Sales Enablement

Raymond Carver’s 1981 book of short stories What We Talk About When We Talk About Love is a series of vignettes focusing on characters seeking to define and understand the true nature of love through conversation. The deeper the characters delve into attempts to articulate love, the more inarticulate they seem to become. The same […]

I’m in the process of moving out of the house my family and I have lived in for the past 16 years. With our kids off to college, it’s time to downsize our “empty nest.” Anyone who has been through this experience can probably relate to the following. I’ve been amazed at the amount of […]

We call it the first-line sales manager paradox: While most sales leaders agree that it is one of the most important roles (if not THE most important role), the first-line sales manager is also the role that receives the least support, structure and guidance.

Something struck me the other night as I was creating some new content for an upcoming event I’m facilitating. So, I’m building content, and actually thinking about content itself as a topic area we have been thinking and talking about a lot lately as a research team. And here’s what struck me: Buyers don’t want content. Buyers want information.

One of the best lessons I learned early in my sales career was that four criteria need to be in place before I can be ready to negotiate.

In the classic 1990 Martin Scorsese film GoodFellas, actor Joe Pesci plays Tommy DeVito, a low-level member of an organized crime family. About halfway through the movie he learns that he’s going to be “made” into an official member of the crime family, with all the rewards and privileges that brings. The big day finally […]

What has changed is the nature of B2B marketing and its escalating requirements for product and demand content, which has given rise to the “trend” of content marketing. Content marketing is not trendy; it is already deeply embedded in the way that communications functions think and operate.

Fill in the blank: Our salespeople… are lazy. all suffer from ADD. are completely coin-operated. only go after the low-hanging fruit. would all rather be on the golf course. need lots of pictures to understand things. would sell their mother for a deal. are a necessary evil. I’ve heard these and some even more disparaging […]

SiriusDecisions data shows the most trusted source of information for B2B buyers is their peers. The closest a marketer can come to delivering this source is a customer reference or evidence-based content. So if customer references are a fast track to trust and value, why is there so much mediocre reference content out there?

It’s rare that a company starts its life focused on selling to the mid-market (which we’ll define as companies with $100 million to $500 million in revenue). Most start focused on the Fortune 500 – a market easy to define and quantify. But at some point, a company will look at the mid-market to maintain […]

For Baby Boomers (and even Gen Xers) who carried the bag earlier in our careers, those were the good old days of selling. All we needed to do was wait for buyers to come to us with their needs, ask them questions, align our offerings to meet their requirements and close the deal. It was […]

Fifty hours. That’s likely the average workweek for an average salesperson – though between travel and late nights writing proposals, filling out RFPs and rehearsing for presentations, it may be longer for your reps.

I’ve been on both sides of the table for analyst briefings. As an analyst I’ve sat through hundreds of them, and as a product manager I’ve conducted just as many. A successful briefing shouldn’t be too stressful, but it does require some forethought to be effective. Here are four tips to consider the next time you need to brief analysts.

During our recent Summit, I spoke with a marketing client to help him strategize about building a thought leadership program for his company’s professional services business unit. He clearly saw the value of using thought leadership content to boost inbound marketing and demand creation results. On the other hand, the head of the consulting practice […]

Sell value! Across the B2B landscape, this is the age-old mantra of CSOs to their troops. Reps are told to stop competing on price and product, and start competing by demonstrating the value their offerings bring to a client’s business. Based on the daily discussions we have with clients, this is easier said than done. […]

Anyone who has ever worked in this profession understands that no two sales calls will ever be the same, and that ultimately the training given should prepare reps to “improvise” – letting their training take over when in doubt (just like those NYPD rookies).

Famous (and notorious) as a model of ruthless operational efficiency, Walmart is known for mastering just-in-time (JIT) delivery of goods – holding virtually no inventory – to extract from suppliers only what’s needed to sell. While we certainly don’t advocate that B2B marketing and sales adopt the type of adversarial vendor relationships Walmart is legendary […]

Sales enablement leaders often ask us how they can better measure whether their efforts are truly making an impact. While there are a number of ways to measure sales enablement, certifying reps is a great way to do it. Based on the increasing number of inquiries we receive on this subject, our clients seem to […]

Many of our clients struggle with large opt-out lists that, while containing contacts they’ve identified as a good fit for their offers, are unable to be communicated with due to their current status. The good news: All is not lost.