Sales Enablement: The Organization’s Role in the Success of Sales
Craig Nelson, CEO, iCentera

As a sales rep, you learn very quickly the degree of support your organization has in place to enable your selling success.  I’ve had the opportunity to be part of companies that truly believed that, in the end, there are only two kinds of people in a successful company:  1) those who sell; and 2) those who enable sales.  Nowhere is this organizational trait more apparent than within emerging growth companies – firms where every person is working towards the same goals:

•           building great products

•           crafting an easy-to-pitch value proposition

•           creating sales-ready marketing material

•           putting in place a collaborative team-selling environment to make it all work

If you’ve worked for a company like this, you know how exhilarating it is — there’s no time to watch the clock, and the “it’s not my job” mentality simply does not exist.   What we’ve learned having worked for similar companies is that a belief in the need for sales enablement along with technology plays a big part when it comes to making enablement work.  And what we’ve learned at iCentera is that a technology services platform geared to drive sales enablement gives any size company the opportunity to put in place an environment that will bring the weight of their entire organization to every sales call.

Given the current economy combined with a savvier buyer, selling processes and enablement tools must change.  The days of a sales rep equipped with an CRM/SFA tool and static sales intranet portal are over.  The timing is right to do more on the enablement front, but to create a sense of urgency for any new initiative such as sales enablement, may require justification including a quick time-to-value for the business.

Given the need to sell more with less, we are certainly finding there is no shortage of justification for sales enablement today.  A recent research report entitled Uncovering the Hidden Costs of Sales Support, Scott Santucci of Forrester Research tells us there are golden opportunities to improve sales effectiveness, while reducing the cost of sales.  His findings speak for themselves:

•           Technology vendors are spending, on average, 19% of their selling, general, and administrative (SG&A) costs — or $135,262 per quota-carrying salesperson — to support-related activities.

•           Few are aware of this enormous amount because the costs are hidden — tucked away in many different budgets dispersed throughout the organization.

•           Corralling these “random acts of sales support” presents a golden opportunity.

•           By creating a strategic sales enablement program, marketers and sales can drive significant cost savings in the short term, while improving their companies’ competitiveness to thrive in the new growth cycle.

In future blog posts, I’ll cover the building blocks required for sales enablement along with examples of best practices from companies that embrace this notion of true sales enablement, permeating through the entire organization.  Day-to-day, these companies are thinking about the success of sales — or, as one of our customers put it, “Channel First.”  If your organization has a true sales enablement solution combined with the right mentality to enable your channel, both your top and bottom lines will certainly see a positive impact.

What can we do to help you leverage the sales enablement revolution?  Please use the comments section of this blog to ask questions or give us your perspectives. And we’d love to hear from you by phone or email as well.

Tags: Sales Effectiveness, Sales Readiness

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009 at 1:57 pm and is filed under Enablement. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.