Actively managing the seller experience
Shannon Konvalin, D.B.A., PsyM., PMP
Business Development Enablement & Program Management | Sales Enablement Certified | Market Intelligence Expert
The CEB/Gartner Sales Leadership Council has an outstanding definition of Sales enablement.
“The practice of actively managing the seller experience by providing integrated sales resources that simplify the sellers' job.”
Sales enablement as a function within organizations requires management of the cognitive dissonance that exists within the archetypal sales and marketing relationship.
Consider a successful football team; the offense, defense, and special teams all have different roles. And while one spectacular unit might be able to carry the team to a win, those wins are harder to achieve and less consistent. However, even the most exceptional teams can improve their performance, with evolved coordination, training (individual & collective), the right resources, and added intel concerning their operating environment.
A vital sales enablement task is sales process improvement and support. This responsibility boils down to reducing complexity for sellers. In the execution of complexity reduction, it is necessary to build rapport with both sales and marketing. It is essential to influence and amend the relationship between sales and marketing. This is done through leadership that involves shaping the dynamic without explicit authority. As such, careful attention must be paid to leadership traits and styles exercised in sales enablement roles.
Alignment with marketing means sales productivity. The ideal use of marketing content by sales is often a vital element of sales enablement. Salespeople are more successful when they can provide a buyer with the right content at the right time. This alignment is the first commission of sales enablement, strengthening the relationship and collaboration between sales and marketing benefits the entire organization.
Many organizations are now asking if they can afford to confront the future without addressing this challenge, and if sales enablement is the right answer. So far, the answer is in the numbers; in the last five years organizations with dedicated sales enablement has increased 40 percentage points to 61%. While quota attainment in an organization with dedicated sales enablement increased by 10.6 percentage points. What will be your organizations' answer?
