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These materials are © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Any dissemination, distribution, or unauthorized use is strictly prohibited.

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Sales Enablement

by Stephanie Diamond and

Brendan Cournoyer

Brainshark Special Edition



Sales Enablement For Dummies®, Brainshark Special EditionPublished by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 111 River St. Hoboken, NJ 07030‐5774www.wiley.com

Copyright © 2015 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey

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Table of ContentsIntroduction ....................................................... 1

About This Book ........................................................................ 1Icons Used in This Book ............................................................ 2Beyond the Book ........................................................................ 2

Chapter 1: Unlocking Sales Enablement . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3Looking at the Evolution of Sales Enablement ....................... 3Considering the Benefits of Sales Enablement ....................... 5Solving the Sales Productivity Problem .................................. 6

Chapter 2: Creating Your Strategy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .9Focusing on Your Mission ........................................................ 9

Uncovering the critical components ........................... 10Tapping into your resources ........................................ 12

Chapter 3: Discovering the Role of Content . . . . . . . . . .13Describing a Sales Enablement Content System .................. 14

Defining sales enablement content ............................. 14Examining the attributes of great content .................. 15Identifying the key components of a

sales enablement content system ........................... 17Planning and Creating Your Content ..................................... 18

Developing your content plan ...................................... 19Producing your content ................................................ 19Integrating with your CRM ........................................... 20

Chapter 4: Delving into Onboarding and Training . . . . .21Using Formal and Informal Training ...................................... 21

Looking at formal learning ............................................ 22Utilizing informal learning ............................................ 22

Adopting a Blended Learning Approach ............................... 23Deploying Just‐in‐Time Training and Reinforcement .......... 24Integrating with Your CRM System ........................................ 25Asking the Right Training Questions ..................................... 26

Chapter 5: Extending Prospect Engagement . . . . . . . . .29Identifying Rep Challenges and Pain Points ......................... 30Getting Attention and Keeping It ........................................... 31

iv Sales Enablement For Dummies, Brainshark Special Edition


Supporting Successful Meetings ............................................ 33Being Mobile‐Ready ................................................................. 34Developing Product Differentiation ....................................... 35

Chapter 6: Examining Sales Coaching . . . . . . . . . . . . . .37Introducing Systematic Sales Coaching ................................ 37

Evaluating your manager’s coaching capabilities ................................................. 39

Monitoring Rep Activity .......................................................... 40Integrating with Your CRM System ........................................ 41

Chapter 7: Ten Features to Look for in a Sales Enablement Platform . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .43


Introduction

T echnology has completely changed the way salespeople interact with their customers. Today’s buyers have likely

already explored several options and developed strong opin-ions about what they need before they ever become your prospect. This puts pressure on the sales rep to persuade a buyer who may not have the proper vision or understand the value of your company’s product. That’s a problem. To avoid this, you need to create better sales conversations to seal the deal.

The good news is that technology has also played a positive role in sales. Advancements in content, training, and analyt-ics have enabled salespeople to deliver a very personalized one‐to‐one experience that communicates the value of their products. But do they? This question is at the very heart of sales enablement.

About This BookWelcome to Sales Enablement For Dummies, Brainshark Special Edition. The information in this book covers all aspects of sales enablement — from developing a strategy to engaging your prospects to closing the deal. It shows you how your organization can use the right content to train sales reps and deliver more value to buyers. It also gives you a perspec-tive about the complex nature of sales enablement and what goes into determining your specific needs.

In this book, I present the concepts you need to know to eval-uate and improve your sales enablement system. And if you don’t currently have a sales enablement system, I show you the benefits that implementing a system will provide.

2 Sales Enablement For Dummies, Brainshark Special Edition


Icons Used in This BookThroughout this book are special icons that alert you to important information. Here’s what to expect:

The Tip icon highlights information that can help make doing things quicker or easier.

The Remember icon calls out information that will be helpful to remember. When searching your memory bank, hopefully this information will surface.

If you see this icon, beware! It alerts you to things that can be harmful to your work or yourself.

Beyond the BookTo learn more about Brainshark go to www.brainshark.com.

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Unlocking Sales Enablement

In This Chapter ▶ Following the development of sales enablement

▶ Dealing with the sales productivity problem

▶ Identifying the sales productivity gap

B efore technology intervened, B2B salespeople could count on the fact that they were meeting most of their

prospective clients at the start of the buyer’s journey. They were confident that they had the sales information that the buyer needed and could dispense it when they thought the timing was right.

The salesperson was in control. The buyer relied on the sales-person to get him the information he needed to make a decision. Of course, now, this sales journey is just a distant memory.

In this chapter, I look at what sales enablement is, how it evolved, and what you need to do when you’re considering how to upgrade your current sales enablement system (or lack thereof).

Looking at the Evolution of Sales Enablement

Today’s sales rep faces challenges that require a new paradigm. Enter sales enablement, an emerging discipline that has some people confused about its definition. Sales

Chapter 1



enablement is a rich area that is defined differently by different organizations.

Brainshark defines sales enablement as “A systematic ap proach to increasing sales productivity, by supporting reps with the content, training, and analytics they need to have more suc-cessful sales conversations.” That’s the definition I’ll be using throughout this book.

So, what caused this very real confusion about the definition of sales enablement in the marketplace? One reason is that the rise of the newly educated buyer produced a call from C‐level executives to “make sales everyone’s job.” Marketing and sales departments were challenged to take action.

The attempt to heed that call unleashed a barrage of initia-tives from different marketing and sales silos. It resulted in actions that were neither coordinated nor designed to meet the real needs of the salespeople at whom they were aimed. This prompted Forrester’s Scott Santucci to dub this type of activity, “random acts of sales support” in the Forrester Report “Uncovering the Hidden Costs of Sales Support.” Obviously, strategic changes in the sales process were sorely needed. The buyer of past sales campaigns was not the same.

Salespeople today are confronted with educated buyers who

✓ Conduct more research online on vendor or analyst web-sites and through social networks.

✓ Ask more complex questions.

✓ Make requests for additional custom assessments, which creates a much longer sales cycle.

✓ Demand customized information about how their busi-nesses will be affected by each solution.

✓ Make collaborative purchases that often prevent the sales rep from ever meeting the real decision makers.

These problems open the door for sales enablement systems that map content and learning resources to every stage of the sales process, resulting in better conversations. As sales enablement continues to gain a foothold in sales organiza-tions, it needs to encompass the entire end‐to‐end sales process.

5 Chapter 1: Unlocking Sales Enablement


You need a well‐developed system that helps reps acquire all the skills and resources they need. This system should provide an easy way to develop and deliver all the content required at every stage of the process.

An effective sales enablement system allows salespeople to articulate the value of their product to win the sale. It covers such things as sharing best practices and developing sales training that cuts down on budget waste.

Considering the Benefits of Sales Enablement

When people think of sales enablement issues, they rarely think about one of the most serious consequences of a dis-jointed or nonexistent sales‐training system: the amount of money spent onboarding and training sales reps. To under-stand the scope of the problem, you need to look at the entire outlay — recruiting, hiring, and training.

If you’re not using a sales enablement system to put your sales reps in the best position to succeed, you may end up wasting a great deal of time and money bringing new hires onboard. It’s no wonder that when many executives look at the high cost of sales turnover, they see training as a “cost” rather than an “investment.”

In addition, when training a new rep, you’re looking at an investment that may not pay off for 12 to 18 months. If that rep leaves, you have to start all over again, incurring even more costs and a blow to morale.

Some other benefits of a sales enablement system include the following:

✓ An acceleration of the selling cycle to win more deals faster, often referred to as sales velocity

✓ A better way to keep sales reps informed

✓ The ability for managers to effectively monitor and coach reps that are less successful



✓ A greater ability to demonstrate value to customers through the use of quality content

✓ More effective demand generation

In the next section, I look at another problem that a sales enablement system can address: productivity.

Solving the Sales Productivity Problem

It is well known that salespeople have a great many needs from the moment they’re hired. But what are the specific needs of today’s rep serving the educated buyer? Brainshark wanted to find out.

Recently, Brainshark conducted a survey among 416 sales professionals across industries to learn about the major prob-lems these sales reps face. The report produced was called “State of the Sales Rep: Benchmarks for the Way Reps Prepare for, Present at, and Follow Up after Sales Meetings.”

As I review some of the report’s findings, think about how your sales enablement system measures up. If your system doesn’t deliver these solutions, consider what you need to do to fix that problem.

The report found the following:

✓ Sales reps unable to locate sales content. In fact, 33 percent of sales reps reported that they are “always” or “often” frustrated by their inability to find sales materials.

Solution needed: A system that provides for well‐orga-nized content from a central location mapped to each stage of the sales process.

✓ Sales materials that the sales reps needed did not exist. Forty‐three percent of reps spent more than half a day preparing for meetings because they had to create their own custom content.

Solution needed: A way to quickly develop quality content that can easily be tracked to ensure usage and prospect engagement.

7 Chapter 1: Unlocking Sales Enablement


✓ Sales reps needed to prepare for sales meetings in external locations. Ninety‐three percent said they prepared for meetings in restaurants or coffee shops; 64 percent prepared in cars.

Solution needed: The ability to allow sales reps to grab any content they need any time, from the field on mobile devices.

The full report has many more interesting findings. But even by viewing this small slice, you can see that sales enablement systems need to be able to meet serious productivity chal-lenges that can’t be swept under the rug.

Another major issue that sales organizations have to deal with is the sales productivity gap (SPG). The SPG refers to the fact that there is always a gap between the A reps who meet their quota and the B and C reps who struggle and fail (see Figure 1-1).

According to The TAS Group, 67 percent of sales reps don’t meet their quota. Here’s why:

✓ Outdated methods are used to train salespeople. Training has not been revised to meet the new needs of the educated buyer. This also means that the coaching that sales reps receive will miss the mark.

✓ Reps forget what they learn. According to the Qvidian Sales IQ Series, 75 percent of what reps learn in training is forgotten within 30 days. Reps need onboarding/train-ing materials available for “just in time” access.

Figure 1-1: The sales productivity gap.



✓ A lot of the reps’ time is wasted trying to find things. According to Forrester Research, 40 percent of a sales-person’s time is spent searching for tools and resources.

Most significantly, a majority of the salespeople who fail to meet their quotas are unable to communicate value to the decision makers who control the sale (see Chapter 5).

So, what does the right sales enablement system do to solve these problems?

✓ It integrates the customer relationship management (CRM) system. Reps spend their days in their CRM system, so making all their training and resources avail-able in one centralized location is crucial. Reps will be more likely to use these resources when they can access them from within their CRM.

✓ It makes engaging content easy to create. Video is one of the best ways to deliver engaging content. This means that creating and distributing video needs to be a key compo-nent of your system. Creating videos can be difficult if you don’t have the right tools to produce and distribute them. Prospects expect content that adds value and keeps their interest, and on‐demand, high‐quality video is a perfect format for getting important messages across quickly.

✓ It makes content simple to find and access. Reps shouldn’t have to waste time searching for the resources they need. Sales content should be organized in context with training requirements and sales processes. This way, salespeople always have access to the right content for the right situation.

✓ It enables you to create content that is mobile‐ready. Both prospects and reps use their mobile devices to access a great deal of their information. You need to ensure that everyone can find what they need anytime, anywhere.

✓ It provides content messaging in context with the sales cycle. In order to assist the rep in winning the sale, she must have access to content that addresses each phase of the sales process. She can then personalize the con-tent without having to start from scratch, which is a waste of time and money.

I cover each of these sales enablement topics in depth in this book. So, let’s get started!


Creating Your StrategyIn This Chapter

▶ Determining your mission

▶ Conducting a needs assessment

▶ Getting buy‐in from key stakeholders

B uilding the strategy for your sales enablement system is a complex problem. You need to pick the system that

meets all your important needs. This requires a clear‐eyed look at what you’re doing now and what’s missing. But you also need to get buy‐in from C‐level executives and your sales and marketing departments. Without their buy‐in, you’ll miss reaping the benefits of a good sales enablement system.

This situation is made even more complicated by the fact that Forrester Research reports that 89 percent of sales calls provide no value to buyers — the salesperson merely repeats what the buyer already knows instead of redefining the vision for the product. Now, that’s a problem that needs your attention!

In this chapter, I explain how to create a strategy for a sales enablement system that helps your sales force meet your corporate goals.

Focusing on Your MissionNew strategic initiatives often aren’t met with great enthu-siasm by sales and marketing organizations. They typically want to know how changing their behavior will help them in the trenches. So, to get buy‐in from stakeholders, you need to articulate direct value for them as you begin the process of uncovering the critical components of your strategy.

Chapter 2



A good sales enablement system will involve putting a strong onboarding/training system in place and solidifying the mes-saging you need to win the sale. So, how can you do this? To determine what needs to be done, you need to begin with a needs assessment, which will help you detail how sales enablement fits into your organization. In this section, I walk you through how to perform this kind of assessment, but before you start asking questions, you need to take a couple preliminary steps:

✓ Determine who should weigh in. Look at your list of stakeholders and make sure to get a representative sample. You’ll want to hear from top management, as well as reps from all the functional groups that will be affected, to ensure that you get a big‐picture view.

✓ Determine what you need to ask to get the most effec-tive responses. You’re probably familiar with some of the problems that exist in your organization, but make sure to develop a sampling of questions that probe all facets of the sales cycle, as well as management’s understand-ing of why they think changes are needed.

Tabulate the results before deciding to pick a solution. You want your solution to meet your very specific needs. By col-lecting data and analyzing it, you’ll be able to take actions that will solve real problems.

Uncovering the critical componentsLet’s look at some suggested questions you can ask to build your strategy and uncover the critical components. From those answers, you can also develop the messages to encour-age buy‐in. I look at both here.

Begin by asking the following:

✓ How will this system help us generate more high‐qual-ity leads? An effective sales enablement system will allow you to collect data and analyze your prospects’ viewing habits and retention rates. What are you doing now and how is it failing you?

11 Chapter 2: Creating Your Strategy


Message to stakeholders: We’ll be able to provide you with the leads that have the best chance of succeeding.

✓ How will this system enable us to communicate value at every stage of the sales process? An effective sales enablement system should allow you to create and deliver content in context with every stage of the sales process. Do you have that kind of content now and can it be found?

Message to stakeholders: This will help reps establish trust and win the sale.

✓ What are our content needs? An effective sales enable-ment system will help you determine the content that succeeds. You’ll be able to produce more of it to support your training and engage prospects. What kind of content creation system are you using? Does it enable you to produce the kind of videos and high‐quality graphics that your audiences expect?

Message to stakeholders: This system will help reps become more productive. They’ll be able to find the right material when they need it. You’ll also have the tools you need to develop effective content.

✓ How will sales reps access the resources they need? An effective sales enablement system integrates with your company’s CRM (for example, Salesforce.com). This enables you to provide content and training in a place salespeople are already familiar with, so they can find what they need quickly without having to search other systems or locations. Relevant content can also be mapped to specific leads and contacts within the CRM, so reps always know what to use in every situation.

Message to stakeholders: This system will help add more value to our CRM, further enabling effective sales activi-ties and making it a place reps want to spend more time.

✓ Who will be responsible for the sales enablement process? An effective sales enablement system needs to have designated managers who will ensure that the system is being used properly and that all standards are maintained. Do you currently have people who are directly responsible for your systems or do you assume everyone will pitch in to help?



Message to stakeholders: This system will provide you with identified managers to whom you can turn if you have questions.

✓ How will we measure success? An effective sales enable-ment system helps you put the right metrics in place to ensure that you know which content and tactics are most effective.

Message to stakeholders: This system will allow us to identify the sales approaches that really work, so we can increase productivity and improve win rates.

✓ How will this help us more effectively coach reps through the sales cycle? An effective sales enablement system will allow you to track each sales rep’s success at every stage of the sales cycle so you’ll know what works and what doesn’t. Do you currently collect these kinds of metrics, and does it inform your coaching system? Do you even have a coaching system, or is it informal and haphazard?

Message to stakeholders: This system will allow us to coach B and C reps to use the tactics and content that the A players are using to succeed.

When you put a new sales enablement system in place, it may take several months to show financial results, so don’t assume your efforts aren’t working.

Tapping into your resourcesWhen assessing what needs to go into a sales enablement system, you need to look at what internal resources you have and what you’ll need to rely on from external sources.

Some sales enablement systems make it easy for you to create and produce your content. Evaluate this feature when you look at available resources. Do you have subject matter experts who can develop the material needed for training and messaging?

What about people who can do script writing, storyboarding, designing, and editing? In the next chapter, you look at what types of content are required to support your system and ensure that you can engage your customers.


Discovering the Role of Content

In This Chapter ▶ Defining sales enablement content

▶ Planning content that meet sales needs

▶ Tracking content for sales training and prospect engagement

S avvy sales organizations know that the right content is one of the key determinates to winning the sale. This

includes content for both sales training and prospect engage-ment. A strong sales enablement system will allow you to create engaging content in a way that is cost‐effective and deliver the information that buyers need to make a decision. If it doesn’t, your organization will waste a great deal of time and money with very little to show for its efforts.

Many organizations find themselves in this position today. They have content that is disorganized, outdated, and ineffective. Using their current systems, they’re unable to identify their most valuable prospects, improve conversion rates, or provide the best content in a cost‐effective way.

Brendan Cournoyer, Director of Content Marketing at Brainshark, says that when it comes to content, “Everything you do has to have a purpose, whether it’s an inbound marketing asset, sales, or demand gen. You need to have a strategic goal for that.”

So, what can you do to ensure that your organization gets the full benefit of your content? In this chapter, I look at the ele-ments that go into creating effective sales enablement content.

Chapter 3



Describing a Sales Enablement Content System

In its most basic form, sales enablement content is any mate-rial that allows the sales organization to win the deal. This encompasses a huge amount of material.

A content program for sales enablement has many moving parts and is used by all customer‐facing employees. Marketing content has continued to grow in importance. Brainshark found that 25 percent of the sales and marketing budgets of American companies is spent on content production and dis-tribution. This significant outlay is usually rife with inefficient and wasteful activities. A sales enablement system allows you to gain an understanding of how the money is being spent and how it can be made more efficient.

In this section, I fill you in on the types of content required, what makes great content, and the key components of a sales enablement content system.

Defining sales enablement contentAccording to Forrester Research and the American Marketing Association, the following types of content are required:

✓ Onboarding: Product training, sales methodology training, CRM/system training, sales skills, corporate policies, compliance procedures

✓ Continuous training: Sales skills, new product introductions, regulatory updates

✓ Lead gen: Events and webinars, whitepapers, on‐demand videos, podcasts, tips and how‐to’s, e‐books, online surveys

✓ Sales communications: Prospecting resources, PowerPoint slide decks, product demos, email templates

✓ Closed deals and follow‐up: Customer testimonials, additional product info, proposal documents

15 Chapter 3: Discovering the Role of Content


Even if you think you have most of this content, can you easily locate it? Do you know if it’s up to date or of any real value? Sorting all that out is a monumental task.

The hallmark of an effective sales enablement system is its ability to organize and deliver the most up‐to‐date content every time.

When you have the right content in place, you may still face a few issues that prevent your employees from utilizing it. For example, there may be no clear strategic direction. There must be a strategy for content development in place and known to everyone.

Another well‐known problem is that sales and marketing departments don’t always collaborate well. Clear communica-tion between sales and marketing is essential to ensure that the content being created is truly valuable for sales. A good sales enablement system simplifies that communication.

Examining the attributes of great contentNow that you’ve seen what content formats need to be created, let’s see what makes content great. An effective sales enablement system allows anyone who perceives a need to create content. However, not everyone who wants to create content can successfully develop something that is useful to others.

To create either training or prospect materials that are valuable and shareable, reps need to be able to use the tools available to them to develop high‐quality material.

Subject matter experts are available in most companies, but customer‐facing employees should also be able to personalize the content they need for an immediate situation.

When creating content for prospects, remember that all con-tent begins and ends with the buyer. You need to know who the buyers are, their needs, their industry, and what will help them make a buying decision. This is done by creating what is called a persona (the profile of a segmented group of your



customers). If you take the time to create these profiles, you can target your content more effectively. You can map your content to the sales cycle or buyer’s journey that a persona may go through. This helps your reps have better, more relevant sales conversations.

An effective sales enablement system helps you create these personas by giving you the data you need to learn about who your customers are and what they want.

Here are some of the attributes of great content:

✓ It should tell a story that can be identified with your brand and customer successes. People love stories. They’re interested in engaging with them and can remem-ber them. Knowing this should encourage you to build stories about your company and its products.

✓ It should tell their story, not yours. Customers don’t care about you — they care about their own problems and challenges. Don’t bore them with a bunch of market-ing speak; “me first” sales and marketing content is too easily ignored. Make the buyer the star of your content. Tell their story and show that you understand the chal-lenges they face and how to solve them. In this way, you’re not selling a product; you’re selling a solution to a problem.

✓ It needs to be simple, engaging, and to the point. Because people are reading large amounts of text on the web, they’ve become accustomed to quickly skimming vertically as well as horizontally before reading. Then they look at bullets and headings. Text that’s dense and long that doesn’t use these devices is not often read. Short videos and infographics can help bring a more visual element to dense or boring text. For example, Brainshark makes it easy to take existing documents like PowerPoint presentations or PDFs and transform them into simple, voice‐enriched video presentations.

✓ It must be interactive. Content can keep the reader engaged by using such interactive devices as polls, fill‐in‐the‐blank tests, multiple choice, true‐or‐false questions, and links to external content for further learning.

✓ It should be easy to update. One of the worst things you can do is allow your materials to become outdated.



Content must be tagged so that it can be refreshed when needed. This includes things like product overviews and sales messaging.

✓ It has to be mobile‐ready. All content for both sales training and customer engagement needs to be centrally located and available to be read on mobile devices.

Identifying the key components of a sales enablement content systemHere are some of the major components that must be included in a sales enablement content system:

✓ Content creation: There needs to be a system in place to quickly create content in engaging formats such as video. There should be a clear understanding of who the subject matter experts are and how to reach them. In addition, there has to be a way for others in the company to easily create new content when needed.

✓ Messaging for customers: Content needs to be created that is mapped in context with the sales cycle. As messages change, you need a way to update material with new messages so that reps can grab them on a “just in time” basis.

✓ Distribution of content within the CRM: Every employee who plays a customer‐facing role must have access to the most up‐to‐date information. That means there needs to be a central repository where all the content can be found, also known as sales asset management (SAM). A major complaint of sales reps is that they spend too much time hunting for the content they need. Your content system needs to solve that problem in a place reps already work.

✓ Tracking for training and customers: There are two tracking components to a sales enablement content system:

• Tracking to enable managers to know what training sales reps are consuming

• Tracking the specific content reps are using and potential customers are downloading and watching



Automated analytics is key to knowing what resonates with prospects and which assets your sales teams find most valuable.

✓ Mobile tools for sales and prospects: All content must be mobile‐ready so that everyone — prospect and rep alike — can access it when they need it.

✓ Editorial oversight: Someone must be responsible for determining what content needs to be created and on what schedule. This will ensure that both sales training and customer materials are available and the right con-tent is being developed.

✓ Governance for all sales materials: You need clear stan-dards by which content can be judged, developed, and updated. If reps can’t determine what sales materials are usable, they’ll create their own, which is unproductive and devalues your content assets. In addition, onboard-ing and training materials must meet the same standards and come under the same scrutiny.

As you can see, content creation and distribution is a complex undertaking. Without the right sales enablement system in place, companies find themselves struggling to meet their needs, wasting both time and money.

Planning and Creating Your Content

Imagine the pace at which content is needed for a sales enablement system. Communications are happening in real‐time and require an immediate response. In addition, regularly scheduled content is also being created or revised. Everything is moving at lightning speed with the expectation that it will be accurate and up‐to‐date. The importance of content planning cannot be overestimated so that these very crucial needs are met.

A recent report jointly issued by the Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs found that marketers with a documented content strategy are “far more likely to consider themselves effective at content marketing.”

So, what goes into your plan? Let’s look at how to approach it.



Developing your content planWhen you’re evaluating your content, you need to look at what already exists by doing a content audit. The person responsible for the effort will need to set out different reposi-tories for the information that is used for training and the information that is used for prospect engagement.

With regard to your content, a research brief from SiriusDecisions called “Sales Enablement and Content Operations: Building the Relationship” states that you should “Ensure that content assets are aligned to selling stages, per-sonas, products and market segments, and retire content that never gets used.”

The content audit will tell you what you already have and let you see what’s missing. In addition to determining the content topics for training and prospect engagement, you’ll also need to know the format of the content and how recently it was updated.

Next, you’ll need to produce a regular schedule for developing the content that needs to be created for onboarding and training and a schedule for developing your prospect content. This is particularly important for the “social selling” aspects of the plan.

You want to have regularly scheduled content that goes out on social media platforms. You also need “prepackaged” messages to be used by reps to send to prospects. One of the great benefits of a content schedule is that it keeps everyone apprised of what’s available and what’s coming. Instead of creating something on their own, customer‐facing employees can see that content they need is being created.

As I note throughout this book, you want to map your content to the sales process (stage of the buying cycle, persona, use case, and so on) so that your reps can easily find the right resource for the right situation and be more productive.

Producing your contentMaking it easy to produce content is a key focus of any good sales enablement system. You need a system that identifies the workflow process and makes it transparent to everyone.



As you look at your staff, you may have a few employees who are capable of producing content, but if you don’t identify all the subject matter experts, writers, designers, and producers who need to be involved, you’re risking a less‐than‐productive system.

The tools also play a huge role. The right tools create content that is easy to produce and looks professional. In addition, you want to ensure that the content you already have is iden-tified to be repurposed. If you already have usable content, you should just repurpose it.

Video content has been steadily growing in popularity. You want to be sure that your sales enablement system allows for the easy production of engaging video content. According to a report by Invodo called “Video Statistics: The Marketer’s Summary 2014,” 52 percent of marketers around the world cited video as content with the best return on investment (ROI).

Integrating with your CRMIntegrating your content with your CRM system is crucial. You need to make it easy for your rep to stay in her daily environ-ment and see things such as

✓ The training that is available to her

✓ The training she has completed and what she needs to do next

✓ The ability to identify subject matter experts she can consult for answers

✓ The ability to find the most appropriate content to pre-pare for meetings and share with prospects

✓ The sales materials that her current prospects and cus-tomers are consuming

Do your current systems work together as seamlessly as this? If not, you need to look at ways to integrate your CRM with your sales content.


Delving into Onboarding and Training

In This Chapter ▶ Implementing formal and informal training

▶ Looking at blended learning

▶ Adding CRM integration

M ost organizations agree that training their sales reps is essential to meeting revenue goals. The question

becomes what kind of training and under what circum-stances? Clearly the answer depends on the challenges and goals facing your organization.

In this chapter, I introduce you to the types of sales enable-ment training you should consider and the benefits of using a blended approach to onboard and train your sales force.

Using Formal and Informal Training

When evaluating your own training systems, you need to determine how well you’re currently meeting the needs of your salespeople.

Onboarding and training systems must deliver a cohesive approach to group learning and meet the individual needs of each salesperson. For this reason, both formal and informal learning is recommended. To understand why, let’s look at the characteristics of each type.

Chapter 4



Looking at formal learningFormal learning provides a sales rep with a set curriculum with predefined lessons. These lessons are often presented in a classroomlike setting during new hire onboarding but can also be delivered on demand. Here are the characteristics of formal learning:

✓ Formal training is created by subject‐matter experts and instructional designers. The process can be a long one and may be delivered from within a learning management system (LMS).

✓ The content may include such things as lectures, required reading, and tests. The sales rep is usu-ally expected to complete the training in a designated amount of time.

✓ Formal learning can be on demand for individuals, but is also often conducted in a group setting at a specific time. This requires reps to be at a designated place at a specific time, preventing them from consuming the information at their convenience.

✓ This type of training allows you to exercise control over the curriculum and how and when it’s delivered. It provides a structured learning environment where training is delivered via planned programs and course criteria.

Utilizing informal learningInformal learning is not as tightly structured as formal learn-ing, and it doesn’t necessarily prescribe how and where it will be consumed. This is typically the ideal format for continu-ous learning and preparation after a rep has been onboarded. Here are the characteristics of informal learning:

✓ If you’re using an efficient sales enablement system, informal training can be created quickly by anyone in the organization who discovers a need. This usually means that there will be more content created to serve a variety of different needs.

23 Chapter 4: Delving into Onboarding and Training


✓ The content can include a variety of formats — video presentations, polls, hyperlinks, and other learning materials that suit a specific, immediate need.

✓ Informal training can be conducted in a group setting (for example, a meeting to role‐play and exchange tactics), but it’s more often conducted individually. The strongest value of informal training to the organization is the fact that it’s flexible and can be consumed any time on mobile devices out in the field by individual sales reps.

✓ This type of training allows sales reps to access it when-ever they have time, making it more accessible. It can be viewed when needed instead of on a rigid schedule. It can be segmented and used to suit the sales reps’ immediate needs. It can also be shared via internal social platforms (like Salesforce Chatter) so reps can share and comment on learning content they’ve found most valuable.

Adopting a Blended Learning Approach

In the previous section, I explain the distinction between formal and informal learning. In this section, I show you how technology enables us to enjoy the best of both worlds by using what is known as blended learning.

Blended learning combines the energy of live training sessions with the convenience and practicality of on‐demand e‐ learning. A blended approach reduces the challenges of live training. These challenges include scheduling conflicts, travel costs, the need to give the same live training repeatedly to new hires, and live, lengthy training sessions that cut into selling time.

A blended approach has several benefits:

✓ Reps can supplement their live training with a refresher about things they’ve forgotten.

✓ You can accommodate the learning styles and attention spans of each rep.



✓ Reps can maximize their time by reviewing learning con-tent at their convenience without having to stop for live scheduled training that cuts into their productivity and work flow.

✓ Managers maximize their time by not having to conduct frequent, long, face‐to‐face meetings in order to ensure that everyone is trained.

You don’t ever want to do away with live training completely, but supplementing with on‐demand learning when it makes sense has a lot of value.

So, what does a blended approach look like? It’s an approach that allows sales reps to

✓ Attend classroom‐style meetings that deliver a formal curriculum while they use self‐paced e‐learning modules to supplement live meetings.

✓ Attend live training sessions that incorporate such tac-tics as role playing and sharing of best practices through face‐to‐face or in‐person interactions.

✓ Get sales coaching sessions from their manager on skills development or find answers to questions directly from on‐demand e‐learning materials.

✓ Receive timely updates with the current messaging via email or on‐demand portal or receive product release information delivered during live meetings.

✓ Supplement their live training with on‐demand learning that they can view at their convenience.

The freedom that a blended learning approach provides makes it better than just using live or on‐demand training alone.

Deploying Just‐in‐Time Training and Reinforcement

The concept of just‐in‐time (JIT) training is not a new one. It originated at Toyota in the 1970s. Taiichi Ohno, then president of Toyota, devised a system to produce and deliver exactly what was needed, when it was needed. This cut down



on both costs and corporate waste. The concept gained popularity among business executives who saw the value of producing only the inventory that would be consumed in a specific timeframe.

The development of mobile technology like iPads and smart-phones has revived the interest in JIT training and made it a powerful tool for sales enablement. JIT training allows sales-people to learn and prepare at their own pace in conjunction with their schedules.

It allows reps to focus on a specific problem they’re having and solve it. The right learning materials are ready where and when they need it. A rep can sit in his car outside a client’s office and grab the content he needs to deliver an up‐to‐date and relevant presentation.

Claire Schooley cites JIT training as an important factor in employee development. In her 2014 Forrester Report called “Create a Learning Culture to Jumpstart Employee Development,” she writes, “Employees must have access to knowledge at the moment of need.”

JIT training is best when it delivers simple, quick content in the form of a video or other interactive format that shortens learning time.

JIT training is now viewed as a critical component of sales enablement systems and should be a part of any training program you deliver.

Integrating with Your CRM System

Another critical aspect of sales enablement is providing integration with your internal customer relationship man-agement (CRM) system, or what some refer to as sales force automation (SFA). Most salespeople live in their CRM systems. Some may even log in and stay there throughout the day. This means they have one place where they get all their leads and customer information. From their CRM, they send their emails, manage their to‐do lists, and more.



So, what are some of the training benefits your company gets from using a sales enablement system that integrates with your CRM? CRM integration allows you to

✓ Save time and increase productivity. Reps don’t have to log into a separate LMS to get their formal training or JIT materials.

✓ Maintain oversight. Managers can use the CRM to monitor the progress of new reps by seeing what courses they’ve taken and when.

✓ Organize sales training in an effective way. It ensures that informal and JIT learning content is mapped to your sales process and will easily be found when needed.

✓ Produce detailed analytics. Trainers and managers have a single dashboard to monitor progress and determine learning content effectiveness.

Brainshark delivers formal e‐learning courses and curriculums right from within Salesforce.com. New reps can access formal training as soon as they get their Salesforce login, while informal JIT training can be mapped to leads, contacts, and opportunities inside the CRM.

Asking the Right Training Questions

At this point, you’re ready to look more closely at the training needs of your specific organization. Here are some questions to ask yourself:

✓ Are salespeople wasting too much time in formal training sessions?

✓ Are training sessions delivering the right value?

✓ Can reps get updated content from anywhere, anytime?

✓ Is everyone in your company with expertise able to create content easily?

✓ Do you need to frequently update your content?



✓ Do you have a content system that makes it easy to deliver everything a sales rep needs at every stage of the buyer’s journey?

✓ Are you clear about what actually needs to be tracked?

✓ How much control do you need when tracking your reps’ training activities?

✓ Do you know who needs to receive reports and how often?

Spend some time thinking about and answering these questions, and you’ll get a clearer look at your onboarding/training needs.




Extending Prospect Engagement

In This Chapter ▶ Understanding your reps’ challenges

▶ Demonstrating value at each stage of the sales process

▶ Harnessing the power of mobile

T he age‐old question of how to get your prospects’ atten-tion and keep it has been further complicated by the over-

whelming availability of information online. Your customers expect to be able to find solution information before they ever think of contacting you.

In addition, your competitors are working very hard to grab your customers’ attention and hold it. They want to create a vision for the customer that ensures that your solution is never the right choice. If they have a good sales enablement system, they can reach the customer through a variety of channels and great‐looking sales materials that broadcast their message.

So, what should you do to compete and win? In this chapter, I look at the issue of prospect engagement and how a sales enablement system helps you up your game.

Chapter 5



Identifying Rep Challenges and Pain Points

As we all know, it’s no longer possible to drop a packet of sales brochures in the mail and expect to schedule a meeting with your targeted prospect. In fact, when you look at what’s required today, it’s hard to believe that such a process ever succeeded. Selling has become an increasingly more complex endeavor.

According to Brainshark’s report called “State of the Sales Rep: Benchmarks for the Way Reps Prepare for, Present at, and Follow Up after Sales Meetings,” the top three ways sales reps follow up with their prospects is by email (92 percent), by phone (70 percent), and via sales/marketing collateral (37 percent).

However, we know that these methods are not always suc-cessful. We know this because sales reps report that their top three follow‐up challenges are

✓ Reaching their prospects after the meeting (55 percent)

✓ Knowing who else is influencing purchasing decisions (49 percent)

✓ Dealing with a contact who is not a key decision maker in the organization (38 percent)

So, what does a sales enablement system do to eliminate the kinds of pain points and challenges a rep faces when engag-ing with prospects? It provides the content and supports delivery of value to the prospect at every stage of the buyer’s journey so that trust is developed and a solid relationship is built. When that happens, the rep has access to the real decision makers who can influence the sale. It extends the conversation beyond the live meetings and phone calls to virtual interactions. It also creates a clear picture of the prospects’ interests and needs, while providing visibility into the sales process for management.

31 Chapter 5: Extending Prospect Engagement


In a nutshell, for prospect engagement, a sales enablement system needs to have the following:

✓ The capability to generate higher‐quality leads and iden-tify the best sales opportunities

✓ The capability to create the right message to get the decision makers’ attention and keep it

✓ The content and tools to support successful meetings that elevate the sales conversation

✓ The right tools to ensure that everything is mobile‐ready

✓ The capability to articulate value and provide product differentiation

Brainshark’s sales enablement system takes follow‐up one step further by allowing a sales rep to send a personalized video presentation after the meeting, summing up the conver-sation and covering the key points to ensure alignment with the buyer.

In the rest of this chapter, I cover these requirements in more detail to see how they facilitate prospect engagement. Think about what your current sales systems provide as you look at the ways a sales enablement system supports prospect engagement on the way to closing a deal.

Getting Attention and Keeping It

How do you capture attention for your product with so many other things clamoring for your prospect’s attention? You’re not only competing with other vendors — you’re competing against the very real possibility that the prospect will make no decision at all. So, it’s critical that the sales rep knows what message she needs to deliver, when, and to whom.

So, how does getting your prospect’s attention turn into an actual sales meeting or call? When reaching out to a prospect, a salesperson needs to have an understanding of customer motivations and concerns.



By providing customer insight data, a sales enablement system allows reps to prepare more effectively and deliver the right message to encourage the prospect to take the next step. To continue to move down the sales funnel, the rep is presented with an important choice: He needs to decide what to send the prospect to show that the solution speaks directly to his specific problems. If the rep shows that he understands the buyer’s concerns, it increases the chances that he can move forward. He can’t send the same messages and expect to get a meeting. He needs content that helps him to reframe the problem around the unique needs of the prospect to make his product the only right decision. Perhaps most important, he needs to stand out from the pack.

Executives have become less tolerant of lifeless sales materi-als. They need engaging content that answers their questions and holds their interest. It’s no wonder then that 59 percent of senior execs prefer watching videos over reading text, and the majority view more online video content now than in years past.

Lots of content at the ready is helpful, but only if it has direct application. The content must also be easily customized so the buyer feels like the content has been created specifically for her.

It’s not a trivial undertaking. To underscore that point, let’s look at examples of the type of content that you need to create and map it to the sales cycle:

✓ Awareness: Webinars, tips, blog articles, thought‐leader posts, e‐books

✓ Interest: Events, videos, PowerPoint presentations, pod-casts, whitepapers, email templates, how‐to’s

✓ Consideration: Testimonials, product demos, e‐books, on‐demand videos

✓ Close and follow‐up: Proposals, meeting follow‐up videos, FAQs

✓ Renew: Product updates, annual conferences, executive announcements

By delivering content in context with the sales process, reps can be more confident that they are sharing the right resources and messages in every situation. Content can be



mapped to leads, contacts, and opportunities right within the CRM, and organized by persona, industry, state of the sales cycle, or any attribute.

From a prospecting perspective, an effective sales enablement system should also enable timely, impactful follow‐up after content has been shared. Automated monitoring tools allow you to determine how prospects are engaging with your on‐demand materials.

With a strong sales engagement system, you can deter-mine which content has been opened, when, and by whom. Customer‐facing staff must be able to track response and retention rates for specific prospects. Sales reps can be alerted when materials are viewed and contact prospects when they’re most engaged.

Supporting Successful MeetingsWhen you get the meeting, your job is just beginning. Here’s an example of how this content would be deployed to support a typical meeting:

✓ Before the meeting: The rep sends materials that enhance what the prospect has already learned about your product online. This helps to “warm up” the pros-pects before the meeting and keep them engaged with your message going in. The analytics you gleaned from the integration with your CRM helps you see what content has been accessed and what this prospect is interested in. You can use this customer data to help determine what to show your prospect. This could include a thought leadership article on the state of the industry and the challenges the prospect faces.

✓ During the meeting: With the knowledge of customer concerns and the right content on hand, the rep can con-duct a lively two‐way dialogue with the group. Up‐to‐date PowerPoint presentations, PDFs, videos, and other pre-sentation content should be easily accessible. Interactive material such as polls, surveys, and questions can also help direct the conversation.

✓ After the meeting: The rep can immediately share every-thing so as not to lose momentum.



A successful sales meeting not only provides participants with an engaging conversation during the meeting but supports and engages the prospect after the meeting. The system also needs to allow for the creation of new content by subject‐matter experts and reps to deal with new issues that were raised. It should also be easy to find existing content that answers any unexpected questions. You want to be able to leave the participants with the content they need to take the next step.

Today’s prospects want access to on‐demand communica-tions to facilitate their decision. It’s up to you to provide those resources every step of the way.

Being Mobile‐ReadyThe system needs to provide the right tools to allow the rep to grab the most up‐to‐date content for every stage in the buying cycle. It needs be available to reps wherever they are, so they don’t need to worry about being at a specific location — or using a specific device — to get what they need.

In Chapter 4, I mention how crucial mobile is for training your sales force. But mobile also plays a starring role in customer communications. Salesforce’s “2015 State of Marketing” report says that 46 percent of the 5,000 marketers who participated in the survey are using some form of mobile marketing, and 70 percent of them cited it as a “critical enabler of products or services” (up 13 percent from the year before).

So, what does being mobile‐ready mean? It means that the content that reps use to engage prospects or train themselves is available from all mobile devices. A mobile‐ready system provides access to

✓ The sales enablement system from smartphones and tablets

✓ All JIT learning materials

✓ All content in a mobile‐ready format on any device

✓ Training and prospect engagement content in a video format when appropriate



Being mobile‐ready is not optional. If your content is not accessible, your prospects will find competitors whose content is.

Developing Product Differentiation

Like any good sales conversation, a buyer needs to be guided on a journey from “interested” to “sold.” However, today’s educated buyer expects a great deal more from this conver-sation than before. In order to differentiate your company’s product and avoid selling on price, your reps need to reframe the problems facing the prospect and articulate value at every stage of the sales process.

In all likelihood, a prospect has already seen several product demos and looked at data sheets from several competitors before you even meet them. What prospects want is the abil-ity to discuss broader business concerns.

Forrester Research has reported that today’s buyer is no longer content to watch a product demo and that 88 percent prefer a conversation about business issues they’re facing.

This puts a great deal of pressure on the average salesperson to be educated in the business aspects of an industry, in addi-tion to the product features. Simply put, sales reps need to have better conversations to win the sale.

It’s well known that a salesperson’s greatest enemy is not her competitors — it’s the status quo. Keeping things as they are and making no decision is always easier for a prospect. For this reason, reps need to be able to challenge assump-tions and reframe the problem to make their product the only viable choice. They need to confidently sell their vision of why the status quo is dangerous to continue and that their product is the solution.

By alerting the prospect to threats and challenges they may be unaware of, you instantly get their attention. They begin to evaluate how these threats will affect their company and their own job. This allows the rep to present solutions that



are directly solved by his product. This instantly becomes a better conversation for the sales rep. The conversation becomes about the unique value that his product can provide, thus differentiating the product from other competitors.

The benefits of using a product differentiation strategy include not having to compete on price and helping loyal customers recruit other customers by making the value argument for them. This tactic is enhanced by the use of social media platforms.


Examining Sales CoachingIn This Chapter

▶ Evaluating your coaching system

▶ Looking at your manager’s coaching skills

▶ Discovering whether coaches set the right priorities

A sales enablement system makes it possible for you to track and measure everything your sales rep does along

the journey to a sale. These analytics provide managers with the insight they need to coach reps to more wins.

With an effective sales coaching strategy, it shouldn’t matter how large your team is or how it’s structured. If you have the right system in place, your organization can be spread throughout the country or the globe and perform successfully.

In this chapter, I review what goes into an effective sales‐coaching program and tell you how a sales enablement system can help your managers provide meaningful advice that can close the deal.

Introducing Systematic Sales Coaching

Sales coaching is a key ingredient of any sales enablement program. With the right coaching program, you can help your B and C players act like A players and ensure that your managers spend their time doing the things that impact the bottom line.

Chapter 6



Most average sales programs that don’t use a sales enablement system include training for three things:

✓ The company’s specific sales process and proprietary methodologies

✓ Training to use the tools provided

✓ Specifics about the company’s products and services

But in today’s sales environment, that approach alone just doesn’t cut it. What’s missing is the coaching and integration with a CRM that effectively accommodates the needs of each individual rep throughout the sales process. Tools need to be available to provide the automated analytics that enhance one‐to‐one coaching.

To develop a good sales enablement coaching program, you need a repeatable and effective process to

✓ Identify the skills needed. It’s critical that you know what skills your reps need to pinpoint areas for improvement.

✓ Monitor how reps are performing using built‐in analytics. Observation is good, but to ensure that sales reps are doing what they need to, you need a way to track their activities. Analytics provide the basis from which to draw real predictions about winning sales and assist the manager in providing meaningful coaching.

According to a 2014 report by Peter Ostrow of the Aberdeen Group, “Sales teams that deploy data‐driven coaching out‐perform non‐adopters across five sales KPIs [key performance indicators].”

✓ Provide the coach with specifics about winning strate-gies with intelligent content. In addition to the analytics, a coach must be able to provide one‐to‐one coaching based not only on these measures but also on what con-tent and sales approaches the best reps are using to suc-ceed. You need to have a system that points everyone to the content and conversations that close the deal.

✓ Reward the activities that produce successes along the way. There must be a way to acknowledge performance and reward successful completion of goals.

39 Chapter 6: Examining Sales Coaching


✓ Set goals within an integrated CRM system. Salespeople spend most of their time in their CRM systems. To make goals accessible, they need to be right alongside their emails and customer information.

With that system in mind, we need to look at the sales man-ager’s ability to deliver effective coaching. I tackle that next.

Evaluating your manager’s coaching capabilitiesThe role of the sales coach in a sales enablement system requires specialized skills. Being a highly successful sales rep doesn’t necessarily equip you to be a good sales coach. Here are the questions you need to ask to evaluate your managers’ coaching capabilities:

✓ Do they have the required coaching skills? Sales man-agers are often plucked from the ranks of rock‐star sales reps with an inherent ability to sell. But knowing how to sell doesn’t necessarily mean you know how to impart that knowledge to others. That’s why “train the trainer” content is a critical part of the system and must be endorsed by upper management to ensure quality coach-ing. This also provides consistency.

✓ Do they have the needed management skills to coach a sales group? Do they have the ability to set priorities? If you think that’s an unusual question to ask about manag-ers, consider the fact that some sales managers spend more time shuffling through reports and meaningless data than they do looking at key ways to help their teams be more productive. They simply may not know how to determine the right amount of time to spend with each rep to get results.

An interesting finding was reported in 2011 by Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson in an article in the Harvard Business Review called “The Dirty Secret of Effective Sales Coaching.” They found that “the real payoff from good coaching lies among the middle 60% — your core performers. By focusing on this group you can see improvements of up to 19%.”



Not only is coaching quality important, but the ability of man-agers to target the right reps for the optimum amount of time is a key to meeting quotas.

On the other side of the coin, you need to make sure that you’re supplying the right information to your coaches. Ask yourself:

✓ Do you have the right coaching materials for them? If you don’t share the information they need to coach reps at each point during the sales process, you’re preventing them from succeeding.

✓ Have you set expectations? Do they know how much of their time should be spent coaching so that they can spend an adequate amount of time in the field? If your coaches are worrying about paperwork, your reps get short‐changed. Sales forecasts are very important, but you need to ensure that managers have enough time to devote to their coaching efforts.

✓ Do they have access to the data that shows the messag-ing and content that has the most chance for success? You need to make sure you’re providing the guidance and real‐world content that will make the coaching program a success.

Coaches need to develop action plans for each rep that focus on developing and upgrading their specific skills.

Monitoring Rep ActivityOne of the great benefits of a sales enablement system is that you can monitor a salesperson’s activities throughout the onboarding, training, and deal‐making process. Without a system, you’re forced to guess or take the word of the rep regarding the content and sales approaches he’s using.

With a system that provides automated analytics, you have the best chance of knowing how to effectively coach your reps. For example, it isn’t unusual for reps to forget what they learned soon after the training and need refreshers to bolster their knowledge.

41 Chapter 6: Examining Sales Coaching


Accenture reports that 80 percent of the knowledge gained during training is lost within 60 days.

A sales enablement system provides the capability for refreshers by having both on‐demand and formal learning channels (see Chapter 4). Analytics can tell the manager whether they’re completing their training refreshes in a timely manner. They can also use interactive techniques to deter-mine if they’re retaining the material. This includes quizzes and fill‐in‐the‐blank‐style tests.

A really valuable part of a sales enablement system is that it lets you use analytics to understand what engages the cus-tomer and learn the techniques and messages that help your top reps close more deals. With this knowledge, you can iden-tify best practices and coach less successful reps to up their game and close the deal.

Integrating with Your CRM System

If learning resources and sales content are integrated with the CRM, analytics on content usage and performance should be as well. This enables both managers and reps to gain insight into the sales process without having to log in to a separate system.

But understanding the content that performs best is only part of the equation; you also need to deliver that content seam-lessly to salespeople, particularly underperforming reps.

The right sales enablement system makes it easy for manag-ers to promote best practices from within the CRM as well. In Salesforce.com, for example, sales success stories and ideas can be shared and posted to Chatter. The most effective content can also be prescribed automatically to CRM users, automating the coaching process and delivering more sales content intelligently when and where reps need it.




Ten Features to Look for in a Sales Enablement

PlatformIn This Chapter

▶ Identifying the features you need

▶ Knowing why those features matter

S ales enablement is a complex issue. It requires systems that empower both reps and managers. But, most

important, it needs to free up salespeople to do what they do best: Sell!

Here are ten features that you should look for when you’re searching for a sales enablement system:

✓ CRM integration: The capability to deliver the content, training, and analytics that sales teams need to sell more effectively, right within the CRM where they work, such as Salesforce.com

✓ Content creation: The ability for subject‐matter experts to quickly produce impactful content resources, to be used for training, demand gen, prospecting, and more

✓ Video‐based content: The ability to easily create dynamic, voice‐enriched video presentations that engage audiences, improve response rates, and increase knowledge retention

Chapter 7



✓ Interactivity: The ability to enrich content with interactive elements such as quizzes, polls, and surveys to learn more about your audience and keep them engaged

✓ Content in context: The ability to prescribe the right content for every situation, organized by persona, industry, stage of the sales cycle and more, and mapped to opportunities within the CRM

✓ Mobile‐ready: The ability to access sales enablement resources anytime from any device, and even show approved PowerPoint slides and other presentation content live from smartphones and tablets

✓ Formal training: The ability to deliver structured eLearning courses and curriculums for sales onboarding and training, and track the progress of learners to ensure completion

✓ Continuous learning: The ability to make up‐to‐date informal learning resources available for reps to quickly access anytime, anywhere — right when they need them

✓ Analytics: The ability to gain insight into the sales and training processes with actionable data that makes it easy to identify what’s happening, what’s working, and what isn’t

✓ Demand generation: The ability to increase campaign response rates with engaging marketing content, and then track audience behavior to identify the most interested sales opportunities and prioritize follow‐up


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