Why Sales Content Management Needs More Work

There's no longer any doubt that content has become the currency of marketing and sales for virtually all kinds of B2B companies. According to the latest content marketing survey by the Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs, 91% of North American B2B companies now use content marketing in some form.

Content also provides the fuel for productive interactions between sales reps and potential buyers. Today's business buyers have become accustomed to using content to support their buying decisions, and they now expect sales reps to provide relevant content resources to complement their in-person conversations.

Unfortunately, research has shown that many B2B companies have a serious content underutilization problem. Three years ago, an analysis by SiriusDecisions found that 65% of all the content owned by a typical B2B company is not used, and that 28% of the content isn't used because it's "unfindable." (2014 State of B-to-B Content Survey)

In my experience, sales content management remains a significant challenge for many B2B companies, and new research from CSO Insights helps explain why the challenge is so persistent. The 2017 Sales Enablement Optimization Report is based on survey responses from "just under" 500 sales professionals. Survey respondents represented a wide range of industries and company sizes (from less than $10 million to more than $1 billion in annual revenue).

The CSO Insights study provides a wealth of information regarding the current state of sales enablement, and it's a worthwhile read for B2B marketing and sales professionals. In the 2017 study, CSO Insights found that content had become the fourth most significant service provided by the sales enablement function, trailing only sales training, sales tools, and sales process improvements.

CSO Insights also asked survey participants about the primary approaches they are using to get content into the hands of salespeople. The following table show how the 2017 study participants responded:

As this table shows, 29.0% of survey respondents said they are using email to distribute content to sales reps, and another 22.6% said they have multiple content repositories. Only 16.7% of the respondents said they have a single repository for sales content, and a similar percentage said they use a sales enablement technology solution to manage sales content.

Using email to distribute content to salespeople puts the burden of managing content on individual sales reps, and having multiple content repositories can significantly increase the time it takes sales reps to find the content they need - if they find it at all.

This anemic adoption of sales content management solutions provides at least part of the explanation for the continuing sales content management challenges facing many B2B companies. Today's sales enablement/sales content management solutions offer robust capabilities that can streamline sales content management processes and increase the effective utilization of sales content assets.

When CSO Insights asked survey participants who are using a sales content management solution to describe its benefits, 50.9% of respondents said that it improves salesperson access to sales content and tools, and 38.0% said it reduces search time for content and collateral.

If your company has more than a handful of sales reps, these solutions should be on your radar.

Top image courtesy of Carolyn Coles via Flickr CC.

Surveys Show the Growing Commitment to Sales Enablement

SiriusDecisions recently published the results of its 2017 Sales Enablement Study. The 2017 research was based on a survey of 250 B2B sales enablement professionals representing 45 industries. This study was somewhat skewed toward larger B2B enterprises, with 43% of the survey respondents coming from organizations  with more than $750 million in annual revenue

Sales Enablement is Widespread

Overall, 66% of survey respondents reported having a dedicated sales enablement function, up from 61% in the 2012 edition of the survey. But the use of sales enablement is significantly greater in larger enterprises. Eighty-three percent of respondents from organizations with revenue of $750 million or more said they have deployed or plan to deploy a dedicated sales enablement team.

It's interesting to compare the results of the SiriusDecisions research with a recent survey conducted by CSO Insights. In its 2016 Sales Enablement Optimization Study, CSO Insights found that 37.7% of companies have a dedicated sales enablement function. This lower percentage is likely due to the demographics of the CSO Insights study. Only about 27% of the respondents in the CSO Insights study were with organizations having more than $250 million in annual revenue.

Sales Enablement is Clearly a Sales-Led Function

Both the SiriusDecisions study and the CSO Insights study show that sales enablement is now firmly established as a sales-led function. In the SiriusDecisions survey, 40% of respondents said that sales enablement reports directly to sales leadership, 25% said it reports to the CEO, and 13% said it reports to sales operations. Only 10% of respondents indicated that sales enablement reports to marketing leadership.

In the CSO Insights study, 60.8% of survey respondents said their sales enablement function reports to executive sales management, and another 20.9% said that it reports to sales operations. Only 7.6% of the respondents said that sales enablement reports to marketing.

Commitment to Sales Enablement is Growing

The SiriusDecisions research also found that the commitment to sales enablement is large and growing. Twenty-eight percent of the survey respondents said they have seven or more full-time employees working in sales enablement, but this increases to 43% for high-performing companies. (Note:  The study defines high-performing organizations as those reporting that 80% or more of their full-time sales reps achieved quota in the most recent fiscal year.)

Even more significant, nearly three-fourths (74%) of the respondents said they plan to increase spending on sales enablement during the next 12 months.

No Major Surprises

The findings of these two studies are not particularly surprising. After all, improving sales effectiveness has been a top priority for company leaders for the past several years, according to the annual sales performance optimization studies by CSO Insights.

It's also not surprising that sales enablement is a sales-led function in most companies. View properly, sales enablement is a multi-faceted function that encompasses several types of activities and processes, including sales process improvement, sales training, sales technology, and sales content development and management. So, it seems appropriate to manage the sales enablement function withing the sales organization.

Image courtesy of Daniel Oines via Flickr CC.

Sales Enablement Best Practices and Challenges

Sales enablement has been one of the hottest topics in B2B marketing and sales for the past few years. Last year, CSO Insights launched a new research study devoted specifically to sales enablement, and last month, the firm published the results of the 2016 edition of its study.

The 2016 CSO Insights Sales Enablement Optimization Study provides valuable insights regarding how companies are implementing sales enablement and how well it is working. The 2016 study is based on input from 400 survey respondents, a majority of which (58.9%) are based in North America. Most of the respondents were affiliated with small and mid-size companies. Nearly three-fourths (73.6%) were with companies having $250 million or less in annual revenue, and 42.5% were with companies having less than $10 million in annual revenue.

(Note:  This research focuses primarily on sales enablement best practices, so I think we can assume that all of the survey respondents had implemented sales enablement in some form. In other research, CSO Insights has found that a growing number of companies are implementing a dedicated sales enablement function. In the 2016 Sales Performance Optimization Study, 32.7% of survey respondents said they had a dedicated sales enablement function. That was up from 25.5% of respondents in the 2015 SPO study and 22.6% in the 2014 SPO study.)

Here is a quick summary of three of the major findings of the 2016 sales enablement study.

Sales Enablement is Still a Work in Progress

CSO Insights asked survey participants to assess the effectiveness of the sales enablement initiatives they had implemented during the past two years. Only 31.3% of respondents said their sales enablement programs had met all, or at least a majority, of their original expectations. Another 44.8% said that their sales enablement efforts had met at least some of their expectations.

Formal Planning Matters

In the 2016 study, 9.6% of respondents said they treat sales enablement as a series of one-off projects, 39.5% said they have an informal sales enablement vision, 35.7% said they have a formal sales enablement vision, and 15.3% said they have a full-blown sales enablement strategy (charter).

The study found that formal planning increases the odds of sales enablement success. Over half (51.3%) of the respondents with a formal vision or a formal strategy said their sales enablement initiatives met all or a majority of their expectations, compared to only 34.7% of respondents who had an informal vision or who treated sales enablement as one-off projects.

Sales Enablement is a Multi-Faceted Function

Most companies that have implemented sales enablement treat it as a  multi-faceted business function that encompasses a diverse set of services. CSO Insights asked its survey participants what services for salespeople were part of their sales enablement function, and the table below shows how they responded.

The CSO Insights study contains far more insights than I can discuss in a blog post. I encourage you to take the time to review the full study.

Top image courtesy of Tomas Sobek via Flickr CC.

Effective Sales Enablement Requires More Than Technology

As I wrote in an earlier post, sales enablement was one of the hottest topics among B2B marketing and sales professionals during 2015. The growing interest in sales enablement is evidenced by the amount of research the topic has attracted.

During 2015, several firms conducted research studies regarding sales enablement. Many of these studies were produced by companies that offer sales enablement software, and these studies naturally focus on the benefits provided by sales enablement technology. However, there are some studies that examine sales enablement from a broader perspective, and what is clear from these broader studies is that companies with the most successful programs treat sales enablement as a distinct and multi-faceted business function.

The Power of Enablement:  Bridging the Sales Productivity Gap by Forbes Insights (in association with Brainshark) is based on a survey of 216 top executives in US-based companies. This research identified several key characteristics of companies that excel at sales productivity.

• 59% of top-performing companies have a defined sales enablement role (versus only 30% of under-performing companies).
• Three out of four (74%) of top-performing companies report good alignment between their marketing and sales functions, compared with only half (49%) of other firms. Forbes also found that companies with a defined sales enablement function say they they have better alignment between marketing and sales (61% vs. 42%).
• Top-performing companies recognize the importance of providing sales reps effective coaching and training. When asked how they are investing in skills development to improve sales productivity, 74% of top performers cite training and reinforcement (vs. 50% of other companies).

The 2015 Sales Enablement Optimization Study by CSO Insights is a benchmarking study that examines how companies are actually implementing sales enablement. Here are some of the more interesting findings in the CSO Insights research:

• 25.5% of survey respondents said they have personnel dedicated to increasing the effectiveness of the sales organization (i.e. a sales enablement function).
• In over half (52.5%) of the companies that participated in the study, the sales enablement function reports to the chief sales officer, and in another one quarter (25.3%) of companies, sales enablement reports to sales operations.
• A large majority (72.8%) of companies have fewer than four employees dedicated to sales enablement.
• The top four goals of sales enablement programs are increasing sales efficiency (81.8% of study respondents), increasing revenues (75.8%), increasing new account acquisition (68.7%), and increasing the win rates of forecast deals (64.6%).
• The top four services provided by the sales enablement function are sales training (74.7% of study participants), sales process improvements (67.7%), sales tools (66.7%), and CRM/technology management (59.6%).

Both of these studies provide more valuable insights than I can cover in a single blog post. For example, both studies discuss the importance of good content and the role of technology in effective sales enablement. 

I omitted any discussion of technology in this post because there is a tendency to view sales enablement as something that can be "solved" with a software application. The reality is, a successful sales enablement effort needs clear goals and objectives, the right mix of human skills, and a clear understanding of what services the sales enablement function will provide and what methods and processes it will use. With this foundation in place, the right sales enablement technology can be a powerful enabler of effective sales enablement and a potent "accelerant" of sales enablement success.

Illustration courtesy of iphonedigital via Flickr CC.

Why Marketing Can't Always Produce "Goldilocks" Content

Does this scenario sound familiar? You're talking with a marketer for a B2B company, and she says, "We're creating great content - and lots of it - but our sales reps don't use half of the content we develop." Then, you talk with sales reps from the same company, and they say," We need better content! A lot of the content that marketing provides doesn't really help us advance our sales opportunities."

Unfortunately, this scenario is far too common, and it's clear that sales reps don't use content resources produced by marketing for two main reasons. Either they can't find the resources when they need them, or they don't believe the resources will be useful in the selling situation they're facing.

SiriusDecisions recently estimated that 28% of all the content owned by B2B companies goes unused because it's unfindable, and that 37% isn't used because of low quality or lack of relevance. In a survey last year by Demand Metric, only 43% of sales respondents rated their marketing content assets as somewhat effective, and only 3% said they were very effective.

Some people argue that both of these problems can be solved.

• Sales enablement technology can be used to make content resources easily findable by sales reps, and some sales enablement solutions can use data analytics to recommend specific content resources for specific sales interactions.
• By collaborating with sales reps during the content development process, marketers can create content resources that will better meet the needs of salespeople.

Technology can certainly be used to make finding content assets easier, and collaboration between marketers and salespeople should enable marketers to develop content resources that will be more compelling to potential buyers. But can marketing be expected to always provide "Goldilocks" content - content that will be "just right" for every interaction that a sales rep has with a potential buyer? I don't think so, and here's why.

One vital characteristic of effective marketing content is personalization. By personalization, I mean the degree to which the material in a content asset is tailored based on the attributes and anticipated interests of the intended recipient. The following diagram shows the six levels of content personalization.

The table below describes each level of personalization.

Today, we know that marketing content should be segment-specific, persona-specific, and stage-specific. In other words, marketers should consistently develop and use content resources that are tailored for specific buyer personas who are affiliated with specific types of prospect organizations, and who are at specific stages of the buying process.

However, it's just about impossible for marketers to develop prospect-specific and lead-specific content because those levels of personalization require insights that can only be gained through personal interactions with potential buyers. So, these types of personalized content can only be produced by someone who is having direct conversations with the potential buyer - and that usually means a business development representative or a salesperson.

Last year, David Brock addressed this issue in a post at his Partners in EXCELLENCE Blog. Dave described prospect-specific and lead-specific content in captivating terms:

"It's marketing content for an audience of 1 - at this very moment . . . It's content that addresses my specific problem, concerns, and priorities right now - because they may be slightly different from those I have tomorrow . . . The content I need comes from you engaging me in conversations and a discussion about what I do, what my people do, what my boss is expecting of me, what my customers and suppliers want . . . It is specific to me and my priorities today."

For the past few years, the conventional wisdom has been that salespeople should not be spending their time developing content. But the reality is, there are some types of content that only a sales rep can produce. Instead of trying to eliminate all salesperson-created content, marketers should support sales reps in performing this vital job. And salespeople should stop expecting marketers to provide ready-made content for every selling situation.

Top illustration courtesy of CW Wells via Flickr CC.

B2B Marketing Developments That Took Center Stage in 2015

As 2015 draws to a close, it's interesting to think about what technologies, practices, or other developments in B2B marketing captured the most attention during this year. The nature of my work requires me to stay on top of trends and new developments in B2B marketing, and therefore I spend a considerable amount of time attending conferences, reading research reports, attending webinars, and performing other types of research.

During 2015, three practices - account-based marketing, predictive lead scoring, and sales enablement - generated a great deal of hype. None of these practices was completely "new" in 2015, but all gained substantial traction among marketers over the past twelve months. Predicting the future is always hazardous, but I think these practices are likely to play significant roles in B2B marketing in 2016..

Account-Based Marketing

The defining characteristic of account-based marketing is that it focuses on a group of identified or named target accounts. More specifically, ABM programs are directed at relevant individuals (decision makers or influencers) who are affiliated with those target prospects. In a recent survey by SiriusDecisions, more than nine out of ten respondents described ABM as "extremely" or "very" important to their overall marketing efforts.

As I have written before, account-based marketing is actually a combination of long-established marketing principles and methods, and new technology-enabled marketing techniques. For example, technology now enables us to target online advertisements and customize website content for individual target accounts. Today's most successful ABM programs also exhibit a high level of integration across marketing, business development, and sales activities. This characteristic has caused some ABM thought leaders to argue that ABM should really be called strategic account development because it encompasses much more than marketing.

Predictive Lead Scoring

Predictive lead scoring is an analytics technique that takes data regarding existing customers from a company's CRM and marketing automation systems, and combines that information with external data to create a profile of organizations that have the greatest propensity to purchase the company's products or services. Then, the scoring software aggregates similar data regarding the prospects in the company's marketing database and compares these prospects to the profile, resulting in a "propensity to buy" score for each prospect.

Predictive lead scoring can enable companies to qualify prospects using much more data than is typically used in traditional lead scoring systems. Therefore, predictive lead scoring qualifies prospects more accurately, and it can identify buying signals that are almost impossible to find using traditional lead scoring techniques.

Sales Enablement

Improving the effectiveness of sales efforts and increasing the productivity of salespeople are not new business objectives, but they have become important priorities for leaders in most types of business organizations. In the 2015 Sales Performance Optimization Survey by CSO Insights, respondents identified increasing sales effectiveness as their second most important objective for 2015, behind only winning new customers. Gartner recently estimated that $297.5 million was spent on digital sales content management systems in 2014.

Sales enablement - in some form - has existed in B2B companies for several years. But over the past five years or so, the interest in sales enablement has increased dramatically, driven largely by the appearance of sales enablement technology solutions. By 2015, the capabilities of sales enablement technologies had become quite sophisticated. Some solutions now have the ability to recommend specific content resources to a sales rep based on data analytics, and most solutions now enable companies to track the usage and effectiveness of their sales content resources.

2015 has been another interesting year in B2B marketing, and I expect more of the same in 2016.

Illustration courtesy of Automotive Social via Flickr CC.

A Cornucopia of B2B Marketing Predictions for 2015

So far this month, my posts have focused on what will happen in B2B marketing during 2015. In my first January post, I discussed a recent webinar by the Aberdeen Group regarding what best-in-class marketers are planning for this year. In my last post, I described some of the findings of a recent survey by StrongView Systems that asked business leaders about their marketing budget and spending plans for 2015.

While performing research for these posts, I discovered an excellent website developed by Backbone Media. Backbone has collected predictions from nearly two dozen B2B marketing thought leaders, and the website presents these predictions in a very accessible format.

The predictions at the Backbone website cover a wide range of topics. I'll focus on three topics that earned comments from multiple marketing thought leaders.

The Roles of Marketing and Sales

I've written before about the need to forge a tighter integration between marketing and sales, so this is a topic that interests me greatly. Here's a sample of the comments and predictions from the thought leaders.

• David Meerman Scott predicts that there will be a convergence of marketing and sales driven by changes in the way people buy. He argues that most people now begin their buying process by performing research using search engines and social networks. Then he says:  "And that means that it's not about marketing doing one thing and sales doing another because from the buyer's perspective it's all the same."
• Matt Heinz predicts that the sales enable function will become more formalized and robust in 2015, and that it will be managed by the marketing department.
• Perhaps the most provocative prediction comes from Marcus Sheridan, who argues that B2B sales reps will largely become extinct and will be replaced by online content.

Video Marketing/Visual Storytelling

Over the past couple of years, several research studies have documented the power of video content to create engagement with potential buyers. Several thought leaders believe that companies will greatly expand their use of video content in 2015. For example:

• Heidi Cohen  believes that 2015 will be the year of video for two reasons. First, she notes that YouTube is now the second largest search engine and that you need content there if you want to be found by your prospects. And second, she argues that video content is an easy and fairly painless way for companies to get input from their employees and customers.
• Michael Brenner argues that visual storytelling will be critical in 2015 and that leading brands will start to create in-house production studios to develop video content.

Predictive Analytics

Predictive analytics was a hot topic in marketing circles in 2014, and several thought leaders believe it will play a more significant role in B2B marketing in 2015 and beyond. Some examples:

• Craig Rosenberg argues that companies will add predictive analytics in order to gain insights that will make their sales efforts more efficient.
• Matt Heinz contends that companies will begin to leverage predictive analytics to help them put the right marketing content in front of the right prospects at the right time.

Whatever actually happens in 2015, it will be an exciting year in B2B marketing.

What High-Performing Marketers are Planning for 2015

We're now well into the prediction season, and it's easy to find articles, blog posts, and webinars that focus on what will happen in marketing in the coming year. The prognostications range from timid to bold, and while I wouldn't bet my retirement savings on most of them, some of the predictions are realistic and insightful.

Recently, I attended a webinar that featured some useful (if not completely surprising) predictions derived from solid research. The webinar was presented by Maribeth Ross, the Chief Content Officer and a Managing Director with the Aberdeen Group. The topic of the webinar was "What Best-in-Class Marketers are Planning for 2015," and the content of the webinar was based on research conducted during 2014 in Aberdeen's customer-facing practice areas.

In this webinar, Ms. Ross focused on two major issues:

• What were the top challenges facing marketers in 2014?
• What are best-in-class marketers planning to do in 2015 to address these challenges?

According to Aberdeen's research, the top four pressures facing marketers in 2014 were:

• "We're not getting the most out of our marketing automation investment."
• "We know lead management is important, but we're not doing it very well."
• "Our buyers are doing more research on more channels before ever talking to sales."
• My sales team needs different resources due to this new buyer."

To address these pressures, Ms. Ross says that in 2015, best-in-class marketers plan to:

• Improve their use of marketing automation technologies by implementing progressive profiling, testing and optimizing landing pages, aggregating data to create account-level views, and implementing lead routing and lead scoring
• Develop clearly defined lead management processes and improve their ability to track and measure the performance of their lead-to-revenue funnel
• Double down on investing in content so that they can effectively engage potential buyers who are performing research and educating themselves
• Enhance their sales enablement capabilities by improving lead qualification processes (including, specifically, the ability to identify "hot" leads that should be sent immediately to sales), by analyzing the effectiveness of their content resources, and by leveraging technology to make it easier for sales reps to find and access content resources

As noted earlier, these predictions are not particularly surprising. The pressures that Ms. Ross identified have been building for the past few years at least, and leading B2B marketers have been focused on marketing automation, content marketing, and sales enablement for quite some time. It's likely that these issues will remain important for next several years.

Why You Need Both Short-Term and Long-Term Marketing

All business leaders face two fundamental demands. They must execute their current business activities well enough to win success in today's competitive marketplace, while at the same time adapting their strategy to meet tomorrow's competitive challenges. As Jack Welch, the former Chairman and CEO of GE, once said, "You've got to eat while you dream. You've got to deliver on short-term commitments, while you develop a long-range strategy and vision and execute it."

Marketing leaders face this same business challenge. To build a well-tuned demand generation system that will produce consistent and growing revenues, marketers (and sales leaders for that matter) must simultaneously focus on both the short term and the long term.

Managing marketing efforts to deliver both short-term and long-term results is similar to the military doctrine of fighting close and deep at the same time. In military science, fighting close and deep means that you engage the enemy forces directly in front of you (fighting close), while simultaneously attacking the enemy's rear echelon forces (fighting deep). The basic idea is to weaken the rear echelon forces before they get to the front lines.

Some of you may be wondering what military doctrine has to do with B2B demand generation. Quite a bit, actually, especially for companies with long and complex demand generation cycles. In these circumstances, maximizing demand generation results requires marketing programs that cover the full depth of the demand generation arena. In other words, companies with high-performing demand generation systems engage both long-term and short-term prospects simultaneously.

From a marketing perspective, a complete demand generation system will include the five types of customer-facing programs shown in the diagram below.

The important thing to remember is that these programs impact revenues over different time horizons. At one end of the spectrum, sales enablement programs provide content and tools that support sales reps as they work with short-term sales opportunities. At the other extreme, reputation-building programs are designed to build brand awareness and credibility that will impact revenues over a longer time frame. The principal objective of reputation-building programs is to lay the foundation for your lead acquisition efforts.

Lead acquisition and lead nurturing usually produce an impact on revenue in a more intermediate time frame, and marketing to existing customers can produce both short-term and long-term results.

During the past few years, a great deal of attention has been given to the role of marketing in acquiring and nurturing leads. One reason for this attention is that, with today's marketing technology tools, it's relatively easy to connect these marketing activities to revenues and thus demonstrate the value of marketing.

Lead acquisition and lead nurturing are obviously important marketing functions, but so are the other types of marketing programs. It takes all of these programs to create a demand generation system that will deliver revenue growth in both the short-term and the long-term.

Passing the Baton Without Missing a Step- Sales Enablement, Part 3

 

This is the third of three posts that are discussing the role that marketing plays in helping the sales team sell - what is usually called sales enablement. In the first post, I discussed what sales enablement is and why it is an important issue for most B2B companies. The second post discussed one of marketing's primary sales enablement responsibilities - providing the content resources that will help sales reps advance sales opportunities.

In this post, I'll explain why effective sales enablement also requires marketers to provide information that will enable sales reps to continue prospect relationships without a loss of momentum. In essence, marketing and sales need to work together like the runners in a relay race. Here's what I mean.

As I wrote in my last post, business buyers don't distinguish between marketing and sales activities. From the buyer's perspective, there is one problem-solving process that may result in a purchase. We now know that most buyers are performing research on their own before they are willing to meet with a salesperson. So by the time a potential buyer meets with your sales rep, the buyer will probably have visited your website and accessed several of the content resources you offer.

These self-educated buyers have little patience for "starting over" with a salesperson. They expect their sales rep to come into the initial meeting with a basic working knowledge of their business and industry. Just as important, today's buyers also expect their sales rep to know what has already transpired in the relationship. They want the sales rep to step in and provide new insights that build on what has already occurred and help advance the decision-making process.

To make the transition from marketing to sales without losing forward momentum, marketers must do more than simply provide contact information when they pass a lead to sales. An effective lead hand-off should include significantly more information, such as the buyer persona assigned to the lead, a description of the content plan for the relevant buyer persona, and a list of the content resources developed for that buyer persona.

An effective lead hand-off will also be accompanied by an activity history detailing the prior contacts between the lead and the selling company. The activity history should include the following kinds of information:

• Outbound marketing offers sent to the lead
• Outbound marketing offers the lead has responded to
• Website pages viewed by the lead
• Content resources accessed by the lead
• Summaries of any person-to-person communications between the lead and representatives of the selling company
• The prospect's lead score

Delivering this information isn't as overwhelming as it might first appear. Marketing should have developed a content plan and content resources for each buyer persona for each stage of the buying process. So, this information should already be available. Your marketing automation software should be able to capture most of the lead's activity history and transfer that information to your CRM system when the lead is passed from marketing to sales.

Don't misunderstand me. This type of lead hand-off does require additional work, but it will also provide significant benefits to the sales team and the company.

• It reduces the amount of time that sales reps must spend on lead research.
• It eliminates the need for sales reps to guess about what content resources to use.
• It reduces the need for sales reps to create or customize content.
• It improves the ability of sales reps to continue prospect relationships without losing momentum.
• It helps improve sales pipeline velocity.

The changing dynamics of B2B demand generation require a coordinated effort by marketing and sales. That's why sales enablement remains one of marketing's most important responsibilities.

Read Part 1 of the sales enablement series here.

Read Part 2 of the sales enablement series here.

Create Content that Helps Sales Reps Sell - Sales Enablement, Part 2

Business buyers do not distinguish between marketing and sales activities. From the buyer's perspective, there is one problem-solving process that may result in a purchase. As they work through their decision-making process, what really matters to buyers is the relevance, quality, and credibility of the information they receive from prospective vendors. They couldn't care less about whether the information comes from the marketing department or a salesperson.

To maximize results, what B2B companies need is a demand generation process/system that can address buyers' needs at every stage of their decision-making journey. I call it managing demand generation "from curiosity to close."

Marketing and sales play distinct roles in the demand generation process, but marketing is well-suited to help make the selling process more effective. This role of marketing is usually called sales enablement, and marketing has two major sales enablement responsibilities.

• Content - Marketers must provide the content resources that will enable sales reps to advance sales opportunities.
• Information - When a lead is passed from marketing to sales, marketing must provide the information that will enable sales reps to continue prospect relationships without loss of momentum.

This is the second of three posts dealing with sales enablement. In the first post, I discussed why sales enablement is important for B2B companies. In this post, I'll discuss the content aspect of marketing's sales enablement responsibility. My next post will cover the information component.

Sales Enablement Content Needs Improvement

Recent research by Richardson, a sales training firm, paints a mixed picture of marketing's performance on the sales enablement content front. The Richardson research consisted of a survey of over 400 sales representatives and sales managers. Here are a few of the significant findings.

• 54% of sales reps and 65% of sales managers say they understand their company's content marketing strategy.
• 65% of sales reps and 74% of sales managers say that the content their company publishes is valuable to their customers.
• Only 52% of sales reps and 43% of managers say that the content their company publishes helps improve sales effectiveness.
• When asked how their company's content could be improved to better support sales efforts, 59% of sales reps and 57% of managers said "improve content relevance to our customers." Fifty-one percent of sales reps and 65% of managers said "create a stronger link between the content and the solutions we sell."

Two Flavors of Sales Enablement Content

There are two basic types of sales enablement content. The first consists of "normal" marketing content resources that are distributed to prospects directly by sales reps. Marketing is responsible for developing content resources for all buyer personas for all stages of the buying process. This will necessarily include those stages that occur after marketing has passed a lead over to sales.

These later-stage resources are designed for prospects who are actively considering a purchase. To borrow the terminology used by SiriusDecisions, these are prospects who are "exploring possible solutions," "committing to a solution," and "justifying the decision." When late-stage marketing content resources are distributed by sales reps, they become sales enablement content.

The second category of sales enablement content consists of various "tools" that are specifically designed for use by salespeople. This category includes, but is not limited to:

• E-mail message templates
• Sales presentation slides (with accompanying scripts or notes)
• ROI calculators
• Total cost of ownership calculators
• Sales proposal templates

While I contend that marketing should take the lead in creating these kinds of content resources, marketers need to involve sales reps at every stage of the development process, and they need to pay close attention to the "real-world" intelligence and insights that sales reps can bring to the process. Getting salespeople to buy into these resources is critical because they will have no value if they aren't used.

In my next post, I'll discuss the kinds of information that marketing should provide to salespeople as part of the lead hand-off process.

Read Part 1 of the sales enablement series here.

Read Part 3 of the sales enablement series here.

Why Sales Enablement Matters More than Ever - Sales Enablement, Part 1

In most B2B companies, your success as a marketer depends to a significant extent on your ability to help the sales team sell. By no means is this a new development. For decades, many (perhaps most) B2B companies have been "sales driven," and the primary role of marketing in these organizations was to support the selling effort by creating collateral materials, managing trade show participation, and running occasional brand building and lead generation programs.

Today, marketing is playing a broader and more significant role in the demand generation process in many B2B companies. In particular, marketers are taking greater responsibility for nurturing potential buyers before passing those leads over to sales.

Notwithstanding all of the changes, sales is still a critical part of the demand generation process, and improving sales effectiveness is still an important business objective. If anything, the increased power and heightened expectations of business buyers are driving greater interest in the topic of sales enablement. For example, Forrester Research held its third annual sales enablement conference earlier this year, and other national research/analyst/consulting firms, including IDC, Gartner, and SiriusDecisions are also focusing on this topic.

In my next two posts, I'll discuss the two most important ways that marketing can support and enable the sales team. First, however, a little background information.

What is Sales Enablement?

Both Forrester and IDC have published "formal" definitions of sales enablement.

Forrester's definition:  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 cycle to optimize the return of investment of the selling system.

IDC's definition:  Getting the right information into the hands of the right sellers at the right time and place, and in the right format, to move a sales opportunity forward.

These definitions are very broad because both Forrester and IDC view sales enablement as a strategic business function. Under these definitions, for example, sales enablement would probably include sales training, sales process management, and technology solutions, and sales enablement would extend to all "client-facing" employees, not just salespeople. I don't disagree with this approach, but in my upcoming posts, I'll focus specifically on how marketing can help sales reps sell more effectively.

Why is Sales Enablement Important?

Sales enablement is important for three very simple reasons:

• Sales enablement is expensive - According to Forrester, companies on average are spending about $135,000 per year per sales rep on sales support people, activities, and processes.
• The selling process in most companies needs improvement - In research by IDC, 26% of business buyers said their sales reps were unprepared for the initial sales meeting, and 31% of buyers described the sales reps as somewhat prepared. Only 43% of buyers rated their sales reps as very or extremely prepared for the initial meeting. A recent Forrester survey found that only 15% of executives say that their meetings with sales reps meet expectations.
• Poor sales enablement is costly - According to IDC, a lack of good sales enablement results in $14 million of wasted sales and marketing expenses and $100 million in lost sales opportunities in a "typical" $1 billion company.

In my next post, I'll explain how marketers can support the sales team by developing the right kind of sales enablement content.

Read Part 2 of the sales enablement series here.

Read Part 3 of the sales enablement series here.