Peter Ostrow

Today Forrester is publishing new research revealing that, all else being equal, B2B sales leaders achieve better revenue results when they hire first-line sales managers (FLSMs) externally, rather than promoting individual contributors (ICs). This runs counter to standard practice and tradition, but the data is clear: Externally hired managers and their teams perform better. Our advice […]

My colleagues from our future-of-work research team, Katy Tynan and Angelina Gennis, recently published a wonderful report about leadership and culture. In addition to a key underlying message that great leadership mandates active cultural shaping, they crucially remind us that “Culture does not just happen. It is created, either intentionally or unintentionally, through the actions of […]

In many professions, education for a new employee’s role incorporates learning with doing. Educators must undergo a full semester of student teaching, surgeons develop by “watching, teaching, doing,” and aspiring electricians must deliver hundreds of hours as apprentices prior to licensure. Even most MLB stars spend years toiling in the minor leagues perfecting their skills. […]

Toxicity lives on in some sales cultures — and where it does, it impedes growth and success. Learn what’s needed to overcome it in this B2B Summit North America session preview.

How recently did your company leadership issue a directive implying that the sales team must change their behavior? Not long ago, if yours is like most revenue organizations. Whether it’s framed as changing from tactical to strategic selling, focusing on solutions instead of products, or prospecting deeper into buying groups, most institutions habitually move the […]

Equipping sellers for better performance isn't a matter of course volume. Explore the questions that should guide learning.

Read five suggestions to simultaneously come to the aid of your internal customers and to up your enablement game for the long term.

The sales and revenue enablement space has seen a wildly dynamic 2023, with many casualties of layoffs impacting the profession but also plenty of new opportunities opening up. At the same time, enablement leaders have had to adapt to changing priorities while continuing to deliver tangible, quantifiable value to the C-suite. If you’re a newly […]

Forrester is adapting along with the entire B2B sales space, pivoting from “sales enablement” to “revenue enablement” in describing the discipline of ensuring that all customer-facing roles receive consistent enterprise support so that they have the confidence, competence, and content to drive customer value and revenue results.

Who doesn’t love a success story? Every year at Forrester’s B2B Summit North America, our sales research team presents new and exciting research, topped off with a captivating B2B Program Of The Year Award presented in a fireside chat with a Forrester analyst. For 2023, our B2B Program Of The Year Award session will include […]

For over two decades, Forrester’s B2B Summit has attracted and educated leaders in sales, marketing, product, and customer engagement disciplines, furthering their professional development and “what it means” around everything from corporate alignment to generative AI. When 4,000 delegates gather again this June in Austin, they’ll be choosing from 111 sessions within nine tracks to […]

What does a help desk, or similar functionality, look like for enablement teams?

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 […]