AMA: Adobe Head of Product Marketing (APAC), Jeremy Wood on Sales Enablement

In my experience customer testimonials and case studies are always the #1 most requested asset from sales. In a couple of my roles we ended up polling the sales teams on what their most requested item(s) might be from Product Marketing (because we were all bombarded with various requests!) This way we could stack rank them and focus on one or two key items based on the inputs. Furthermore this gave us a strong mechanism to take back to Sales when they demanded more items or ones not prioritised ...Read More

This is definitely one of the trickier elements of sales enablement and the quantifiable value driven through product marketing into sales enablement. In short much like the majority of PMM KPI's and metrics, its hard to have 'absolute' metrics but I have no hesitation in owning the influence on key business metrics by way of strong sales enablement. A good example of this is things like decreased Time To Close (TTC), increased Average Contract Value (ACV), and higher win rates. If PMM is enabli ...Read More

You have to be very clear up front around the objectives of the enablement effort itself. That is to say if you're running an enablement session on X product and its for sales that are brand new to the product, then outline within the calendar invite itself that this is a '101 level' training and you should not expect deep dive nor overly technical information to be part of the delivery. This helps level set first and foremost what they're going to get out of the session (and what they aren't!) ...Read More

I always like to go back to basics and follow the same principals that we as PMM's follow when it comes to positioning to our customers. What is the customers pain point? What use cases are they trying to solve for? How can our products/solutions help them achieve their key business objectives? If we take those similar principles and apply them to an enablement curriculum you ensure you're aligning and delivering value to sales. How are you helping them? What will they be able to achieve from be ...Read More

I mentioned this elsewhere but in my mind there's two key dimensions to sales effectiveness. One is the core sales skills side..i.e how good are they at discovery? how do they navigate objection handling? How are their deal progression skills and so on. These are typically built up over time with more and more experience but are enhanced through 'sales skills' training. The other dimension is product/solution enablement. How well do they know the product? How well can they position the value of ...Read More

Ah I remember this stage a few times ;) Again, I think keeping things simple is key. Don't overthink as it will only complicate things and in turn likely create the opposite impact you're aiming for! Prioritise a handful of key initiatives and activities that are inline with the business. Think along the lines of these steps: Based on the product or service you're selling, ensure your value proposition, messaging, competitive differentiators, and other USP's are clearly articulated. Again, keep ...Read More

This is a great question and probably one of the hardest to actually achieve depending on the topic and the environment you're doing the enablement in. I think the trick is to ensure THEY know why they're there and why it will be beneficial for them to pay attention! The same way you would always design your product messaging, value proposition etc around the customer and the benefits they will get from your products, make sure you are clearly articulating what the sales teams are going to get o ...Read More

Full disclosure, I've never 'started' sales enablement in a company so I'm just going to tackle this from my point of view but it's not based on real world experience! I would keep things very simple and frame them up the same way you would with a GTM for a new product/solution/service. What is the value proposition, messaging, competitive stance etc and how do you in turn ensure your sales team(s) understand that. Also, who is the customer what is their pain point and why will your solution be ...Read More

The biggest one I've seen not just with new programs but existing is not incorporating/including sales into the plan itself! I've found in my experience that sales can be less trusting of marketing/product marketing "telling them" what to do vs having some buy in to the process. I've always found consulting with sales leaders or a few 'ambassadors' to be very handy! They will also act as advocates to ensure you get strong attendance and participation from the rest of the sales teams. Also includ ...Read More

Great question and one which I've had to tackle quite a few times over the years (and not always successfully might I add!) I think the key here is to get sales on-side by having them actively participate in the process. At one business where I owned sales enablement, we did a yearly survey of the sales teams around what assets they wanted prioritised. As expected the dominant results were around customer stories and case studies/1-sheeters. When we collated the results we went back to sales wit ...Read More