On June 30, 2011 focus.com published a report entitled “Defining Sales Enablement”. (You can download the PDF report for free once you provide some information on this link on focus.com) The experts included in the report are: Ardath Albee, Michael Fox, Robert Koehler, Christian Maurer, Russell Palmer, and myself (Paul Krajewski; part of the team at BizSphere AG).
One of my explanations of Sales Enablement was actually based on statements by Tamara Schenk (T-Systems International GmbH) as well as on Forrester’s definition of Sales Enablement. Here it is broken down:
“It’s a method of equipping sales channels with reusable tools that map to the buying process.
It is a strategic, ongoing process and it has very ambitious objectives:
To equip all people touching the accounts (more than just pre-sales and sales)
with the right information (sales playbooks, campaign information, ROI calculators and the like, documents/links, contact details of subject matter experts, etc.)
in a well-structured (What is applicable where? Who authored what? What can be used for how long?)
re-usable way (output in different formats or even auto-generation of tailored content)
across all silos in the enterprise and in the right language
at all stages of the customer’s problem-solving process/the customer’s buying cycle.
Having been on the enterprise side and having seen how many marketing dollars go into content production and toward polishing the look and feel, I want to highlight how important it is that the money is only spent on content that works (content planning, content intelligence like tracking usage and ratings/comments), and, if possible, can even be done in-house.”
Later in the report I am quoted with…
“A lot of people say ‘You are either in sales or you are in sales support!’ That basically shows that everyone should either contribute to sales enablement or benefit from it. Having so many stakeholders, sales enablement is owned by everyone and no one and suffers from that, unless an executive sponsor can be found who aligns people, processes, content, and technology.”
