Sales Enablement: Where We’ve Been, and Where We’re Going
Craig Nelson, CEO, iCentera

Welcome to our new blog! I look forward to engaging with you here whether you are a potential customer, an existing customer or someone who is interested in reading more about sales enablement and the iCentera solution.

As the CEO and co-founder of the company, I believe it’s important for you, our readers, as you’re looking to commit to the deployment of a critical solution like Sales Enablement, to understand how the concepts behind the solution were developed and refined.  In the end, if the solution doesn’t provide real value to the business, and if the end user isn’t involved in the evolution of that solution, then its value to the individual and the organization will be marginal.

The founders of iCentera first introduced in 1991 what we called at the time the “Sales Enablement Website,” while building a U.S. presence for a European CASE Tool Software Company.  Over the past 18 years, a tremendous amount of thought has been put into the fundamentals required to support an expanding sales model.  During the course of building out several companies in the ’90s, the founders of iCentera determined that enabling a sales organization ranging from just six people at the start to 600+ after going public, required much more than simply selling a great product that people loved.  The sales people had to be better, do more, learn on the fly, present value over price, and, if done right, in a sense bring the power of the entire company behind them to every sales call!  If you can do this for your direct sales and channel sales functions, your organization’s ability to ramp in the good times, while maintaining business in the bad times, will also be possible.

Fast-forward to 2009: the opportunity to put in place a Sales Enablement solution is much easier — and really has become mandatory in today’s environment.  We’ve all heard and read more than enough about current economic challenges — the question is what you and your company are doing to ensure your direct and channel sales organizations are successful.  Some of our most successful customers will tell you: you are either in sales or enabling sales.

In the past, the idea was to simply hire a really talented rep with a deep Rolodex.  That’s all changed.  The buyer is now smarter than ever, more cost-conscious than ever, and more risk-averse than ever.  You get the picture:  selling can no longer be an art.  Each sales discussion — whether by phone, web conference, or in person — must be a dialog that adds value to the buyer.  Prospects already know you, your competition, and to some degree the desired solution — before the first call.  Both the sales and buyer’s games have changed.

I appreciate the saying “a rising tide lifts all boats.”  Applied to business times, the late ’90s saw high tides, and almost anyone wanting to sell boats could be in the boat business.  Today, the tide is down for many but, interestingly enough, it is up for a few.  During Q2 2009, we surveyed our customer base of more than 100,000 subscribers to determine, when enabling sales, what is considered high priority going forward.  We found of course that budgets and priorities had dramatically changed during Q1 to respond to difficult economic conditions.  High on the list was to focus on a discipline that we believe is critical to scaling any business: enabling sales and doing so at a lower cost to the business.

Our survey results uncovered the following five items critical to driving sales in 2009:

• Enable sales productivity
• Reduce cost of sales
• Maintain revenues while potentially decreasing “feet on the street”
• Reduce or eliminate new IT costs required to manage a Sales Enablement solution
• Empower the business user to manage the solution with quick time-to-value, and gains to be recognized in 2009

Much more will be written about Sales Enablement over the coming months and years as companies look for ways to impact deals sitting in pipelines and forecasted sales that simply aren’t closing.  And we will be adding to that body of knowledge here on our new blog with a concept that we feel is uniquely different and powerful, 360 degree Sales Enablement.

Again, welcome, and we hope you’ll engage with us by commenting on our blog posts, or contacting us by email or phone.  We look forward to being of service.