I recently had the opportunity to interview Craig Nelson of Sales Enablement Group. I asked him why the trend of sales enablement has really taken off in the past few years. Why sales enablement? Why now?
I also opened the conversation up to the wider LinkedIn community and there are some really great opinions came out of it. You can see the original post here, and I’ve captured some of the highlights below:
“In the last several years, a variety of forces have converged to transform nature of face-to-face selling interactions and offer the opportunity to sell more at lower cost. The ubiquity of mobile devices, the consumerization of technology, and pressure from clients for better insights, ideas and advice are redefining the relationship model and the client experience. Most significantly, a rapidly maturing set of sales enablement technology – including mobile devices, analytics, solution selling, presentation automation, content management, and CRM solutions – have demonstrated the potential change the game and solve these long standing selling problems. They offer an unprecedented potential for sales innovators to executing solution selling, differentiating the client experience with insights and thought leadership, increasing account penetration with cross selling, and adding more value during face-to-face sales interactions.”
“Most would agree that retaining and growing revenue comes at a significant cost. The next time you hire a new rep or add a channel partner ask yourself whether the foundation is in place to enable their success in a reasonable time period. A sales enablement system that evolves with your markets can answer this question.”
“To expand on the video, sales enablement (SE) has become a top priority. Perform a simple LinkedIn search for “sales enablement.” Compared to years past, you’ll see a huge increase in results. Further, research shows the increasing importance of SE in today’s competitive markets. SiriusDecisions research shows that 61% of B-to-B organizations have enablement functions in place and another 12% plan to in the near future. As momentum for SE continues to build and to create mindshare, it’s important to focus on the benefits that are important to your organization. Today markets are more competitive than ever and the Internet, peers, analysts, social networks and other resources have empowered buyers. These buyers are smarter and demand that the seller be smarter, which is a primary function of the SE system.”
” The primary goal of SE is not new. Companies have always been trying to improve sales performance, i.e. accelerate more profitable revenue growth and lower selling costs. The problem is these effort s have not made a significant difference, as you highlight. Another snap shot to underscore this failure to move the needle is ten years of summary 3rd-party market research (see it here https://tinyurl.com/bew9rl9 ) which was summarized into the following Customer Communication Index™:
•Less than 50% of your marketing and sales communications are relevant to your customers
•Less than 30% of your marketing content is relevant to your customer-facing teams”
I would definitely appreciate any additional viewpoints weighing in on LinkedIn.
