You might be surprised „What a question, of course it is the right term! We have to enable our sales force to deliver better results, to grow, to be more effective, more efficient“, and so on.
Wait a minute; let’s recap the “why” and “what” of sales enablement. The “why” is a pretty obvious – traditional function-oriented inside-out approaches are no longer working – something is broken. The “what” is described in many ways, also here in one of my earlier blog posts. However, it’s definitely not about creating more content and more trainings and throwing all of that over the fence to the sales force – won’t be successful.
Sales enablement, processed in a meaningful and valuable way, is quite the contrary!
Here are some key elements:
- SE is a system’s approach, a strategic, ongoing discipline, which covers the whole selling system in an end2end way
- SE’s mission is to bridge the gap between strategy and execution by engineering the right selling models according to the business strategy based on outside-in oriented GoToCustomer approaches.
- SE’ foundation is collaboration as a core principle across the whole selling system, within sales teams, with partners and with customers. The goal of collaboration is to achieve better results. It impacts strategy, processes and IT, inside and outside of the organization.
- SE’s specific topics are across the selling system are e.g. sales model, selling methodologies and strategies based on your sales segments, integrated end2end lead and opportunity management from prospect to contract, account management best practices, sales content/messaging, knowledge and collaboration platforms, trainings/learning’s (what and how), engagement models tailored to buyer roles and of course, performance metrics.
- SE’s goals are to enable all client-facing people to have meaningful conversations that are valuable for customers to solve their problems, to master their challenges and to drive their desired outcomes.
- SE’s impact is to improve the performance of the whole selling system regarding efficiency and growth.
Now, let’s think about the term „sales enablement“! If you should find a headline for sales enablement regarding the purpose and what all the different fields of actions, we considered above, could have in common, what would it be?
Isn’t that all about scalable selling efficiency? What’s the bottom line of all these topics, which are mentioned above? They are focused on the vendor’s organizations, on process integration and performance, on connecting the dots across the selling systems. Calling that “sales enablement” makes sense.
But something has changed in parallel, right? Some organizations already changed the design point from an internal one such as the own product and service portfolio to an external – the customer and their challenges and problems.
Why is that so important? Because the customers don’t care about our products, they only care about how to solve their own problems and how to achieve their desired outcomes. So, there is a translation required – mapping own capabilities to the specific buyer’s challenges.
Let’s rephrase that: We are talking about sales enablement, and then we changed our design point to the customer. So, sales is an internal function, the buyer, the clients are outside, right? Establishing the term „selling system“ was the first step in the right direction, because we can only be successful in the future, if we collaborate successfully across the functional silos – that’s why I mentioned collaboration as a mandatory core principle. But what about collaboration with partners and customers?
What’s the next level, which builds on the layer of scalable selling efficiency?
Scalable efficiency is pretty much focused on strategy, structure, process and performance. We need that, no doubt, it’s a very important foundation. Getting all these elements right, you can build a selling system which is very efficient in a scalable way.
But does that make any difference? Probably not, but it’s a necessary foundation for greater success.
What about people, and what about culture and how do we want to interact with our customers in the next decades and which skills are required to master these century’s challenges? We need people’s passion at work, their full creative potential, we need much more meaning, more focus on valuable outcomes for our customers instead of more outputs.
Outputs were part of the industrial age, outcomes are information age key elements.
Sounds simple, but it’s not – not at all.
That’s about the big picture. What does that mean for sales enablement, what’s next, how do we need to evolve the discipline?
“The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.”
Alvin Toffler
Unlearn and relearn. Now, it’s now about people and culture, about how do we equip and coach people to unlearn and to relearn. What do we really need to change from last century’s push behavior towards a smarter, pull-oriented behavior (which does not mean being reactive!)?
Unlearn the „product push muscle memory“, the attitude to pitch a product, to focus more on outputs as activities and check lists than on value-creating outcomes.
Relearn is all about what it really means to work customer-centric, to help a client to achieve their desired outcomes – which can also mean to challenge a client in a positive, in a collaborative way. It’s about how we share new insights with them on a business level; make them thinking on their challenges from a different perspective to show them how a certain solution could help them to achieve their desired outcomes?
From my point of view, we have to establish a learning organization, based on collaboration in many dimensions, with a culture of scalable learning. I mean different layers of learning, e.g. basic learning’s, individual coaching , tailored learning’s within smaller groups, where certain people are coached from a few high performers – a platform to share tribal knowledge, e.g. how to sell cloud services in a meaningful and valuable way (we won’t make no difference if we try to sell different cloud operating models, but we could make a difference if we would show a customer how to create new cloud based business models – next level of value creation).
Leadership based on storytelling might be a prerequisite… to touch people’s hearts, not only their minds.
That’s no longer selling and trying harder as well-known for decades, it’s more how to challenge and enable buyers to help them to make their best decision to solve their problems and to drive their desired outcomes – that’s what I call a value-creation engine!
Couldn’t buyer enablement be a great term for this next level, based on scalable learning?
It could be a consequent next step, which requires a foundation of scalable selling efficiency, what we should achieve with sales enablement in the first place.
Additionally, successful buyer enablement will only happen, if an organization is pretty clear on the why, on the meaning, why does the organization exist. Without meaning and mission, what should I learn and why should I change?
Organizations that have a meaning, that deliver extraordinary value for customers will achieve growth and profit – but as a result, never as a purpose.
Apple is the best example.
It’s not only me – there are a few peers thinking about the term sales enablement and buyer enablement. Have a look at this excellent blog post on enablement, written by Michael Fox: The 21st Century Sales Warrior.
by Tamara Schenk
http://blog.tamaraschenk.com/
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