Today was the kickoff for SAVO Group's Sales Executive Enablement Summit and Co-founder and CEO John Aiello kicked it off by sharing his thoughts about the reasons sales enablement is a REVOLUTION.
But first, some details on who's here:
190 Executives - 90% of whom are Directors, VPs and C-level
120 companies spanning 15 industries
No kidding, the room was literally standing room only.
According to John, ten years ago if you searched on the term "sales enablement" you'd get 3 measly returns. Today that number has jumped to 102,000. Likewise, 10 years ago there were only 4 companies working in the space - today there are at least 100.
Several reasons John attributes to the rise in demand for sales enablement include:
- CRM hasn't delivered
- One-size-fits-all content management solutions - which don't meet sales' needs
- Web 2.0 - your salespeople are getting eaten up, chewed on and spit out by buyers who are more demanding, smarter and may know more about your products and solutions than your sales reps.
Sales environments are harder than ever. He quoted the CSO Insights statistic that shows—for the first time ever—that less than half of salespeople are expected to make quota.
Another issue found by Sirius Decisions research shows that more than half of the buyers asked say meetings with sellers, [well], suck.
Essentially what's happened is that risk aversion has become personal. People are afraid that if they make the wrong decision it could cost them their jobs. So self preservation is playing a huge role in delaying and scrapping decisions being made at all.
The shift in the market also shows that tactical doesn't sell - strategic does. Buyers need to see ROI faster - think 90 days or less.
In order to overcome the current sales environment challenges, there's a Sales Enablement Revolution underway. Below are the tenets that John proposes are leading the way:
Differentiation: Sales people and subject matter experts are key.
Fluency: Smoothness is needed for conversations and dialogue. This fluency needs to go beyond vocabulary, buzzwords and setting salespeople up with ice breaker sentences. Exchanges must be interactive. Your salespeople need to know how to deliver value.
Competitive Information: Intelligence needs to be dynamic and active - not a static SWOT posting from 6 months ago. In most organizations intel is dated information that comes from the top down, vetted for message. Competitive intel needs to come from the street, in real time and in a way that enables your salespeople to make active responses.
When information comes from the street, it has "street cred" and is more accepted and used by salespeople.
John shared a story about how Savo Group's customer, Unum, is using their platform as a holistic showcase for competitive information. They named the portal FOX - Field Online Exchange. [Interesting that AFLAC is their leading competitor and foxes eat ducks, but that's another story.]
The point is that the discussion board and postings allow their salespeople to post what SAVO Group calls "Tribal Knowledge." They ask questions, share insights and work on handling objections collaboratively.
The reason this is important is because salespeople don't have a lot of time to make a great first impression and get to the next step. The question you need to answer for your salespeople is:
In order to do so, you need the ability to get your salespeople connected to the right subject matter experts to help them - be they architects, engineers, economists, etc. But, even better, you need a system that captures the information they share in response to one salesperson's questions so that it's shared across the entire team in a way that's easily findable and relevant to the situation at hand.
Think in terms of a Sales Playbook. Because salespeople don't know what they don't know, the information they need will be most usable if it's presented in context. This information can include:
- Related subject matter expert profiles, access and contributions
- Formal content
- Tribal knowledge
- PowerPoint Presentations
- And more...
Objection Handling: Companies need to understand that objections happen as a matter of course throughout the buying process, not just whenever you think they may appear. With the speed of change today, the nature of objections also changes frequently. Salespeople need active content to address objections in real time.
John also shared the idea that influencers aren't able to say "yes" to your salespeople, they don't have the authority. The scary part is that they can say "no."
Customer-Relevant Information and Data: Salespeople need to be able to "speak" customer data in a way that's relevant to the customer. We must be able to apply the intelligence we have and continuously gather about our customers in a way that's relevant to them. That means we need to use customer data to add value to conversations and to create outcomes.
Stay tuned. I'll have a post on Scott Santucci's workshop up next.
