I got back from Europe over the weekend and have some great stories, but what I am really excited to do is share some of the findings from Forrester's third Sales Enablement Roundtable executive exchange session. To help chart a course for this rapidly emerging discipline, we have been rolling up our sleeves and getting into the details about this very important and complex topic.

Just a few days ago, 16 executives from companies like HP, IBM, and Cisco convened to begin sharing their points of view about 1) how they define "sales enablement" 2) discuss a few projects (like skill development programs or a nice juicy topic of sales communications) and 3) what should be done to elevate the role inside your organizations. Of interest, our group was comprised of marketing, sales, and portfolio executives — each of whom brought their own biases to the table.

To give our summit some pizzazz, if you combined the total revenue of all of the participating companies and grouped them into one pool — it would represent the 18th largest economy in the world — behind Turkey, but more than Poland. With so much revenue flying through our industry, and respective companies should we accept the current status quo of "random acts of sales support?"

If you are interested in learning more about what happened at the session, or what's on the mind of some of your peers, please join us for a Teleconference on March 5th, 2010 which I will be hosting with Eric Brown.