There is a market correction coming that will impact most Enablement leaders. This represents the most significant opportunity in this space for those that understand and can apply “Sales Enablement 3.0” (as coined and defined by Roderick Jeffersons’ book of the same name).
– What defines the 3rd Wave of Sales Enablement, and how far away are you?
– How do you get behaviour change if you can’t overcome the forgetting curve?
– Sales managers are the single point of success or failure for most Enablement programs.
– You’ll notice there is no question mark in point 3 – If this is accepted as fact, what can be done to ensure more success?
Organisations are not just trying to do something strategically about the readiness crisis, they’re tackling it every day in the form of traditional sales enablement programs. The goal is clear: if you want to continuously hone different skill sets, tie the program to revenue outcomes, and customise it to individual business needs. The reality is different: the programs get launched, often to much fanfare, and we get that initial spike in adoption, but when we don’t reinforce knowledge day-over-day, month-over-month, the science of the forgetting curve begins to kick in. Without practical reinforcement of the knowledge that’s shared, sales reps begin to forget, and their performance suffers. There are a multitude of LMS and enablement systems that will give you this initial adoption spike, and wane over time. This may explain why 90% of sales training programs fail after 120 days.
• You wanted continuous, and you get one-and-done
• You wanted revenue-focused, and you get adoption-focused
• You wanted to be customised, and you get generic
The BTN was recently delighted to partner with Mindtickle, for an exclusive roundtable. The open and interactive session was hosted by Anthony Parker (General Manager & VP of Sales, EMEA at Mindtickle) which brought about the following takeaways:
There has been a lot of momentum around sales right now as organisations of all types move out of the pandemic and into the ‘next normal’ phase of business, looking for opportunities. However, for sales enablement leaders, there are some distinct challenges that come with that. For many leaders, the most important question lies around what is the number one program/initiative that leaders are focusing on for 2022/23 and/or what revenue-impacting sales challenges are they trying to overcome and how?
Sales Enablement is a tick box
Sales enablement 3.0 is the enablement of shifting from tactical to business and is integral to everything an organisation does. Enablement needs to prove its value to get invested and needs to be seen as a tick box. The importance of continually enabling your sales force cannot be overstated, yet too many enablement programs fall flat. Enabling salespeople to do their jobs to the best of their ability result in organisations benefiting the most. Using enablement practices of winning revenue organisations means that companies can improve the overall effectiveness of their own programs. There is a reliance within sales on the role of content and organisations are starting to see the huge benefit of making it a priority to ensure their sales staff have enough of it. However, for smaller companies, the methodology is a massive overhead and therefore needs to get moving as quickly as possible.
Organisations are refocusing resources on existing sales
Almost 50% of sales enablement functions sit under a Head of Sales (according to CSO Insights) while others might report to executive management, sales operations, or marketing. It was mentioned that when it comes to sales onboarding, some organisations highlighted the focus on the first 6 months, whereby they are able to train their salespeople around mostly targets, provide opportunities for promotion, and offer open coaching hours all in which are ways that they can spend time with enablement.
Employees who went through this initial training are now overtaking people those who didn’t as they are becoming more effective with what they do. Those that have not gone through the same amount of training are more likely to experience poor job performance and increased levels of work-related stress. Does this however mean that those who did not have the same amount of training risk being lost as individuals or even consider leaving?
Enablement should have a seat at the table
With enablement already being critical to the success of every organisation, it is evident that organisations with a sales enablement function have a much higher win rate than organisations that don’t. So why don’t all organisations allow enablements to have a seat at the executive table? If you’re an organisation that’s running a program or training initiative in a sales organisation, you need to be able to manage it in flight and change behaviour to get better results. Articulating results is where organisations will be able to get a seat at the table when they need to be able to adapt to get behaviour change. Firms need to articulate the impact on revenue and outcomes, which helps set up the steps for sales enablement 3.0.
Recently, many organisations have noticed a huge shift in Venture Capital (VC). This is because the pandemic has changed the structure of VC’s investing as firms shift more cash into their existing portfolios at the expense of startups. With this being said, the point was made that the only way enablements can have a seat at the table is by stopping training/activity and start discussing the actual outcomes. In order to get an outcome the best way that firms can do this is through the front-line managers as those are the individuals that are not involved in training. when it comes to onboarding, 90% of the information which people are told will be forgotten in 30 days if not reinforced.
Sales Enablement and Marketing need to work together as enablement is normally seen as a cost, not revenue.
Learn how Mindtickle, the only complete sales readiness platform, can empower you to identify and drive winning rep behaviours and drive revenue growth here: https://explore.mindtickle.com/state-of-sales-readiness-report-2022/p/1
About Mindtickle
Mindtickle is the market-leading sales readiness platform, helping revenue leaders at world-class companies like Johnson & Johnson, Splunk, and Wipro, be ready to grow revenue by increasing knowledge, understanding ideal sales behaviours, and adapting to change. Dozens of Fortune 500 and Forbes Global 2000 companies use Mindtickle to define excellence, build knowledge, align content, analyze performance, and optimize behaviour throughout their sales organizations. Mindtickle is recognized as a market leader by top industry analysts and is ranked by G2 as both the #1 enterprise software product and #5 sales software product.
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