AMA: Zendesk Senior Director Product Marketing, Mozhdeh Rastegar-Panah on Sales Enablement

There are many ways to measure whether Sales is properly enabled but the goal setting is just as important as the measuring. A few key things to remember, goals should be: realistic, agreed upon before enablement content is developed, and measured in a way that supports qualitative and quantitative feedback. Why you might ask? 1- Realistic: our enablement team always reminds us that sales will only remember 10% of the content you shared. Really! 2- Agreed upon: taking a moment to work with your ...Read More

I will assume this question is meant for a growing startup who has just started hiring a more formal enablement team. Sales enablement at its core is meant to ensure the business is providing the right training at the right time, that is aligned to the company's objectives and future direction. This calls for a bit of discovery to help you validate that you are building a curriculum to solve the RIGHT problems. In order to understand the areas of opportunity, a bit of discovery is in order: 1- T ...Read More

Great question! This is where a tiering structure comes in handy. Despite what some folks might say, not all enablement needs are created equal and neither should their delivery formats and timing. Here is one way to think about it: Tier 1 - Live Training: time sensitive, more-complex content, highest impact, could get value from live Q&A Tier 2 - Lab Course Training: time sensitive, less-complex content, high impact, live Q&A not required Tier 3 - Async Training: not time sensitive, les ...Read More

We did this at Zendesk with a two prong approach: survey for quantitive feedback and focus groups for qualitative feedback. 1- Survey: We sent out a VP-backed survey to all reps that helped us understand the value of the assets we currently provide (stack ranked), what content they would like to have that is missing, and what self-made content they use most often. This was also sliced & diced at a regional level to ensure we had a global lens. Once we developed some hypothesis around what wo ...Read More

We have done a variety of things over time which I'll list out here: 1- Leveraged tools like Gong to get reporting on critical topics, key ways of selling, and also understand gaps in messaging 2- Align a GTM PMM team whose role is to stay connected to your field team. They are expected to have contacts in every sales role & region who can act as stakeholders when we have key questions or want to get a pulse on the business. 3- Leverage underway programs that are happening like Deal Reviews ...Read More

Prioritizing enablement is such a difficult question but ultimately I would ensure that you have alignment with: where you see the business is focused, timing of upcoming launches, and complexity of content. I've shared a tiering structure as well in a prior comment based on a variety of delivery methods. Ideally you have a tight connection with your Sales / Sales Strategy team - but if you don't, a good rule of thumb is to follow the $. Understand the price points of your products and what the ...Read More