Sales Enablement
Sales success — and, by extension, organizational success — rests in large part on sales reps having the skills and knowledge required to execute on sales strategy. Read our sales enablement insights to equip your sales team to achieve and exceed objectives.
Insights
Blog
Three Key Findings From The Forrester Wave™: Revenue Enablement Platforms, Q3 2024
For the first time, Forrester has published an evaluation of the combined space comprising sales content management and sales readiness capabilities.
Blog
Revenue Enablement And Change Management: Two Sides Of The Same Coin
To launch and sustain successful sales initiatives, revenue enablement teams should embrace all three phases of the Change Management Model as a guide for managing initiatives: set the stage, put the plan in motion, and make the “new” seem like business as usual.
Blog
Revenue Enablement Is Not In The Tool Business
No sales force can function without technology, but enablement leaders must emphasize and communicate revenue-centric outcomes, treating tools as supporting actors rather than spotlighted vanity projects. Never forget that revenue enablement is not in the tool business — it’s in the empowerment business.
Blog
First-Line Sales Managers: Promote Or Hire?
Today Forrester is publishing new research revealing that, all else being equal, B2B sales leaders achieve better revenue results when they hire first-line sales managers (FLSMs) externally, rather than promoting individual contributors (ICs). This runs counter to standard practice and tradition, but the data is clear: Externally hired managers and their teams perform better. Our advice […]
Blog
The Chief Sales Officer And Cultural Leader: Not A Contradiction In Terms
My colleagues from our future-of-work research team, Katy Tynan and Angelina Gennis, recently published a wonderful report about leadership and culture. In addition to a key underlying message that great leadership mandates active cultural shaping, they crucially remind us that “Culture does not just happen. It is created, either intentionally or unintentionally, through the actions of […]
Blog
How Quickly Should A Sales Rep Be Onboarded?
In many professions, education for a new employee’s role incorporates learning with doing. Educators must undergo a full semester of student teaching, surgeons develop by “watching, teaching, doing,” and aspiring electricians must deliver hundreds of hours as apprentices prior to licensure. Even most MLB stars spend years toiling in the minor leagues perfecting their skills. […]
Blog
Focus On Customer Value To Deliver B2B Customer Growth
Last week, I presented at my 10th, and final, Forrester B2B Summit North America. I say final not because the event is ending but because I’m retiring from Forrester in June of this year. One of my sessions introduced the Forrester Customer-Led Sales Growth Model, which was a perfect way to summarize my views on […]
Blog
Harness The Power Of Buying Signals At Forrester’s B2B Summit
B2B organizations must know their buyers, anticipate their needs, and empower them with each interaction — or lose to providers that do. Signals help transform the way we interact with our audiences across functions, disciplines, and interaction types, helping B2B organizations deliver contextual interactions with immediate value throughout the customer lifecycle. Check out these sessions […]
Blog
It’s Time For Sales Leaders To Coach Sellers Like Athletes
Sales managers now have the visibility needed to coach sellers beyond the basics.
Blog
Why Can’t My Sellers Adapt More Quickly?
How recently did your company leadership issue a directive implying that the sales team must change their behavior? Not long ago, if yours is like most revenue organizations. Whether it’s framed as changing from tactical to strategic selling, focusing on solutions instead of products, or prospecting deeper into buying groups, most institutions habitually move the […]
Blog
Your Predictions Questions Answered: Leveraging GenAI Successfully
During Forrester’s Predictions 2024 webinar, we received a lot of great questions about how generative AI might affect customer-facing functions such as marketing, customer experience, and sales. Check out our answers.
Blog
“32 To 36 Courses” Is Not Revenue Enablement
Equipping sellers for better performance isn't a matter of course volume. Explore the questions that should guide learning.
Grow Your B2B Revenue With Customer Obsession
Stop extracting customer value -- and start creating it. Read our report to learn how to sustain B2B success with a customer-obsessed growth engine that creates buyer value and revenue.
Blog
B2B Summit North America 2024: Your Ticket To Turning Disruption Into Growth
Explore the strategies and tools needed to drive customer-obsessed growth at our premier event for B2B marketing, sales, and product teams.
Podcast
How To Use AI To Uplevel Revenue Enablement
Many revenue enablement leaders are simultaneously intimidated and intrigued by AI, particularly generative AI (genAI). The sooner they embrace it, the sooner they can help make sellers and other customer-facing roles more effective. Vice President and Principal Analyst Peter Ostrow shares advice for getting started with AI this week on What It Means.
Blog
Shift From Manual To Automated Account Planning To Deliver Results
I’ve been involved with account planning programs for over 30 years — first as a sales rep, then as a sales manager, then as a sales operations leader, and, finally, as an analyst and advisor. And in all that time, resistance by sellers to the process of creating and leveraging account plans remains high. Why? […]
Blog
Your Company Just Announced Sales Layoffs. What Should Revenue Enablement Do About It?
Read five suggestions to simultaneously come to the aid of your internal customers and to up your enablement game for the long term.
Blog
Improv And Playbooks: Navigating The Unscripted World Of Modern Selling
I’m from Chicago, which is known for many things, particularly its rich history with improvisational theater. Improv is a form of theater performed unscripted and created spontaneously by the players on stage, often through an audience suggestion. As a theatergoer, I am amazed at how much knowledge the actors must have to create something from […]
Blog
The Top Five Priorities For A New Revenue Enablement Leader
The sales and revenue enablement space has seen a wildly dynamic 2023, with many casualties of layoffs impacting the profession but also plenty of new opportunities opening up. At the same time, enablement leaders have had to adapt to changing priorities while continuing to deliver tangible, quantifiable value to the C-suite. If you’re a newly […]
Blog
How B2B Companies Will Win The Competition For Growth
The competition for growth is fiercer than ever for B2B companies. To win, marketing, product, and sales leaders need to build a growth engine based on three fundamentals that are also simple, powerful, challenging, and achievable.
Blog
Revenue Enablement: Why Forrester Has Made The Change
Forrester is adapting along with the entire B2B sales space, pivoting from “sales enablement” to “revenue enablement” in describing the discipline of ensuring that all customer-facing roles receive consistent enterprise support so that they have the confidence, competence, and content to drive customer value and revenue results.
More posts