Why Sales Enablement is Catching Fire

Matt Downes

Senior Director EMEA

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Leading our partnerships with customers

500+ Customers across all industries

20 of the Fortune 100

62 of the Fortune 500

9 of the 15 Largest Banks

10 of the Top 30, and 21 of the Top 100 Global Technology

Companies

47 of the Top 100 Asset Managers

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Defining Sales Enablement

Sales Enablement is a strategic, ongoing process that equips all client-facing employees with the ability to consistently and systematically have a valuable conversation with the right set of customer stakeholders at each stage of the customer’s problem-solving life cycle to optimize the return of investment of the selling system. - Forrester

The job of sales enablement is to ensure that sales people possess the skills, knowledge, assets

and processes to maximize every buyer interaction. – SiriusDecisions

Sales force enablement is a strategic, cross-functional discipline, designed to increase sales results and productivity, by providing integrated content, training and coaching services, for salespeople and frontline sales managers, along the entire customer’s journey powered by technology. – CSO Insights

Sales enablement is the activities, systems, processes and information that support and promote knowledge-based sales interactions with clients and prospects. - Gartner

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Defining Sales Enablement

Sales Enablement is a strategic approach to unite stakeholders in Sales, Marketing, and Operations around the common goal of

providing sales people with the right resources, processes, and technology needed to sell effectively

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But we can agree on what it is NOT

TrainingA tick box on a Sales

onboarding listSolved by a tool or single

person / team

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Catching Fire- a punchy statement

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How fast is Sales Enablement growing?

Almost no one is backing away from Sales

Enablement. 74% of organisations are growing it.

SiriusDecisions

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The time is now

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25 YEARS AGO

The Brand Era

AWARENESS

ImpressionsKPI:

10 YEARS AGO

The Lead Gen Era

AWARENESS

CONSIDERATION

Leads

TODAY

The Enablement Era

CONSIDERATION

CONVERSION

AWARENESS

Revenue

Evolving Relationship

MARKETING & SALES

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Influenced by product19%

Buyer decisions are influenced by

the sales experience53%

9% Influenced by price

19% Influenced by company

Buyer Decision Influence

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And yet….

* Source - SiriusDecisions

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The cost of not having a Sales Enablement strategy is astronomical

$1T $2.3M

Misalignment Underused content

Decreased sales productivity and wasted marketing efforts

due to misalignment cost organisations $1 trillion a

year, according to Hubspot

The opportunity cost of unused or underused marketing content for

enterprise organisations is roughly $2.3 million annually

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Business Use Cases

MARKETING & SALES CONTENT JOURNEY

MARKETING

SALES

Unorganized content with uncontrolled versioning and

workflows

Deliver Approved Content at Scale to deliver Personalised

Experience

No understanding of content engagement by customers and

prospects

Prescribe the right content at the right time in CRM and

on Mobile

Spend 30 hrs/month per sales rep searching for and creating

custom presentation

Need to make data-driven decisions to

direct content creation

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3 Steps to Making Sales Enablement a Reality

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3 Steps

Identify internal stakeholders & define

goals and scope of Sales Enablement

program

Secure executive alignment &

sponsorship for the mission, goals &

definition of success

Use data to measure program outcomes & slowly expand scope

as meet & exceed initial goals

Define Align Grow & Measure

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1. Define

3 STEPS

• Gather all key cross-functional stakeholders – Marketing, Sales,

Sales Operations, Sales Enablement, IT

• Agree goals & define success – start small

• Assign responsibilities & accountabilities

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2. Align

3 STEPS

• Top-down support is critical

• Get buy-in & craft communication plan

• Determine ongoing exec management & feedback loops

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3. Measure & Grow

3 STEPS

• Use data to measure results v goals

• Combine objective & subjective feedback to iterate on initiatives

• Expand scope of program as success is achieved

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Case study:

Alignment

Efficiency

Systems

Centralisation

Technology

Objectivity

Revenue: $1M / year

Efficiency

Challenges Solutions Results

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Case study: new BU in large multi-national

Rapid change

Scale

Systems

Exec sponsorship

Alignment

Technology

Revenue: on goal

Efficiency

Challenges Solutions Results

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Case study:

Financial

Alignment

Content

Exec sponsorship

Centralisation

Technology

Revenue: $100M (est)

Cost savings: $50M (est)

Challenges Solutions Results

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Sales Enablement is on fire –start now or get burnt

seismic.com

Thank you - come visit us at stand E18 to continue the conversation!

mdownes@seismic.com