Sales Enablement

The days of sales methodology vendors offering a single strategy for every selling situation may be numbered. Vendors are now aiming to address sellers' specific challenges — and they're doing so with urgency.

As the reality of a current and future world where B2B buying and selling largely takes place in remote and digital formats sets in, sellers must evolve their skill sets, sales leaders must reimagine their go-to-market strategies, and sales enablement providers must increase the value they deliver to their customers. The pace of COVID-induced trends […]

Like in golf, there are so many motions to consider in any customer interaction. Sales enablement practitioners must deconstruct role-playing exercises to enable reps to get into top-selling form.

Sales enablement leaders should be prepared to optimize and expand the all-virtual environment in 2021. Annual planning — for resources, personnel, and programs — will be particularly difficult as enablement leaders solve for the current environment but also anticipate what comes next. Improve your odds for success with the four following suggestions.

If 2020 has taught us anything, it’s that change is exceptionally hard for many people. The best sales enablement teams excel at change management.

Many sales leaders employ, tolerate, and enable high-maintenance sellers, because such reps yield a final product we value. But is this sustainable?

You can ask 10 different sales enablement professionals how they define their function and hear at least that many definitions of what sales enablement is, does, or is responsible for.

Sales methodology is a topic that evokes a wide range of comprehension among sales professionals, largely depending on their personal history with the methodologies their previous employers used.

In Forrester’s recently published report, “The Forrester Wave™: Sales Content Solutions, Q3 2020,” we evaluated the nine most significant ones — Accent Technologies, Bigtincan, ClearSlide (a division of Corel), Highspot, Mediafly, MindMatrix, Pitcher, Seismic, and Showpad — against 40 criteria. After researching, analyzing, and scoring each vendor’s current offering, strategy, and market presence, we identified […]

Data from the SiriusDecisions 2020 Customer-Facing Roles Survey indicates that the right content makes the difference in the ability of CSMs to meet customer expectations. Just as important: The right content reduces time wasted searching for material, which means B2B organizations are more likely to keep those CSMs around.

Most B2B organizations invest significant effort in customer feedback via customer advisory boards, but many fail to consider the same kind of insight from their internal sales team. Sales advisory councils represent a valuable opportunity for organizations to collect vital sales feedback on major strategic initiatives and identify any broad sales issues that must be addressed. Forrester’s own council is a textbook definition of how high-performing sales teams leverage a sales advisory council.

Summit plenary sessions will include actionable insights about changing B2B buying habits and practical advice about how to create resilient sales plans to navigate turbulent times. Sales-specific track sessions will outline how to build a best-in-class outbound prospecting organization, how to select and implement a sales methodology, and how to adopt dynamic selling. technology

Sales enablement and marketing professionals interested in the current and future state of the sales enablement function should take this survey and be the first to receive results.

• Far too many sales asset management (SAM) technology purchases are treated as a project, not a lifestyle
• The result is disappointed sales enablement leaders who miss the ROI potential of their deployment
• Organizations that best leverage their SAM environment reap the most long-term benefits

• B2B revenue enablement demands an understanding of the specific combination of personas, competencies, assets, and communications inherent to every buyer and customer journey
• As Forrester SiriusDecisions defines it, revenue enablement is a discipline that seeks to bring the skills, knowledge, assets, and process expertise to all customer-facing roles
• Our research shows that organizations with advanced capabilities around revenue enablement are more likely to outperform others still employing more siloed approaches toward optimizing their customers’ experience

• Pivoting to new messaging and content is a top priority in B2B at this time of global crisis
• To support shifting needs, cross-functional B2B teams must be flexible and nimble
• Content leaders and their teams are well positioned to provide strategy and resources to support the new normal

• COVID-19’s full impact is far from known, but its reach is unprecedented
• B2B interactions have been affected severely by the crisis, leaving sales professionals uncertain about how to proceed
• We offer a discussion on how to tell whether it’s too soon to sell

• Podcasting has witnessed a boom in engagement with more senior-level executives
• SiriusDecisions research reveals that while podcasts don’t prove to be effective for sales-specific learning, they are effective for communications
• Podcasts are most effective when they’re part of an integrated communications plan with the field

• A year ago, SiriusDecisions’ Jeff Lash presented “’Twas the Night Before Product Launch: A SiriusDecisions Holiday Poem”
• Peter Ostrow continues the tradition with “’Twas the Night Before Year-End,” with an homage to sales enablement
• Best wishes from our pipeline to yours!