SalesCraft: The Enablement Advantage by Sharon Little

Author:Sharon Little
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Halo Publishing International
Published: 2015-04-14T14:00:00+00:00

Never over-customize for a subgroup; always make sure everyone feels like part of the same team.

Address the uniqueness of the group by focusing on requirements that don’t apply to the whole team.

Work in concert with the leadership of these teams at all times. Otherwise, they will go off on their own to address the problem, and you lose alignment and consistency.

Also, as you’re considering your audience, know that they will bore easily. This means that the fabulous portal solution that you rolled out a year ago to rave reviews is now something they take for granted. Commit to keeping your audience surprised and delighted. This can take place in a variety of ways and includes added features and functionality, contests and prizes, certifications, drills, and new tools. Be creative and avoid complacency. Yesterday’s success is no guarantee that your value is well established. Look to create a regular cadence that brings fresh aspects of enablement to your audience on a regular basis. Think of it like a software release: one major and two minor enablement releases per year.

Also critical to this notion of audience alignment is discipline. Earlier I wrote about the need to respect the profession of selling. It is equally important to gain the respect of your sales team. Your sales team will push you; they will ask for more than they need. They will demand some truly outrageous things. This is how they test you. Never take offense, and learn how to say “no” with a smile. They will remember this and respect you for it.

Also critical to the sales team/sales enabler relationship is consistency. Out of sight, out of mind is never truer than when you have the pressure of a thirteen-week quarter on your back. For enablement efforts to remain top of mind, be constant. Manage the instances of sales enablement carefully. Package everything together in a cohesive way and create a brand identity that lets the sales team know that the materials are created especially for them. And keep it simple! Simplicity is critical in your relationship with the sales team. This can be as basic as uniform naming conventions, color-coding, and templates. Ideally, a simple repetitive framework designed specifically for them will become intuitive and ingrained into the culture of your organization.

Adopting all enablement areas requires vigilance. Commit to investing a full third of your resources into adoption. Whether we’re talking about technology, new skills, or a corporate pitch, you must be able to drive and measure adoption. Dedicate both people and technology to driving adoption. This means having a team focused on reinforcement and training as well as technology with adoption metrics. Employ both top-down and bottom-up strategies for driving adoption. It’s critical to get executive and management support for enablement, but from an adoption standpoint, a stick approach will never completely get you to where you want to be. Look for methods of creating more bottom-up, incentive-based methods for driving adoption whenever possible. And leverage classic selling techniques by creating internal champions whenever possible.

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