Peter Ostrow

Competencies, culture, and compensation — find out where you should invest your sales enablement budget in the year ahead. Read highlights from our new report, Planning Guide 2023: Sales Enablement.

Sales enablement automation (SEA) solutions equip sellers with personalized training and content to effectively engage with and meet the expectations of increasingly digital-first buyers. Over the past decade, these solutions have evolved and empowered B2B revenue teams to: Optimize sales processes. Break down organizational silos. Shorten time-to-competency. Measure the impact of enablement programs. These technologies […]

Today, both sellers and buyers are forced to navigate a perfect storm of content, as the average number of interactions per B2B buying cycle has jumped 54% over the past two years and reps have an average of 1,400 sales assets to choose from. While reps now have more tools to leverage than ever before […]

A number of trends in the B2B sales space have disrupted, challenged, and motivated sales enablement teams this year. As the first quarter of 2022 begins, let’s understand how these macro trends and the pandemic have reshaped our function and industry. First, the multitude of sales enablement tech acquisitions we’ve seen allows us to brag […]

Using game elements and techniques to motivate sellers can net short-term benefits. But it won't necessarily build the competencies that drive long-term results.

Sales enablement can often be a squirrelly thing to quantify. For starters, most practitioners are compensated via the same mechanisms — quota attainment, deal size, sales cycle — that are deployed to reward just about everyone in the direct sales hierarchy: leaders, coaches, overlays, managers, and, of course, the reps and partners they support. But […]

Two recent major acquisitions are part of a larger trend that reveals what sales enablement leaders have come to want and need.

Mergers and acquisitions and other major changes can place enormous pressure on frontline sales organizations. Learn when the strain becomes too much in this B2B Summit session preview.

Pretty soon, we’re going to start booking business travel again. After the initial endorphin release, how much will we have learned from selling in a work-from-home world?

If 2020 has taught us anything, it’s that change is exceptionally hard for many people. The best sales enablement teams excel at change management.

Many sales leaders employ, tolerate, and enable high-maintenance sellers, because such reps yield a final product we value. But is this sustainable?

Most B2B organizations invest significant effort in customer feedback via customer advisory boards, but many fail to consider the same kind of insight from their internal sales team. Sales advisory councils represent a valuable opportunity for organizations to collect vital sales feedback on major strategic initiatives and identify any broad sales issues that must be addressed. Forrester’s own council is a textbook definition of how high-performing sales teams leverage a sales advisory council.

• Far too many sales asset management (SAM) technology purchases are treated as a project, not a lifestyle
• The result is disappointed sales enablement leaders who miss the ROI potential of their deployment
• Organizations that best leverage their SAM environment reap the most long-term benefits

• COVID-19’s full impact is far from known, but its reach is unprecedented
• B2B interactions have been affected severely by the crisis, leaving sales professionals uncertain about how to proceed
• We offer a discussion on how to tell whether it’s too soon to sell

• A year ago, SiriusDecisions’ Jeff Lash presented “’Twas the Night Before Product Launch: A SiriusDecisions Holiday Poem”
• Peter Ostrow continues the tradition with “’Twas the Night Before Year-End,” with an homage to sales enablement
• Best wishes from our pipeline to yours!

• Organizations frequently think of marketing, sales, service and renewal cycles as independent sets of customer interactions
• Customers are more likely to purchase and renew when their experience is consistent across all interactions with an organization
• Sales enablement is making strong headway via competency-driven support, but other customer-facing personas should receive similar enablement

• As consumers, we have strong preferences for the companies we trust and admire
• These companies thrive because they focus on customer interactions and treat their buyers with respect and relevance
• B2B organizations can earn the same loyalty – and economic advantages – by learning from their consumer-driven peers

• Sales enablement is a rapidly growing function with a wide variety of definitions and responsibilities
• Some organizations take a legacy approach to enablement rooted in product-centric learning to inform seller-buyer interactions
• Best practices in sales enablement favor a more holistic approach to developing role-specific skills, knowledge and process awareness that yields stronger sellers