Getting Started in Enablement, Redux
Mike Kunkle
🔹Author/Advisor/Course Creator: The Building Blocks of Sales Enablement | Modern Sales Foundations | Sales Coaching Excellence
Hey, Enablers, happy Friday! Mike here. Welcome to this week's edition of Sales Enablement Straight Talk. This week I'm going to take a closer look at some pieces/parts of how to get started in Enablement and either start or evolve an Enablement practice that gets results.
Let's level set first, and then dig in.
Introduction
I've written about this topic a half dozen different times and still get the request to talk or write about it.
These articles contain most of my "starter advice" at a high level. Each contains similar things, while each has its own flavor. The third is targeted at wholesale distributors, but the advice is the same.
In short, when you put it all together, the advice goes like this:
Start with Strategy: Understand your organizational strategy and tactical plans.
Build a Charter: Create an enablement charter with your cross-functional collaborators.
Conduct a Situation Assessment: Assess the sales force’s current state and desired future state using COIN-OP (Challenges, Opportunities, Impacts, Needs, Outcomes, and Priorities), including a Gap Analysis and an Impact Analysis.
Conduct a Gap Analysis: Conduct a Gap Analysis of the Building Blocks and Systems that are (or aren't) in place and to what level they exist (or don't).
Prioritize the Blocks: Prioritize the Blocks and Systems based on what's needed to close the sales force's gaps to achieve the desired outcomes from the Situation Assessment
Conduct a Force Field Analysis: Conduct a Force Field Analysis to assess the factors that are in your favor or in your way. Capture and weight these restraining forces and driving forces.
Create Your Action Plan: Develop an action plan (Sales Enablement Plan) to address those factors (reduce or eliminate the restraining forces and add or strengthen driving forces).
Implement in Phases: As needed, based on priorities, gaps, bandwidth, budget, and resources, create and manage multi-phased plans to do the above. Implement the plans and measure, evaluation, adjust, and execute until you get the results you need.
This is partially covered in my book, "The Building Blocks of Sales Enablement," in Chapter 16, "How to Get Started" and further elaborated in my eBook, "How to Develop a Sales Enablement Plan That Delivers Results."
That will be $25,000 USD, please. I take cash, check, PayPal, Stripe, Venmo.
And Now, Some Advice on Making Enablement Magic
Some of this advice is going to seem blindingly obvious to some of you. At the same time, trust me when I tell you how often I have counseled people to step back and consider these factors.
Sales Hiring System
If you do not have growth plans (in term of sales force size, that is), don't focus first on getting this system place. As I mentioned, this may seem like a Captain Obvious moment, but I do occasionally have to remind people about this.
At the same time, you don't want to wait until you have a massive amount of hiring to do, before you start to work on this. So, base your decision (or your attempts at internal influence) on the headcount growth plans or the volume of turnover and replacement hires that you are experiencing.
If you are hiring and onboarding, and you aren't maximizing your hiring effectiveness, you will likely regret it. Speaking generally, hiring practices tend to be poor, with an overreliance on interviewing and a lot of cognitive bias. I understand that if you are getting direction to build or improve onboarding or if hiring effectiveness is not part of your role expectations, you may not be able to implement a Sales Hiring System immediately. But work toward it, as best you can.
And back to the original advice, if you're not hiring now, with no short-term future hiring plans, there are very likely other areas that need more attention.
Sales Onboarding
This has remained one of the hot topics of enablement since enablement began. Somewhat unfortunately, "Enablement = Onboarding" is a misperception with many leaders that holds our profession back from making more of an impact.
That said, it is critically important to prepare new hires to be effective and efficient (in that order) in their GTM abilities to meet their goals and objectives.
Ongoing Training
The level to which you're doing this depends a lot on context.
If you have a lot of products or updates/upgrades, ongoing launches or product training will be important.
If you've identified organization-wide competency gaps to close, you may do ongoing training around those, which should be tied to coaching from front-line sales managers.
You could implement a system like SkillDirector to identify competency gaps and recommend individual learning plans to close them, again supported by front-line manager coaching.
As new case studies or content are released, we often miss the opportunity to provide training on now just what the content is, but why it was developed, how it supports buyers or buying, and HOW to USE it.
Ensuring effective tool use to support effectiveness or improve efficiency (resulting in better results or more time spent selling) is worthy, if tools aren't being maximized.
But all of the above should be prioritized against the sales force's Situation Assessment with COIN-OP and the identified Needs to close the gap and achieve the desired Outcomes.
Content Management
There is often a gap between the content created (marketing, content marketing, buyer engagement, and sales support content) and the effective use of that content, or the analysis of not just which content is being used, but which content correlates to better deal momentum or ultimately, higher win rates.
We often toss out content sharing the WHAT, but very often miss the WHY and HOW. Closing these gaps can result in better content usage with higher effectiveness. Answering the simple questions of What, Why, How, and as relevant, When and Where, can make a major difference in content effectiveness and how reps utilize it.
Sales Messaging
So can ensuring that your messaging is truly buyer-centric and prepares your sellers to not just know products and solutions, but to talk about them in relevant and compelling ways, based on what matters most to your most common buyer personas. You might lump this into messaging, but wherever it stacks up in your mind or company, it's worth getting right. This typically requires great cross-functional collaboration with marketing and product marketing, with the buyer and customer being the common theme that unites you all.
Software & Tools
Remember the mantra:
"Effectiveness first, then efficiency."
This will keep you from doing more stupid stuff faster. That, and the use of technology for technology's sake, can do as much to hamper sales productivity as enhance it. How are you doing here, and does it need focus?
GTM Sticking Points
All of the other things shared so far, should either support this bucket, or be deprioritized until these gaps are closed.
You should consider the unnecessary or harmful friction that hampers both your sellers and your buyers. I say harmful or unnecessary because not all friction is bad. If you need a buying committee to slow down to include you the vendor mix, you will need to apply friction or do something to capture attention and interest and stop the gears from turning, until you are included (assuming you have NASA -- Need And Solution Alignment -- and are operating in your buyers' best interests, not just your own). But removing unnecessary friction on both sides of the process line will generally improve sales effectiveness.
There two articles will provide more detail than I can here on this topic. And again, the focus should be determined by your Situation Assessment:
Sales Manager Enablement
"If I had only one dollar to spend on sales enablement, I'd spend 75 cents on the front-line sales managers." ~ Mike Kunkle
Sales Management System
For this, rather than summarize or rehash, I am just going to point you to an entire newsletter edition dedicated to this critical topic:
Closing Thoughts
Sales enablement is a multifaceted discipline that requires a strategic approach, thorough planning, and continuous adaptation.
By understanding your organizational strategy, conducting comprehensive assessments, and prioritizing key areas such as sales hiring, onboarding, ongoing training, content management, effective use of tools -- and technically, all of the Building Blocks of Sales Enablement -- you can build a robust enablement practice that drives results. The key is to prioritize based on closing gaps that you and others have identified, which, if left unaddressed, will likely prevent the sales force from achieving leadership’s goals and objectives.
Remember, the effectiveness of your enablement efforts hinges on collaboration across functions and a relentless focus on both the sellers’ and buyers’ needs. As you implement these strategies, keep in mind the importance of enabling your front-line sales managers, as they play a pivotal role in driving sales performance.
By following these guidelines and continuously refining your approach, you can create a sales enablement practice that not only meets but exceeds your organizational goals.
RESOURCES
I've provided other links and resources throughout, for this newsletter edition. Honestly, there are so many other newsletter editions that apply here, as well.
Visit the newsletter page and scroll through, to see what else might be helpful:
Happy reading!
Well, that's it for this week, Enablers! Did you learn something new reading/watching this newsletter? If you did, or if it just made you think (and maybe chuckle from time to time - bonus points if you snorted), share it with your favorite enablement colleague, subscribe right here on LinkedIn, and check out The Building Blocks of Sales Enablement Learning Experience. Felix Krueger and Mike Kunkle are both Building Blocks Mentors, and we hope to see you there! For other courses and content from Mike, see: https://linktr.ee/mikekunkle
Until next time, stay the course, Enablers, and #MakeAnImpact With #Enablement!
