21
2015Death of a Salesman – Fact or Fiction?
No, this isn’t an article about Arthur Miller’s Pulitzer Prize winning play about Willy Loman. Instead, I want to address one of the three big myths that were debunked at the recent SiriusDecisions Sales and Marketing Summit last week in Nashville. They reported that popular metrics indicate that buyers are 57% of the way through their purchase process before they engage a sales rep. They…
04
2014Sales Effectiveness or Sales Enablement?
I started a discussion on LinkedIn last week titled “Sales Effectiveness needs help from all departments” and in it I got an interesting response from Traci Curran, who is the Strategic B2B Marketing Director at Revergy, Inc. Traci made an interesting comment to the discussion, “@chuck, on tools like CollaboRate…these solve content problems (pre sales and post-sale). Content is top of the funnel stuff…which I…
09
2013Do you have an “Effective” Sales Enablement Strategy?
There is a lot of talk today around Sales Enablement, but there is also a lot of confusion as to what it is. I mean the name alone pretty much explains what it is, but let’s take a look at how it is defined. “Sales enablement is a strategic, ongoing process that equips all client-facing employees with the ability to consistently and systematically have a…
07
2013
Success is 90% Preparation, 10% Perspiration
We’ve all heard the adage “Success is 90% preparation and only 10% perspiration”. The great scientist Louis Pasteur once said, “Chance favors the prepared mind”. This is an area that I believe needs to be addressed more effectively by sales people and the organizations they work for today. So, let me start by asking: Are your sales people as prepared and effective as they need…
18
2013
How Important is Sales Enablement to Your Organization?
What exactly is Sales Enablement anyway? Well, there are two really good definitions that I like to quote. The first definition is provided by the Forrester Group: “Sales Enablement is a strategic, ongoing process that equips all client-facing employees with the ability to consistently and systematically have a valuable conversation with the right set of customer stakeholders at each stage of the customer’s problem-solving life…
27
2013As Head of Marketing how do You Know What’s Working and What Isn’t?
There are so many research reports that have been done from reputable organizations like Gartner Group, Aberdeen, Foresters, IDC, etc., regarding how marketing content and collateral just isn’t working. You have to wonder how the head of Marketing knows what’s working and what isn’t for their organization? Here are some examples: “62% of buyers said that content is either not relevant or not useful.” (IDC,…
24
2012The Enlightenment of Sales Enablement
I had the good fortune to be invited to join four new LinkedIn Groups all around the area of Sales Enablement. In Brian Lamberts’ “Sales Enablement Leader Exchange” Group, Brian makes this statement: “What exactly is Sales Enablement? Sales enablement is the process of arming an organization’s sales force with access to the insight, experts, and information that will ultimately increase revenue. It is a…