Sales enablement is starting to catch fire as an industry. Having carried the torch the last few years, it’s good to see companies receive funding and join the crowd. But, are some of these newly established “sales enablement” organizations missing the mark?
Jumping on the sales enablement bandwagon
Right now it seems that some companies that specialize in content storage and file management are jumping on the enablement bandwagon and tacking ‘sales enablement’ onto their existing product arsenal. Although the expanded focus on sales enablement is flattering, many of these companies have made their money in simple cloud storage and seem to be bending their offerings to satisfy the demands of the market, instead of the needs of their customers.
What’s most interesting are the marketing slants that these companies are taking in a way to bend their offerings since they are quickly becoming generic and uber-competitive to try and give their advocates a way to expand their investments by linking to something closer to revenue.
Most recently, I’ve seen companies take their storage and usage statistics and claim they can make your sales teams smarter. And in their reality, doing this is simple. Just have all sales members stack rank the content based on the number of times it’s been opened, showed to an audience, or ranked by sales peers. Some vendors are trying to make that basic information sound trendy, as if the most popular content ‘wins’ an imaginary contest that leads to being better sales people.
And while there is no “industry definition” of sales enablement, the goal of this strategy, from the perspective of Sirius Decisions, is to “ensure that every seller has the required knowledge, skills, processes, and behaviors to optimize every interaction with buyers.” Taking this into consideration, are cloud storage companies equipped to roll out true enablement solutions? From my vantage point, they are not, and here’s why:
- The masses don’t know what work best. Most sales reps are hired because of skills they have that relate to selling – managing a customer relationship, pounding the phones, negotiating a sale, etc. Creating content or knowing the company’s specific branding and messaging guides are not at the top of that list. Most reps don’t know what they should use, and as a seasoned rep I certainly don’t want to put my faith on something that the majority of sales reps think is valuable – I want to know what the top reps leverage to close deals. And there is a huge difference between what the top reps use, do, and say compared to what average reps use, do, and say.
- It’s marketing’s responsibility to tell reps what content they should be using, and why they should be using it. Here’s a real-life example for this one: In 2007, I was running a national vertical program for a large company with 1400 reps across the country. Our marketing team conducted a massive evaluation of vertical and go-to-market strategies, and analyzed the partner vendors that we should use in order to properly execute effectively. After we published corporate guidelines and details on vendor selection, the masses did not comply and many regions created their own messaging and partnered with unapproved vendors. As a result, those regions failed at selling into that vertical, and national selling efforts were stifled. Although the masses had good intentions – to sell whatever they could, mistakes were made over and over again because their efforts weren’t aligned with the corporate directive.
- Committing to the right tools and aligning to industry best practices can accelerate your program’s success; simply taking a file storage system and calling it ‘a sales tool’ will result in only short-term and luke-warm benefits that lead to future frustrations.
If you are lazy about sales enablement, expect it to be a short honeymoon. Gone are the days where the ‘single source of truth’ is the miracle that will lead your sales team to the winner’s circle year after year. It takes more than content and ‘crowd-sourcing’ recommendations to create a winning sales enablement program. It takes effort and planning – and professional tools that empower you to execute a successful strategy.
Sales enablement, field marketing and sales operations leaders need to grab the bull by the horns and take on this responsibility. Asking reps to rank and score content, and then calling that content “the best” and regurgitating it back to the field will lead to very short-term, short-lived success.