The ability to effectively attract, develop, and retain top sales talent has always been a vital factor in driving organizational growth, along with a constant need to develop and improve sales competencies, behaviors, and performance. Successfully managing the sales talent lifecycle requires a rigorous process mapped to the organization’s growth strategy and supported by a cross-functional effort. In this report, we introduce the Forrester Sales Talent Lifecycle Framework, which facilitates a consistent approach to attract sales top talent, onboard new hires, and optimize their contribution to their organization.

Jennifer Bullock

,

Peter Ostrow

,

Eric Zines

For B2B sales reps, the inability to quickly find the right piece of content at the right time is a frequent problem. Most organizations have accumulated far too much sales content, of highly variable quality and relevance, and this heap of content is poorly organized across multiple repositories. This report introduces the Forrester Sales Content Architecture Framework, a blueprint for sales content creation and management that ensures that B2B sales reps have easy access to the right content to prepare for and optimize buyer interactions.

Jennifer Bullock

,

Peter Ostrow

,

Eric Zines

The Sales Content Architecture Framework is designed to assist in developing new and improved sales content to empower sellers and activate buyers. Sales content management (SCM) technologies help sales reps deliver the right content at the right stages of the buyer’s journey and sales process. The Sales Content Management Implementation Toolkit contains selected research, tools, and other resources to assist in the organization of sales content and the process that best-in-class organizations use to select and implement a sales content management solution.

Jennifer Bullock

,

Peter Ostrow

,

Eric Zines

Sales enablement leaders are responsible for a wide range of programs that focus on increasing the productivity of sales reps. Prioritization of programs based on return-on-investment criteria, while ideal, is not always easy to achieve. While the intrinsic value of the enablement function is understood by senior organizational leadership, frequent debates inevitably arise regarding how much personnel, funding, and technology should be allocated to various enablement programs. In this report, we introduce a data-driven construct that empowers enablement to quantify its positive impact on the productivity of individual quota-bearing reps, specific sales teams, and the organization as a whole.

Jennifer Bullock

,

Peter Ostrow

,

Eric Zines

The sales enablement discipline of sales communications management seeks to support sales productivity by governing information flow between corporate functions and the field sales team, allowing necessary information to be delivered without overloading reps or draining their efficiency. This process starts with defining a governance strategy and model comprising communications rules, practices, and processes. In this report, we explore the need for rules and structure regarding communications to and from sales and provide a framework to help organizations define their optimal communications strategy and related governance approach.

Jennifer Bullock

,

Peter Ostrow

,

Eric Zines

Changes underway in B2B sales have shifted roles and required competencies. In many organizations, face-to-face sales meetings have become less common and digital interactions are preferred for conducting sales meetings. Therefore, inside sales reps are playing a bigger role — in some cases almost entirely supplanting traditional field sales roles (e.g., account managers and account executives). In this report, we define basic, intermediate, and advanced competencies across three core disciplines that are now required for the inside sales rep role.

Jennifer Bullock

,

Peter Ostrow

,

Eric Zines