AMA: Intercom Group Product Marketing Manager, Christine Sotelo-Dag on Sales Enablement

I think if messaging is done right, the incentive lies in buyer comprehension and ultimately more closed opportunites. Great messaging means understanding the buyer and their pain points and being able to speak to those pain points with the value propositions of your product. This type of value based selling will resonate with buyers in a way that is proven to have impact - and therefore being able to highlight that to the sales org, and showing them the impact of selling product values - should be incentive enough. 

A few things we've evolved over the years as we've trained sales teams for launches. Rather than leaning on broad sales trainings that include the entire sales org, we've tried smaller trainings for specific regions or teams that are tailored specifically to what is most important to them. We've also evolved from trainings that take place a week before launch to several touchpoints leading up to a launch - ranging from trainings, to office hours, demo sessions, and on demand trainings - so sales is able to digest change over time and have plenty of time to get comfortable with selling ahead of launch. One area that often gets overlooked, it putting the time and energy in to making sure sales has a solid demo environment and script - and feels confidently trained (and launch enablement doesn't stop with slides and a training). 

Sales should absolutely have a seat at the table. It might take awhile to cultivate this relationship, and it will need to start at the foundational level (ie. not - please review this content we've created). Start setting up time to meet with different leaders and sales folks outside of launch planning time. Understand how they sell, and how product launches impact their selling. From here, once planning starts for a product launch, ask for volunteers to represent the org, to include their points of view and represent the voice of the prospect and customer. Work with them on how they'd like to be involved without taking too much time away from their selling time. Again, that is a relationship that may need to build over time, but once both sides see the value of having sales involved - it will become easier and 100% beneficial. 

In my experience the shift from Product selling to Platform selling has meant that we've had to update the buyer personas we sell too, or at least expand them. It has meant we're no longer selling to a single buyer, but rather a buying committee - so sales has to be equipped with knowing who the members of that committee are, and what is important to them. Selling a Platform will also inherently evolve the pitch and sales motion as well. Sales enablement will be tasked with helping the sales org sell the value at the highest level and ask the right discovery questions to hone in on the parts of the platform that are most relevant for the prospect - while still selling the vision of the entire Platform.

I often see marketing spending a lot of time understanding the customer - doing customer research, and interviews, but completely bypassing understanding sales and their interaction with customers. Sitting in, and/or listening to recorded calls can really help inform - not only if your messaging is working, but also if it's not - what is working? This level of visibility into sales calls will help evaluate how sales pitches the messaging and if this was what was invisioned by marketing, and ultimately if more training is needed or message tweaking. Another way to get ahead of this is to work closely with Sales at the start of creating messaging - and testing it along the way so there is not a metaphorical wall where messaging is created and then thrown over

Where I've found the most valuable bi-lateral relationships within the Sales org (outside of sales leadership) has been with teams that have access to data that can help my team inform where we can lean in more to help sales. These are sales ops type teams that have an eye on the sales funnel, and are able to provide quantative data that paints a picture of sales health. How are deal progressing through the funnel, where are they getting stuck and why? This quantative data combined with the qualatative research our PMM team drives, helps reall prioritize where we can spend our time better enabling the sales org. Outside of that, we find it really valuable to have a handful of strong relationship with members different sales orgs (SDRs, RMs, AEs) to provide feedback and input on any projects we're working on. 

This is a great question. A sales enablement roadmap is very much like a product roadmap. There are many different inputs into what we prioritize over time, and how that gets decided - and although there will always be a push towards highest impact projects, the reality is those can often be labor and time intensive and therefore there needs to be a balance. Therefore we commit to a certain number of resource intensive projects (ie. 2 per quarter) and balance remaining capacity with faster paced transactional projects that can deliver faster. Not only does this help to progress those "needle moving" initiatives but it also impacts team morale - where it feels good to get things done, and continue to move fast in some areas.

I've seen this handled differently across different organizations, and I'm not sure there is one single correct way. Currently, at Intercom, our Support organizatoin owns our help-articles, and our knowledge base and we have a Marketing team focused on customer education, that can bridge the support side of these documents with the marketing side, creating product videos and how-to's. Regardless, Product Marketing / Sales Enablement are partnered closely with each of these teams ensuring positioning and messaging is aligned and there is consistency throughout. 

The most common mistake I see is PMM / Sales enablement positioned as a reactive team that is creating content and collateral for sales without a clear understanding of what problem (within the sales cycle) it is solving for, and how it will be measured for impact. This can lead to endless content creation, that is not always valuable or solving real pain points, and puts PMM/enablement teams on the constant backfoot. 

The best demo's i've seen in my experience we're not super scripted but rather were adapted to the buyer/prospects needs. In an ideal scenario the discover and first calls have helped set the stage well ahead of a rep jumping into a demo. This means a rep has the information required to start on the highest level overview of the product, and then digging into the parts of the product that will bring the most value to the buyer. Stay brief and highlevel and let the buyer guide on where they'd like to see more, and be ready to be adapatable. A good demo script is basic in nature, and highly flexible - where the rep feels knowledgable on its audience to tailor respectively.