Has “sales enablement” finally achieved its moment in the proverbial sun? While the definition, scope of influence, composition, and organizational placement of sales enablement functions can still vary widely from industry to industry, its clear that the role of sales enablement professionals, and the tools now available to support them, has reached an important point of maturity. For evidence of this one need look no further than the recently released report from Forrester Research’s Scott Santucci, “The Sales Enablement Execution Landscape.”
For my Qstream peers and I, Scott’s report was a welcome voice in helping to organize and create a framework for the proliferation of applications now in the market. Perhaps one of the most important points he makes is that despite all the hype around sales enablement as a business function, no one solution is the “silver bullet” for all your organization’s sales challenges.
While most sales enablement strategies share a common goal – to better equip and empower customer-facing sales people to engage more effectively, and as a result, close more business – having more valuable conversations with potential customers requires a diverse set of skills and assets. Scott’s outline of 6 universal business objectives, when mapped to your team’s unique needs, provides an insightful guide for both identifying, and getting executive sponsorship for, the right sales enablement solution investments. These include:
We couldn’t agree more, and in fact, we can’t stress enough the role that management plays in making sales enablement programs “stick.” In our experience, perhaps the most critical audience, and cheerleader, for any enablement initiative is the front line sales manager. Not only are these managers indispensible for scoping, implementing and measuring your efforts at improvement, they play an essential role in adoption, setting expectations for their reps, and helping to relay the “what’s in it for me?” benefits that reps often need to jump in and stay engaged.The report also includes some critical take-aways about the need to build internal consensus for your efforts, what Scott calls, “creating and promoting a shared vision to the problem.” Regardless of where sales enablement as a function lives within your company, there are numerous stakeholders – senior executives, IT, sales leadership, marketing, product, and training groups – that each have a potential stake in your program.
Interested to learn more? Get a complimentary copy of the full report here.
After you’ve taken a look, we’d love to hear from other sales enablement pros on their response to the report. Do these six goals map to your own view of the sales enablement landscape? Anything missing?