SALES ENABLEMENT
Good Growth Ahead SCOTT SANTUCCI
At the Sales Enablement Society Conference in Dallas this past October, Sirius Decisions’ research director Heather Cole shared some extremely eye- opening statistics. The two that really leaped off the page for me?
• 26 percent of sales enablement functions report to CEOs
• High-performing companies are 96 percent more likely to have the function at that elevation. Said differently: The more elevated and strategic the sales enablement function is, the more productive the sales force.
ELEVATED ORGANIZATIONS SIMPLIFY THE SUPPLY CHAIN BEHIND SALES
In 1869, John Roebling undertook one of the most ambitious engineer- ing projects of his day – building a suspension bridge across the Hud-
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son River. Construction went well until they started laying the base in the middle of the river. Workers were getting extremely sick in the depths of the river. They tried dif- ferent work combinations, different ethnic groups; no matter what they tried, the workers got sick – 110 of them. This perplexing, invisible problem was delaying progress and driving up costs. It turns out the men were suffering from what Doctor Andrew Smith first termed “caisson disease.” Today, we know it more commonly as either “the bends” or decompression sickness. Today, most organizations suffer
from an equally invisible problem that is even more harmful to productiv- ity – the inefficiency at the point of sale caused by “random acts of sales enablement.” It’s caused by many different people all trying to do the noble thing – create things to help salespeople sell. However, no one is managing all the information or edicts that reach salespeople, so they get overwhelmed with: • Too much training that isn’t coordi- nated: One company had 27 differ- ent groups supplying some form of “sales training” to sales teams
• Too many materials that don’t map to how they work: It’s not un- common to uncover salespeople sorting through as many as 5,000 different resources for them
• Policies inconsistent with what they are told: Compensation plans that incent one behavior that doesn’t align with what their managers are asking them to do • Too much administrative bur-
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