AMA: Google Head of Marketing, Google Maps Platform, Madeline Ng on Sales Enablement

First, I think you shouldn't expect 100% wholesale usage of the sales enablement materials you create. Sales enablement materials are meant to create a solid foundation for reps to use but, ultimately, every prospect and customer requires some level of customization so expect adaptation. There's really a spectrum here of tracking and it depends on what metrics you need to justify the resourcing you put to sales enablement, and to whom you need to justify that resourcing. On one hand, you can simply use anecdotal feedback by talking to reps and sales leadership to understand if the materials are being used. This could come from joining sales meetings and asking, or doing an informal poll. On the other end of the spectrum, you could gate and tag every marketing asset and use technology solutions to track usage. I'm not going to cite specific tools but it won't take long for you to find! The more tracking you do, the more friction you might introduce into the process and in some ways it might actually run counter to your goal (usage). But if your team needs to justify additional heads for sales enablement, or you need more OpEx to get things done, you could take this approach. 

Sales enablement is a function that helps scale learning within an organization. I've seen sales enablement focus on topics as broad as: * Market/competitive intelligence * Sales skills development * Deal structure * Product or solution launches * Sales compensation * and more As with any function that exists as an organization scales, you will most likely want to think about bringing on the function when you have a large enough sales force with a complex enough offering changing at a reasonable rate. With that added complexity, you'll need a function to help manage the change and keep your sales team up-to-date on their skills and the business's offerings. I would like to note that product marketers are often assumed to be great at sales enablement because of their familiarity with the customer, their problems, and the solution. However they may not be the most skilled and the program management and also learning tools side of enablement. It is worth it to bring on a specialist if you believe it will materially accelerate the capabilities of your sales team.

There's no quick answer here, but I'd consider the following factors when deciding how far in advance to enable the sales team. I would also caveat that this is less about how far in advance you train and more about how much repetition you offer to the sales team to learn about the thing. 1. How complex is the thing that is launching? More complexity requires more repeated training so I would suggest training earlier than later. 2. How familiar is the sales team with the thing that is launching? If you're selling new technology or to a new buyer or in a new market, your sales team is going to need more time to receive training. 3. How much does your sales team care? Are you launching something that is "nice to know" or will learning about it close the quarter for them? The more it's tied to their incentives, the faster they will learn. Bringing in a sales team member as part of the creation of your sales training, and having them actively present as part of enablement, will typically also increase the amount of attention the broader sales organization pays to you. Bonus points if you have a field sales rep already validate your approach and assets with an actual customer. 4. How ready are you? The best run launches are tied up in a bow well ahead of the launch date but I have rarely seen a launch without some small hiccup. You want to be at least 85% confirmed on the thing you are presenting to the sales organization because you do not want to lose their confidence. Generally you should always assume that the first time you train very little is actually absorbed. Trainings should be consistent and build on each other. You should expect to repeat yourself often, I've heard 7 times, before it sticks. In terms of assessing sales competency, the proof is in deals closed and speeding up the time to close. If you have the time, you can have "pitch off" assessments where a sales rep will pitch back to a subject matter expert and have a mock customer meeting for feedback. Or they could even record those pitches and have them assessed asynchronously. That might be sustainable with a team of 12 reps. 

I love that you've already identified that sales is one of the most important stakeholders in your launch process. It's true - having sales involvement early in the product development cycle (ideally well before launch) is critical to stress-testing the value of the product, clarifying its benefits, and therefore aligning the GTM strategy. The best way to get sales involved is to make it worth their time. How does your launch help them better engage their prospects? How does your launch help them retire quota? How does your launch help them differentiate themselves among their peers and make them valuable to the team? Find out what sales needs and work with individual sales reps as a pilot to start and engage them in the launch process. Let them present to their peers and demonstrate expertise. It will be a slow process but a very worthwhile one as your launches will become better. 

In well run marketing teams, the metrics for the business are assessed holistically instead of piecemeal among each marketing function. The contribution of Product Marketing to a growth result is setting up the strategic positioning, messaging, and core assets that can be used by your demand generation teams. The contribution of demand generation teams is taking that understanding of the audience, problem, and markets and selecting channels that best reach and resonate with those audiences and then proving out that resonance with metrics. A brilliant PMM strategy is useless without a way to reach audiences, and an amazing event or nurture campaign is useless without something to say. Instead of thinking of XX% of growth is driven by PMM, instead think about the overall success of the business and how marketing can contribute to it. What are the goals that you are trying to achieve as a team and how is everyone giving to it? 

In my personal ideal launch world, PMM would develop the core messaging, positioning, and Bill of Materials that would then be handed to Sales Enablement to transform into compelling trainings. PMM may end up guest starring in some trainings as presenters, and Sales Enablement would be a critical feedback mechanism to fine-tune the launch assets. This would allow each organization to demonstrate their expertise and skills - PMM with placing the launch most advantageously for the business, Enablement with their capacity to educate and engage the salesforce to be most successful in their sale. That said, I recognize that the ideal world is not easy to attain based upon your own organization's resources. In some organizations, where "PMM ends and Sales Enablement begins" may be all within one person who is switching up their tasks as their jobs cover both domains. In others, it may require a heavier lift from one team or another. I would say the most important thing is to have clear lines of communication around roles and responsibilities, a collaborative mindset, and lots of public thanks for everyone who is involved in making any kind of enablement happen. 

If your sales team is like any sales team I've been privileged enough to work with, your team is full of highly savvy individuals who know what needs to get done to hit their numbers. As a result, anything you want your sale team to sell must first be sold to them as a way that they can, in the end, meet and exceed their targets. Your job is to create that excitement. Perhaps this new persona influences the traditional buyer, and selling them the product will help not only net new sales but also grow existing customers. Or perhaps this new persona is an entirely new market full of greenfield accounts that your rep can now prospect. In any case, you need to figure out how to sell your sales people on how this new product aligns with their incentives. And if it doesn't, you need to solve that problem or else you really should not expect much interest or action from your sales team.