The Sales Enablement Challenge

Sales Enablement offers some unique advantages to drive Sales user adoption. The ability to create new and custom collateral and to effectively collaborate on accounts address big pain points for sales. The CRM world has not implemented these technologies on an industry scale.

Sales Enablement also addresses today’s market realities. Customers and prospects today take more time to educate and filter themselves from the pipeline. Due to this change, Marketing now owns the early phases of the sales cycle. This is positive. Sales can now spend time adding value to the sale rather than educating a prospect about the company and product. Solutions to real business problems has been and will remain at the heart of the complex sale. Sales today needs the skills to focus on the complex sale.

I have enjoyed reading Steve W. Martin’s Heavy Hitter Selling. Having implemented CRM and carried the bag for many years, his message is right on. Sales Enablement will succeed or fail as a methodology based on user adoption. Marketing and Sales need to find ways to work together to make it work. As the article below describes, this is easier said than done.

Heavy Hitter Selling: Why Sales and Marketing Are Always at Odds

Happy Monday.