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Where does sales enablement end and sales strategy begin?

4 Answers
Axel Kirstetter
Axel Kirstetter
Guidewire Software VP Product MarketingMarch 31

This question sits better with Sales than product marketing. Also, sales strategy sounds like an oximoron to me. WHo cares how you sell as long as you make revenues (and its legal/ethical). That said, to better plan and align a company needs to decide a few things. Choices to be made:

- what is the channel or distribution strategy

- what is the Account/Territory plan

- what is the targeting/segmentation appproach

- how will Sales get compensated 

this list can further be expanded with Revenue planning. then you also need to factor in things like:

- price and discount levers

- win rates and pipleline

- packaging levers

Sales enablement is an execution function in my opinion. It executes upon the strategy chosen by either exec team or Sales leadership. It does not formulate the Sales strategy. I always like to come back to how a function is measure to determin what its accountable for. Sales enablement is measured on time-to-productivity. Nobody other than sales enablement owns that. 

1111 Views
April Rassa
April Rassa
Aventi Group Product Marketing ConsultantJanuary 18

Sales enablement is about people and technology, and strategically aligning them both behind a common goal: sales successes. It helps organizations streamline sales cycles by improving buyer interactions with better, more relevant sales content and equipping sales teams with the tools they need to be more informed and productive sellers. When executed properly, sales enablement has a measured impact on time spent selling, win rates, and deal size. 

But before we can enable sales on how best to approach a given market segment, we need to develop our sales strategy. A sound sales strategy documents a plan for positioning and selling your product or service to qualified buyers in a way that differentiates your solution from your competitors.

Sales strategies are meant to provide clear objectives and guidance to your sales organization. They typically include key information like growth goals, KPIs, buyer personas, sales processes, team structure, competitive analysis, product positioning, and specific selling methodologies.

300 Views
Molly Friederich
Molly Friederich
Sanity.io Director of Product MarketingMay 25

This is a big question, but my simple answer is they're part of an ongoing, mutually-informing cycle. As PMMs we need to inform sales strategy in terms of ICP, personas, motivations, positioning, competitive insights, etc—all the fundamentals. This work only matters if we're able to deeply enable the team by bringing those insights to life and reinforcing them regularly, and then gathering feedback to inform fine-tuning. 

473 Views
Hien Phan
Hien Phan
Pinecone Head of Product Marketing, Partner, and Customer MarketingMay 2

As someone who does both, sales strategy is deciding the top level messaging, the actual market and persona that you're tackling, and the overall approach. Sales enablement is translating your positioning into actual assets like slides, one-pagers, and talking points as well as when to use said assets in the sales process. 

575 Views
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