Let me ask you \u2026 What is sales enablement? Is it training? Is it coaching? Is it research? Is it gadgets? Is it big data?<\/p>\n
It\u2019s all of these things and more. But one thing it is not<\/em> is sales training alone.<\/p>\n I\u2019d like to put forward 3 tenets of sales enablement:<\/p>\n Selling is about relationships and there is broad acceptance in industry that ongoing business success is built on strong relationships.<\/p>\n Miller Heiman in their 2013 Sales Best Practices Study highlight that relationships matter, and world class sales organisations put customers at the core of everything they do. The Corporate Executive Board also references anecdotal evidence that traditional sales training has short-lived results, and a change in the \u2018cultural\u2019 foundation of the organisation is required to achieve sales success and growth.<\/p>\n Without relationships, you might make one sale but you won\u2019t make another. In the current economy it\u2019s important to have annuity income to smooth over the typically bumpy ride experienced by most SMEs.<\/p>\n Relationships also need to be across multiple planes. You can\u2019t run a successful organisation with what I call \u2018single-point-sensitivity\u2019 where one account manager has responsibility for all correspondence and interaction with the client. Relationships need to be \u2018many to many\u2019 so that both organisations stick better to each other in good times and bad meaning lots of people in your business need to know lots of people in your client\u2019s business.<\/p>\n I was speaking with an industry contact recently, and they were lamenting that they have a great sales team but they don\u2019t know how to use the information provided to them.<\/p>\n My first thought was about the incomprehensible instruction manuals that often accompany furniture\/electrical equipment and wondered if my contact\u2019s sales team was provided with too much confusing information.<\/p>\n My second was George Miller\u2019s \u201cMagical Number Seven \u2013 plus or minus two\u201d referring to his 1956 article in the Psychological Review where he argued that people can remember seven things (plus or minus two).<\/p>\n How many things was my contact asking his salespeople to remember?<\/p>\n Information overload is a common issue in business, whether it be the number of emails you receive, the number of key points you need to get across in a conversation\/presentation, or various passwords. Our brains are struggling with perspective and balance and this is where we should be focusing our attention.<\/p>\n We don\u2019t have to remember the information. We just need to know how to get it when we need it.<\/p>\n Modern Customer Relationship Management Systems (CRMs) have the capacity to store huge amounts of customer\/client data but it needs to be translated into information before it is useful.<\/p>\n The guide for what is useful information is context<\/em>. If you enable the people that speak with your customer to readily access information that\u2019s relevant to the context of their discussions, then you have provided them with good information \u2013 not just data. This is what will enable your sales organisation\/teams to work more closely with their customers\/clients and give them information that they see as really valuable.<\/p>\n One key component of enabling your business to be successful from a sales perspective is to remember that it\u2019s not just your sales people that are your sales people.<\/p>\n Your website is your new reception, and the social media posts (both your corporate ones and those by your employees) are the conversations your customers hear and listen to. The person chasing unpaid bills could be speaking to a consumer of your products and the customer service representative could do great damage if a dissatisfied customer takes to the online world to vent their frustration.<\/p>\n1. It\u2019s about the relationship \u2026 stupid!<\/strong><\/h3>\n
2. It\u2019s about readily available useful information \u2013 not just reams of data<\/strong><\/h3>\n
3. It\u2019s about the whole organisation \u2013 not just the pointy end.<\/strong><\/h3>\n