How do you make sure your sales enablement is not just a checklist of tactical activities but an actual strategically valuable program?

Great question – let’s tackle it from two angles: the strategic approach and then the content within it. 1) Strategic Approach: For this side of the equation, let’s all pretend we are the sellers for a second, and that the actual account executives are our clients. If we want to “sell” them our enablement program, we need to approach it the same way as they would approach any successful sales cycle: understand the buyer’s motivations and goals, uncover what’s blocking them from achieving them, o ...Read More

Its important that any activation you do is aligned with sales on goal to either drive revenue or grow product adoption (usually because there is evidence it works better for clients). In general if we do sales enablement there are 3 buckets to consider. Being tactical can also be part of building up the strategy around the program.  Large Product Launch – Being clear what the product is, why we’re launching it and how will this be beneficial for clients. How can you also amplify this messaging ...Read More

This is where the partnership with the sales enablement team is valuable. If you don’t have a sales enablement counterpart, then I suggest the PMM team to think in terms of the Knowledge - Skills - Behavior framework. Here’s how this works: Knowledge: what do sales reps need to know in order to be successful? Skills: how should they apply their knowledge in sales conversations? Behaviors: what activities make for a successful sales rep?This is a good framework to discuss with sales leadership. T ...Read More

Great question! Firstly I question the assertion here. there is NOTHING wrong with a tactical list of activties. Sales enablement owns time-to-productivity. If that means doing a preset task list, that is not necessarily a bad thing. In terms of swimming more upstream I would suggest getting more specific about the definition of time to productivty. Is it the first deal, the first 10 deals, the fist $1M booked etc. To articulate the differences you need to dig into the value each milestone provi ...Read More

Sales enablement requires buy-in from the top sales and marketing leadership. It must have a strategic view of the business -  1. segments  2. regions  3. business and technical sellers  4. partners  5. programs by product  6. Communications  7. Calendar of things that come aligned to the business - programmatically aligned to region or segment or both.  Like every other program -- this needs Budget $$, program managers who execute well, understand the learning abilities and time constraints of ...Read More