By John Holland, Chief Content Officer, CustomerCentric Selling® – The Sales Training Company
This article is a continuation from last week’s article, as part of the “It Is What It Is” (IIWII) series.
Sales Enablement is everybody’s problem and nobody’s problem. The lion’s share of blame (or praise) when revenue targets aren’t (or are) achieved is given to sales. As with a baseball player’s batting average, so it is with every CSO in that their percentage of quota achievement is precisely measured. The other silos are involved, but don’t have such direct and measurable accountability.
Sales becomes the corporate pincushion for posting reasons for disappointing results. The lack of a common vocabulary allows the silos of finance, product development, product marketing and marketing to justify why missed revenue targets aren’t their fault. Scott Santucci of Forrester Research refers to this practice as “noun polishing.” Even if justified, this practice speaks to a need for an overall plan rather than having silos take random actions they feel will be helpful from their perspectives.
The silos of finance, product development, marketing, product marketing and sales all should meet at the customer rather than offerings. This is far easier said than done. Most companies have widespread failures to communicate. There isn’t an agreed upon definition of sales enablement. Beyond that there isn’t a common vocabulary or a working definition of intersection points between the silos and the deliverables each must be accountable to provide to allow better buying experiences and revenue targets to be met.
If it were easy, every organization would be doing it. That said, the stakes are high, successful sales enablement implementations provide the Holy Grail: making the way offerings are sold a sustainable competitive advantage.
