Sales Enablement Platforms – Needs and Benefits

Salespeople volunteer for a tough job. The complexity of what they sell and the sophistication of the people they sell to increase year by year. In this environment every sales interaction and conversation is important, which is why the best salespeople spend so much time preparing for their conversations with customers and creating the materials they will use.

But salespeople are often not well served by the resources they are given to prepare for these conversations. The problem resides at two levels: the quality of sales materials is often poor and it is hard to find the right resources, even if they do exist. The concept of the sales enablement platform – a knowledge management tool for sales – has arisen as a solution to the second of these problems. This article outlines the requirements for an effective sales enablement platform and analyses the benefits.

What customers want

Customers have grown out of having products sold to them; they have even tired of solutions selling. Now they want to buy on the basis of business outcomes. The communications company doesn’t want an improved customer loyalty system; it wants customers that stay longer and spend more. The manufacturer no longer wants an improved supply chain solution; it wants lower supply costs and on time delivery. And they want to look at all the options for achieving their desired outcome.

One consequence is that customers expect salespeople to explain how they can deliver outcomes. They are looking for salespeople to share a point of view, not just ask questions. Customers want to work with salespeople who bring business knowledge from a wide range of different situations; salespeople who can contribute new business ideas.

What salespeople need

The sales cycle can be viewed as a series of interactions or conversations with the customer. Each sales interaction has a specific set of objectives: it must change a viewpoint, unearth information, resolve a concern, solve a problem or provide needed information. Knowing this, and understanding the customer’s expectations, it is apparent that the salesperson, when preparing for a sales conversation, needs to be able to marshal a wide range of information and structure it according to the context and objectives of each different situation. Salespeople need better information systems to help them do this, and the sales enablement platform has evolved to address this need.

What’s the problem?

Typically, current tools do not meet the information needs of salespeople – see below “What salespeople say they need”. These shortfalls are damaging because salespeople rely on sales resources to fuel the engine of sales conversations – no fuel, no progress.

What salespeople say they need

• One source – I don’t want to have to search through multiple, unconnected information silos, arranged arbitrarily e.g. according to product set, department, country
• The big picture – I need the high level view so I can spot related offerings and cross and up sell opportunities
• Concise and complete – I want just the resources that are relevant now, not loads of extraneous stuff. But it must be all the resources, from all departments
• Arranged for me – I don’t want to have to be an expert on the portfolio to get to the resources I need
• In my language – it must respond to the words I use
• Responding to the sales context – e.g. the stage of sale, technical vs business
• Linking me to people who can help – I want to connect to salespeople who have been here before me, and to the expert behind the resource
• Listening to me – I’d like the opportunity to comment and share information. I’d like to be updated on topics that I choose

The impact – sales efficiency

Much has been written about the impact of these problems on salesforce productivity. For example, IDC research says that on average each week a salesperson spends:

• 6.4 hours creating presentations
• 5.8 hours searching for client-related information
• 2.3 hours searching for marketing collateral

Clearly, if these processes could be speeded up sales would be more efficient. For example, for a salesforce of 500, saving one hour each week is worth over €500k each year in simple efficiency savings. That means getting more sales out of the same size salesforce or accommodating salesperson wastage without loss of sales.

Significant as this is, Solutions for Sales believes that it is the potential improvement in sales effectiveness delivered by the sales enablement platform that offers the most significant gains.

The impact – sales effectiveness

We have argued that customers expect a higher quality of interaction with their sales contacts. They want business advice; they want a balanced view; they want to focus on their desired business outcome not the salesperson’s desired sales outcome. To meet these customer expectations salespeople need to tap into a wide range of resources and quickly find all that is available to make the next sales interaction successful.

This is something salespeople are not doing well according to statistics from IDC, which show that:

• 33% of all unsuccessful deals could have been won if the seller had been better informed and had acted more client-oriented
• 57% of customers feel that salespeople are poorly prepared or not prepared at all at initial meetings
• More than 50% of customers expect salespeople to be better informed about client-specific requirements and goals

If accessing sales resources is difficult or laborious, it is our experience that the salesperson’s patience runs out long before all relevant resources have been discovered. The result is sales meetings that fall into the 57% that customers judge to be poorly prepared and sales opportunities that end up in the 33% that would have been won if the salesperson had been better informed.

The most significant benefit of a good sales enablement platform is that it improves the quality of the sales conversation, which results in more wins. When it comes to quantifying this benefit there are so many other factors at play that it is hard to provide objective figures. Readers must judge for themselves, but if it is accepted that salespeople who are better prepared for sales meetings can achieve a 1% higher win rate, then for a company with sales of €250 million the result would be an extra €1.5 – €2.5 million of sales each year. And there’s another important benefit: the salesperson that demonstrates the ability to talk outcomes with their customer gains visibility of more sales opportunities.

Marketing has needs too

Sales enablement platforms are not just for sales. Marketing has a whole range of requirements in this area. See below:

What CMOs say they need

• Drive Sales – I need to have better ways of steering Sales in the direction the company wants to go
• Satisfy Sales – I want to provide the sales resources that salespeople need. I am sick of hearing them say that Marketing is no help
• Economise on Marketing resource – I would like to know which resources are valued by sales so I can save money by stopping doing what’s not wanted
• Improve visibility – I want to see who’s using what, which resources are getting old, and what the coverage is of sales resources across the portfolio
• Develop a broader view – I’d like people to have a better understanding of the breadth of our capability and the positive synergies across our portfolio
• Exploit all our resources – I want everyone to be able to contribute to selling, including organisations like professional services and delivery
• Encourage interaction – I need to get salespeople sharing their experience and marketing people contributing their knowledge directly to sales
• Structured, uniform and global – I’m worried that the ad-hoc social networking and web tools that are springing up will just create confusion. Worse, if they aren’t maintained they will mislead

Producing the best sales resources

People all round the company have information that can help sales. Of course the main producers are Products, Marketing and Sales themselves, but there are others. In some companies Professional Services and Consulting divisions have information on the services they offer, their expertise and their processes, methods and tools. They may produce opinion pieces and white papers. This is valuable material in a complex sales process. Delivery and Operations can provide performance statistics and quality measures that are useful sales ammunition, and customers want to know about the design, implementation and support services available to them.

Products, Marketing, Sales, Professional Services, Consulting, Delivery and Operations will all have their own ways of producing and storing information – this is what created the silos in the first place. The good news is that these don’t have to change. The sales enablement platform spans all these sources, presenting sales materials from all departments as an integrated whole. As well as giving 360° visibility, the sales enablement platform helps producers by providing:

• Structure: defining the types of resource salespeople need; formats; desired content
• User feedback: comments from salespeople on how resources can be improved and what new resources are needed
• User rating: rating and usage statistics allow producers to judge how well they are doing and allow managers to identify the best producers and the most popular types of resource
• Inventory control: to highlight when resources need updating or are approaching end-of-life, and show where more resources are needed

The result is a continuous improvement cycle that leads towards better quality sales resources which are more useful to salespeople.

Sales enablement in context

The selling process can be viewed as a series of conversations between salesperson and customer, so the job of sales enablement is to make those conversations more interesting and ultimately more rewarding for both parties.

When preparing for a sales call, the salesperson needs sales resources that are appropriate to the specific conversation being planned. Successful companies make sure that high quality sales resources exist, and they make it easy for salespeople to find the right resources for the job at hand. The sales enablement platform solves the second of these problems. It gives sellers access to the right sales resources and information – the fuel that powers the engine of sales. Moreover, it helps improve the quality of sales resources by creating channels for feedback and engagement so that content producers get a better understanding of what’s needed.

Conclusions

The sales enablement platform is a strategic tool that CMOs can use to define the portfolio structure, drive sales behaviour and optimise product marketing resource. It cuts through organisational silos and allows every department to play its part in supporting sales. It fosters business networking amongst salespeople and with other departments that have a major impact on sales, such as Marketing, Operations and Professional Services. It improves the quality of sales resources by facilitating feedback and engagement between users and producers. For all these activities it provides a structure that is uniform, maintainable and scalable.

For the Sales VP, the sales enablement platform facilitates better execution in the everyday work of the salesforce, leading to lower sales costs and a higher win rate. The result is a solid business case for investment, which explains why the sales enablement platform is taking its place alongside CRM and marketing automation as a must-have business tool.

Binita Patel, Director of Marketing @ Stratascope
(binita_patel@stratascope.com)

(Thanks to Alan Willis of Solutions for Sales for allowing Stratascope to re-blog this article.   Stratascope’s core strength lies in providing actionable insight and content for sales enablement,  while Solutions for Sales provides a framework and methodology to enable a salesforce to sell a product, solution set or service offering at optimum efficiency.)

Connecting with Prospects

Facilitated Buying isn’t just another “Catch Phrase”.  I’ll readily admit that it does get thrown around about as often as any other catch phrase these days.  I don’t recall the first time I heard it, but I do remember the first time I used it.  It was during the first half of the year 2000.  I was working for JD Edwards on a special training project for the field sales organization.  There were three of us in the room and we were working on messaging and value propositions.  That led to a discussion where we ended up mapping our selling process up against a typical buying process.  We were specifically looking at how much longer and expansive the buying process was compared to the selling process.  We were also delving into the level of “executive” involvement at each point in the buying process and how poorly it correlated to the level of “executive” involvement in the selling process.  It was at this point that I walked up to the whiteboard and crossed out the whole selling process and said “We have to stop doing this (meaning “selling”) and we have to start helping them do this ( I underlined the whole buying process ).”  I then wrote the words “Facilitated Buying” on the whiteboard.

I tell this story because it is the process that we followed that day and the discovery that it led to that is important and not the words.  We definitely did not invent the term and I am certainly not here to take any credit for it.  We were involved in a discovery process that I continued to explore over the next 10 years.  Every time I look at the two processes together, I end up in the same place.  We, in sales, have to find better, deeper, and more impactful ways to connect with our prospects.  To be clear, our methods and mechanisms will continue to evolve with the advent of mobile technologies and social networking, but that is not where I am heading.  The real question for me is “How can I connect with my prospects?” meaning: On what grounds?  Where can we find common ground?  How can we relate?  How can we communicate?

When I look at the selling process I have to look at the seller’s point of view.  As the seller of a product or a solution, I am automatically biased by the terms that define my offerings; my opinions are shaped by the features and benefits that I can offer.  My compensation is quota driven and my motivation is pressure based.

As a CEO, I am also a buyer who can look at the buying process.  As buyer, I am focused on the needs of my organization, which are based on the business issues that we are facing.  These same issues are what drive me to find the best value that I can in a solution.  Still confused, let’s try it in table form:

Selling	Buying
Product or Solution Focused	Needs Focused
Feature and Benefit Oriented	Issues Oriented
Quota Driven	Issues Driven
Pressure Based Decisions	Value Based Decisions

Clearly we are not on the same page as our buying prospects and that is the key.  We speak different languages that must be reconciled before we can make a connection.  We have to learn to put ourselves in their position, thinking like they do.  I want to explore this a lot further because we really need to get to a connection point. 

Let’s consider their situational landscape:

1. They probably don’t know you even if they have met you or are aware of you
2. They typically don’t know your products or services very well even if they have heard of your brand (lucky you!)
3. They certainly have no idea why you are promoting specific features or benefits
4. Their directives and initiatives come from senior management and are often broad and vague
5. These vague initiatives and directives manifest themselves in the form of a variety of specific business issues that affect their everyday performance

And their personal goals:

1. Alleviate the obvious pains that effect everyday performance
2. Make measurable progress against their assigned initiatives
3. Create value for the company for which they will receive credit

Did you notice that neither their situational landscape nor their personal goals included buying a product or service from you!

In order to help our prospect buy from us, what must we do? Let’s start by looking at the world from their point of view.  How is this done?  The first step is to understand their industry and markets at a high level.  Learn the language, the trends, the players, and the economic outlook.  Next, try to understand their competitive landscape and recent performance.  Where do they have opportunities to improve?  Where are they the leader?  Identify several specific areas of opportunity.  Match these areas of opportunity to any initiatives that your research has uncovered (hint: initiatives are often found in quarterly earnings reviews on their website, or in formal filing documents for public companies.  Make your life easy, subscribe to Stratascope!).

Now that we have a list (or hopefully at least one) of initiatives, we need to get to the underlying business issues that are driving them.  Every business issue can be categorized by a set of defining attributes.  These attributes provide us with the basis for identification.  Only look at issues that have the same attributes as your prospects situation to create your shortlist.  I focus my efforts on the following attributes only, there are obviously more, but these work for me.

• Performance Impact
• Process Alignment
• Organizational Responsibility (Role)
• Industry Relevance
• My Aligned Solutions
• Operational Evidence (News, PR)

Wait a second!  How can I match my customers’ business issues to my aligned solutions when my solutions are not aligned?  Good catch.  We have reached the key to this whole messy business!  The business issue “IS” the common ground.  You or someone at your company knows which business issues your solutions address in which industries.  Your prospect knows which business issues in their industry are impacting their organization.  This is where you can build your connection in their terms, using their language, from their industry.  Connect with them on the issues that they have that you solve, not on your products or features.

Connect your solutions to the business issues that they address and then find companies that have the same issues.  You must look at every solution that you offer, not from the point of view of its features or even its benefits, but from the point of view of the business issues that it addresses.  You must then determine the attributes of each issue as previously discussed so that the issues can be easily identified based on your customer’s unique situation.  You should conduct this mapping proactively with your in-house experts and not on the fly for each opportunity.

In summary, sellers and buyers look at the world from different points of view.  As the seller, we must adapt to their way of thinking.  We must approach our opportunities based on the addressable business issues at hand.  We must present a vision of how our solutions will improve their situation with regards to the issues.  If we can do this, we will have connected to our prospects!

In my next blog post, I will take on a little bit of a “Marketing Enablement” slant and discuss “Driving Campaign Success”.

-Bruce A. Brien, CEO, Stratascope Inc.

The 2nd Element: Does my client have real business issues that my offerings can solve?

This is the most difficult element to master in any sales cycle.  The difficulty comes from the diametrically opposed points of view.  Your prospects are focused on their own business with their own problems.  They describe them in their own terms using their own language and acronyms.  You are focused on your company, your brand, your solutions, your features, and your benefits.  You describe your offerings using your own terms in your own language using your own acronyms.  When you state the situation this way it is not only easy to see the problem, but also the potential solution.

You need to speak the same language as your clients.  The common ground that you both share is that you are both focused on solving the same business issues.  You must learn to focus your efforts on two important keys in this area.  You must be able to speak in terms of their industry, using the correct terminology, exhibiting an understanding of the world that they live in.  You must understand your own solutions in terms of the business issues that they solve, not the features that they possess.

In order to speak the language of your clients you need to become conversant, not necessarily expert, in their industry.  The internet is a very powerful resource for developing your industry acumen.  You need to develop a discipline and a framework for keeping abreast of the developments in each industry that you have clients that you are servicing.  This work is time consuming and tedious as it is mostly reading.  The benefits are that you will discover opportunities that would be otherwise overlooked, you will foster deeper relationships as trusted advisors, and you will deliver value to your clients and prospects by the very nature of your relationship and not just from the solutions that you offer.

Understanding your own solutions in terms of the business issues that they solve within a specific industry vertical is critical to reaching the common ground on which every deal with a prospect or client will be based.  It is not even enough to simply understand the list of issues that your solutions address, you must also understand the implications of addressing these issues, their applicability to a specific industry, the roles within an organization that would care about these issues, the processes that these issues impact, and the key performance indicators that will be affected.

The more versed you are in the effects and implications of the issues that you are addressing, the more ways you have to connect with our client.  Without the ability to clearly identify the business issues on which your initiative is founded, you will have a very difficult time in moving your sales cycle forward.

This is the second place that you should look if your deal becomes stalled.  If you cannot identify the problems that you are solving, how will your prospect?  If they can’t articulate it, how will you get them to spend money on it?  If this is the element that needs work, you must engage with your client in a discovery process that will result in your mutual agreement on the business issues to be solved.

Next Post – Element 3: Is there sufficient value in solving these issues?

-Bruce Brien, CEO, Stratascope Inc.