Research Services

Sales Enablement Strategies

Sales enablement. Five years ago, it was just a buzzword in most sales organizations. Today it is a front-and-center function that plays a critical role in readying sales to succeed in an ever changing and increasingly challenging marketplace. While the goal of the sales enablement function is simple – to ensure that every seller has the required knowledge, skills, processes and behaviors to optimize every interaction with buyers – the execution of that goal is anything but.

Sales Enablement Strategies™ (SES) from SiriusDecisions provides benchmarking data, analytic models, access to domain experts, peer-to-peer networking and learning solutions that sales enablement leaders rely on to help build and execute sales strategies that result in increased productivity. SES delivers objective data and intelligence to compare and contrast your enablement efforts against peer organizations, and will help you prepare a roadmap for improvement and success.

OPERATIONAL INTELLIGENCE

Compare key benchmarks such as sales productivity, training spend and quota attainment from the SiriusIndex of Fortune 500 and SMB organizations.
Learn how best-in-class sales enablement teams are structured, funded and staffed.
Visualize and communicate your sales enablement challenges with frameworks, models and issue spectrums that allow you to determine the most appropriate course of action.
Understand the changes in the b-to-b marketplace and how to adapt your enablement efforts to capitalize on these changes.

REPRESENTATIVE COVERAGE AREAS

Sales Enablement Structure – Understand how world-class sales organizations structure their sales enablement teams, and how they manage the critical intersection of sales enablement with other marketing and sales functions such as product and solution marketing, field marketing, sales operations and sales communications.
Role-Based Enablement – Learn how enablement efforts must be defined and tailored to meet specific needs to develop the emerging competencies of the entire field force, including sales managers, strategic account managers, territory reps and pre-sales engineers.
Sales Training – Learn how to assess your field force to identify gaps in skills, knowledge and processes, then leverage our expertise and knowledge of the sales training vendor landscape, cutting-edge delivery options and implementation best practices to ensure training becomes actionable.
Sales Tools – Understand how to select, design and deploy the latest selling tools such as playbooks and social media platforms that truly enable a field force and lead to gains in both efficiency and effectiveness.
Sales Enablement Measurement – Beyond revenue, learn how to use other metrics, such as sales certification programs, to measure, benchmark and track your enablement efforts.

REPRESENTATIVE MODELS

Sirius Sales Enablement Model – Models the enablement structure required to execute on the services and deliverables needed by field force roles, including sales management, field sales and pre-sales engineers, and defines the critical interlink between product marketing, field marketing, sales operations, sales training and sales communications.
Role-Based Competency Models – Frameworks that identify the core and emerging competencies (knowledge, skills and behaviors) required for sales success today for the key roles in your sales organization – including complete job descriptions and interviewing guides.
Sales/Buying Process Mapping – Turns the traditional sales process map inside out to ensure that every stage in the sales process is aligned with key stages in the buyer’s journey; includes buyers’ knowledge inflection points and observable outcomes to accurately track opportunities.

DELIVERABLES

Incorporating SES into your workflow is easy. Interact with SiriusDecisions research analysts in the manner that suits your needs. You may speak with our analysts by phone, send an inquiry via e-mail or participate in interactive webcasts and in-person forums with analysts and peers. You will also have access to published research, presentations and rich media-based content on demand via the client portal.

Research:

Research Briefs: Monthly research notes that frame executive-level sales and marketing issues in a concise layout. Three to four briefs are delivered to you each month, and are archived on the research portal.
SiriusPerspectives: A monthly newsletter in a concise layout that provides a high-level overview of a sales and marketing topic dealing with demand creation, sales optimization or reputation development.
Vendor Profiles: Reviews of emerging suppliers who may be beneficial to your demand creation efforts. SiriusDecisions also plots suppliers on our vendor matrices, allowing you to analyze and narrow your choices.
Core Strategy Reports: Provides key observations and commentary on SiriusDecisions presentations introducing critical models, frameworks and strategies. Tackles more complex sales and marketing issues, and introduces new areas of research in a white paper format.
SiriusTools: Frameworks, models and issues spectrums that allow you to more easily visualize and communicate your challenges, and to determine the most appropriate courses of action.
Rich Media: Webcast archives in rich media format that can be replayed at your convenience, shared with team members or used for training purposes.

Analyst Inquiry: Unlimited analyst inquiry privileges are offered as part of SES membership; you can schedule analyst time via phone or email. Discussions often focus on best practices, data, analytic tools or vendor reviews.

Sales Enablement Audit: Compare your organization’s enablement efforts to those of your peers. Our Sales Enablement Audit will look at sales enablement structure, including personnel spend, as well as sales representative efficiency and areas for improvement. The audit will also review training spend and trends, tools deployed in best-in-class enablement organizations, and key enablement metrics to track enablement efforts.

Events: Peer interaction is a valuable way to understand how others are solving similar issues, and to build your network. SES membership includes bimonthly Webcasts and quarterly half-day research forums, as well as discounted pricing on all SiriusDecisions conferences.

Below, please find a partial list of recently published SES research.

Brief
Sales Asset Management: The Selection Committee

The responsibility of a selection committee choosing a sales asset management (SAM) solution for a b-to-b organization is to make sure the solution meets the organization’s requirements. In this brief, we explain how to form a SAM selection committee, including core members and resource members who should be included.

Brief
Sales Enablement: Building an Execution Framework

In this brief, we describe the SiriusDecisions Sales Enablement Framework, which helps sales enablement and other functions identify and coordinate the delivery of enablement elements in relation to the six stages of the buyer’s journey.

Brief
Sales Methodologies and Models for Established Market Demand

In this brief, we outline how key elements found in popular sales methodologies should be used for established market selling, and explore where sales models targeting established markets should focus.

Brief
Financial Services: Producer Marketing Enablement

In this brief, we explain three marketing development components that insurance carriers and other financial services firms should include in their training programs to enable new producers to become more effective.

Brief
Lean Principles and B-to-B Sales

In this brief, we consider lean principles to identify common areas of waste within the sales organization, identify solutions and dispel misperceptions.

Brief
Has Your Organization Outgrown Its Sales Asset Management Tool?

There are clear signs that indicate when an organization’s sales asset management tool – especially a homegrown solution – is no longer meeting the needs of users. In this brief, we focus on how to recognize these warning signs, assess the current sales asset management situation and re-evaluate the usefulness of the asset management tool.

Brief
Sales Methodologies and Models for New Paradigm Demand

New paradigm selling requires a sales rep to convince a buyer of the advantages of a product or service that promises to retool or optimize an existing process, or solve a known issue more effectively than currently believed to be possible. In this brief, we outline how the key elements found in popular sales methodologies should be tailored for new paradigm selling, and share which sales models are the most apt to engage new paradigm buyers.

Brief
Sales Methodologies and Models for New Concept Demand

In this brief, we outline how the key elements found in popular sales methodologies should be tailored for new concept selling, and explain why provocative sales models are particularly effective to engage new concept buyers.

Brief
Large Account Marketing: The Planning Process

In this brief, we describe a four-stage process for building a large-account marketing plan.

Brief
Sales Methodologies: Implementation Best Practices

In this brief, we outline the three key elements required for successfully implementing a sales methodology.

Brief
Sales Methodologies: A Sirius Primer

In this brief, we define what a sales methodology is, including key elements and success factors, and provide an overview of the third-party providers that comprise the current vendor landscape.

Brief
Onboarding: The Role of Sales Operations

In this brief, we define the four roles – planner, presenter, analyst and student – that sales operations should play in the onboarding process for new sales hires.

Brief
Managing Outsourced Teleservices Providers

In this brief, we identify three common mistakes that b-to-b organizations make when working with teleservices vendors, and share ways that these pitfalls can be avoided.

Brief
Conducting a Field Content Collection Week

Lack of knowledge about field-created content represents a lost opportunity to leverage the talent within sales teams, and to improve sales content and enablement programs. In this brief, we describe how to fill this knowledge gap with regular field content collection weeks.

Brief
Sales Content: Gathering Feedback From the Field

In this brief, we outline how sales enablement can ensure that sales content is tested through a closed-loop feedback process, and define the methods that can be deployed to gather this feedback.

Brief
Inside the Demand Waterfall: Small-Net Fishing

Small-net fishing is outbound teleprospecting focused on sourcing new leads based on defined targeting criteria, touch sequences and messaging. In this brief, we define how small-net fishing efforts differ from other multi-touch marketing programs, and classify the three types of small-net fishing efforts that companies can undertake.

Brief
The Sirius Indicator: Value Actualization Tool Vendors

In this brief, using the six dimensions of the Sirius Indicator, we discuss the major categories to consider when evaluating and scoring value actualization tool providers, which help buyers understand the quantifiable value provided by a seller’s offering.

Brief
Integrating Sales Organizations: 10 Steps to Success

For b-to-b companies, the integration of disparate sales organizations is often the factor that makes or breaks a merger, acquisition or internal transformation. In this brief, we define 10 steps that sales operations should take when integrating sales teams.

Brief
The Sirius Indicator: Sales Asset Management Vendors

In this brief, using the six dimensions of the Sirius Indicator, we discuss the major categories to consider when evaluating and scoring sales asset management providers.

Brief
The SiriusDecisions Sales Persona Template

In this brief, we provide a template for constructing personas for different segments of the sales audience in order to facilitate a better understanding of each segment’s unique enablement needs.