Sales Enablement

• SAVO, a sponsor of SiriusDecisions events, is a Chicago-based pioneer in sales enablement software
• This spring, Ellen Lind asked SAVO’s senior director of marketing, Amanda Wynne, some events-related questions
• Amanda and her team get their reps excited during event booth duty with fun giveaways that customers love

• Sales leaders are constantly debating which metrics tell the most accurate story about their performance
• Practitioners need to distinguish between leading and lagging KPIs
• Sales enablement must focus on maximizing the selling time of high-performing reps

• The goal of sales enablement is to ensure sales reps have the right knowledge, skills and process to maximize every buyer interaction
• Sales enablement should improve the lifetime revenue contribution of reps
• The key to sales enablement success is methodical prioritization, defined execution strategy and aligned structure

• Throughout history, the human brain has restructured itself to process information to align with the environment it operates in
• Sales reps can’t be expected to learn simply through concentration – they must engage intermittently with content and technology
• Organizations should examine training and content delivery systems to determine if a new approach is required

• Artificial intelligence (AI) is a controversial and provocative topic that’s impacting many areas of business
• AI-based solutions are being used to “read” and score business content and make improvement recommendations
• A comprehensive content strategy should apply such solutions to all enterprise content to support brand consistency and quality

• Most business-to-business organizations do not provide ongoing sales rep development outside of initiative-based training  
• Sales enablement professionals highlight a lack of core selling skills as inhibitors to growth
• Integrating ongoing rep training and coaching efforts into daily selling activity increases rep competency and results

• The number of SAM offerings available can be mind-boggling
• This is good news for sales enablement, because competition drives innovation
• These table-stakes requirements are must-haves for any short-listed provider

• Organizations that fail to align sales and marketing efforts achieve subpar performance.
• Short of fully integrating marketing with sales, there are a few key steps that will enhance alignment.
• Marketing and sales should agree on goals, use common metric definitions and engage in authentic interlock discussions.

While the weather was chillier than we expected, there was no shortage of heated and thoughtful discussion among the attendees of our 2017 Sales Leadership Exchange that recently took place in Scottsdale, Arizona. I presented our insights around two popular topics in the sales enablement space:  sales onboarding – Don Drury and I conducted an […]

• Sales leaders frequently claim to be in favor of coaching but fail to foster a culture and create an infrastructure to support it
• At SiriusDecisions 2017 Sales Leadership Exchange, Dana Therrien and Peter Zink revealed factors of a successful coaching program
• Every great coaching program relies on an equally great coaching dashboard that shares relevant data proactively and intuitively

• Many B2B organizations continue to struggle with how to define and execute the sales enablement function
• At SiriusDecisions 2017 Sales Leadership Exchange, Heather Cole and Nancy Maluso emphasized effective prioritization of resources
• SiriusDecisions’ Sales Enablement Range of Responsibilities Model groups sales enablement responsibilities into three categories

• Sales kickoffs strive to motivate, recognize, reinforce and develop sales reps so they can achieve business results
• The momentum built at kickoff can fade quickly if sales enablement efforts do not continue throughout the year
• Year-long enablement efforts must be integrated into the daily, weekly and monthly activities of sales reps and their managers

• SiriusDecisions surveyed 400 organizations to analyze technology budgets and adoption
• Fifty-nine percent of marketing and sales technology budgets increased by 5 percent or more
• The software and hardware industries retain flat marketing and sales tech budgets

• Most of what we do each day is driven by unconscious behaviors
• No single sales enablement platform solves all problems – reps must consciously decide when to leverage a particular tool
• Feature consolidation between sales asset management, sales coaching and learning management helps reps execute the right behaviors unconsciously

• Sales reps are expected to deliver a high-quality experience, are quite expensive and represent a long-term investment
• Investing in bad hires comes at a high cost
• Companies must make an effort to reduce sales turnover to reduce the expense of losing high performers

• The targeted and personalized nature of B2B marketing underscores the need for a localization strategy
• Consistency in a localized customer experience is critical for success, and it requires cross-organizational support
• Localization includes every touchpoint in the buyer and customer lifecycle – in addition to the ways data is gathered, classified and analyzed

• When it comes to fueling marketing efforts, B2B organizations typically focus their energy on prospects and top-of-funnel content
• Increasingly, however, organizations recognize they must balance content across the entire buyer lifecycle, which includes post-purchase stages
• B2C organizations, such as PuppySpot.com, provide interesting examples of lifecycle content done right

• B2B sales professionals are y focused only on closing deals; taking time away for learning is a struggle despite an acknowledged need for long-term training
• Sales enablement, charged with finding the right balance between driving knowledge to the field and maximizing selling time, often depends on supporting technology to transmit knowledge
• Selecting the right platform requires identifying the core learning format and delivery needs of reps, as well as organizational requirements for delivery, measurement and reporting

• It’s not enough for B2B sales enablement teams to simply launch learning content toward sales reps.
• Understanding the needs of sales reps and who they are as learners is essential for a successful, technology-based adoption
• This blog shares two of the five rep-friendly characteristics that sales learning environments must include