Why do you invest in technology? To drive efficiency? Or is your goal to increase sales effectiveness as well? Often, we simply want technology to help us do things faster by automating steps that we’ve been doing manually. But ultimately, investments in sales technology should also achieve better business results. So it is with investing in enablement technology. As a productivity boost, enablement technology is a prerequisite to achieving your sales performance goals. Ideally, enablement technology builds on a prepared foundation, which would be, in this case, for instance, a “cleaned-up content basement.”
How does investing in enablement technology help?
Looking at all respondents from our 2015 Sales Enablement Optimization Study, the most important goal was “improving salespeople’s access to content and tools” (35%), followed by “sharing best practices across the sales force” (32%), and “improving cross-selling and up-selling” (30%). The list continues with improvements ranked with less than 30%, such as “improving sales and marketing alignment” or “reduce search time for content and collateral” and “improving ramp-up time for new hires.” No surprises in these results so far. Most of these key improvements are focused on productivity only. But let’s first look at the differences in the regions.
Different focal points in North America and EMEA
In North America, the top improvement desired, regardless of respondent category, was: “improving salespeople’s access to content and tools (46%).” Then, the second most important improvement was “reducing the search time for content and collateral” (33%), which is for many people probably the most common immediate result they want to get out of enablement technology. Two improvements were tied for third place: “reducing ramp-up time for new hires” (29%) and “improving sales and marketing alignment“(29%).
In EMEA things are perceived a bit differently. The top improvement in EMEA was “Improving cross-selling and up-selling” with a pretty high ranking of 52%. In the category of all respondents, this improvement was ranked third with 30%. But looking at North America, this improvement was only ranked ninth with 17%. The second most important improvement in EMEA was “improving salespeople’s access to content and tools” (44%) which was overall the number one result and in NA the number two. “Improving ramp-up time for new hires” ranked third with 28% — almost the same as in NA.
Some of these improvements, such as improving ramp-up time, and cross-selling and up-selling, are linked to a prerequisite: the integration of sales enablement solutions with CRM systems. Integration drives adoption and is an enabler for faster searches and better content access because people no longer need to work with multiple systems.
Integration of enablement technology drives productivity and adoption, and is an indicator of enablement maturity
“Be Inspired” is an enablement delivery mechanism that requires enablement technology to be integrated with CRM systems. This means salespeople don’t have to go to another system, log in, and search for what they need. Instead, technology suggests content (and related training services) based on the characteristics of salespeople’s opportunities and accounts. To make this mechanism work, a customer-core enablement framework and a properly defined and implemented content creation process are essential. The future vision of success is that salespeople have one collaborative platform they work with. The foundation is often the CRM system that integrates enablement and playbook systems, learning content, and predictive analytics to support them at every stage of their deals.
Now, what does reality look like? Overall, 46% reported having this kind of integration, 41% said they did not, and 13% planned to implement it within the next twelve months. That looks like a pretty balanced status quo with lots of room for improvement. Here, the differences in the regions are much bigger.
In NA, 54% reported having this kind of integration, whereas only 28% in EMEA said so. Consequently, many more respondents in EMEA plan an integration initiative within the next twelve months (24%), versus North America (12%).
Enablement is perceived differently in different regions, and organizations are at different maturity levels. EMEA has an opportunity to learn from those who have already done enablement integrations.
A critical dependency that cannot be fixed by technology: content quality
Salespeople perceive technology and the embedded content as one system, which is valuable for them or not. They don’t distinguish between technology and content quality.
The critical dependency that is often overlooked is the quality of the content. What does that mean? Sales content in a world of rising buyer expectations has to be aligned to, for example, the different phases of the customer’s journey, the relevant buyer roles, and the business challenges that are addressed with your products and solutions. This alignment of content with customer journey forces organizations to assess their entire content landscape to see the gaps, the redundancies and the areas that need adjustment. It’s not to create more work for you. It’s not a luxury; it’s a necessity to achieve performance goals. Organizations with high levels of customer journey alignment achieve up to 9.1 percentage points better revenue plan attainment, and up to 13% better quota attainment.
To provide highly effective content, a “customer-core” enablement content strategy is mandatory, and that requires a “customer-core” enablement framework. Only then are you able to tailor your content services accordingly. Highly effective customer-facing content that covers the entire customer’s journey is a must-have ingredient to remain relevant and successful in an ever-changing, buyer-driven world.