How do you plan out what sales enablement content you'll make in any one quarter? How much of this is driven by sales versus product marketing?

It should be collaborative and I would somewhat divide and conquer by you setting up the enablement you know will be needed based on your PMM roadmap such as product launches and other new collateral (comp intel, pitch decks, research reports, etc…), and by sales leaders coming to the table with where they see their teams needing more help. Maybe it’s in deals around a certain use case, for a certain industry, or against a certain competitor. All this should be clear from the sales op data you h ...Read More

In my experience it’s a healthy mix. A few key factors (not exhaustive) can should influence the type (and volume) of sales enablement content you deliver in a quarter: Stage of product lifecycle: How mature is the product and where is it in its lifecycle? This usually will dictate the volume and fidelity of the content you produce. For example, for early stage products, it’s best to keep sales enablement content light as you’re still in the process of assessing early customer feedback Sales fee ...Read More

Sales enablement content planning is a constant push and pull of what's coming from the inside-out (e.g. product launches) versus what's coming from outside-in (e.g. competitor updates). You must address both in your roadmap. Focusing too much on the inside-out will create tension with the sales team as they feel like their needs aren't being met. The risk is that they stop engaging with your content, and no longer give you the valuable feedback your team needs to improve. Focusing too much on t ...Read More

The best practice for good enablement calendar planning is to understand what the business needs from a GTM perspective -and this alignment needs to happen at an executive and functional leadership level, between product ,marketing, sales and ofcourse product marketing. It is dangerous for either sales, or product marketing to be dominating the conversation Now that is an ideal state. In reality, I often see the following models of enablement planning (Goal is to strive towards the ideal state) ...Read More

I’d say it’s 50/50. Sales will always have lots of ideas and requests :) On the other side, I don’t want to spend my time creating content that Sales won’t use. It’s a good practice to understand WHY Sales is requesting certain content. Sales might request a detailed feature-by-feature competitive matrix, when you have your key competitive differentiators on a LP/webpage that’s easier to share with prospects. Then, it’s good to have an agreed calendar (w/ the Sales leads) of what you’ll produce ...Read More