Better Sales Enablement will Yield $100 M in New Revenue

Is sales enablement a new concept? Certainly not. Marketing and some sales organizations have been attempting for decades to equip their direct and indirect sales channels with the "right information at the right time in the right format and in the right place to assist in moving specific opportunities forward." [IDC, 2007] However, companies' inability to get their sales and marketing teams aligned around the right processes and technologies (or at least consistent ones) has cost them upwards of 10% or more of revenue per year; or $100 M for a $1B company.

Cost drivers of this continued misstep in strategy include an inability for sales reps to engage their clients in a strongly desired dialogue by buyers to solve their greatest problems; and a poorly performing lead pipeline requiring 2,000 to 5,000+ contacts at the front of the pipeline to yield 1 closed deal over a 17 month average buying cycle. (i.e., for BtoB, large revenue deals, from marketing through to sales) This insight, sourced from IDC's Sales and CMO Advisory Service research, has trended as such consistently over the past several years.

As any smart executive knows, the best way to begin solving a problem is to focus your resources on it; and that's exactly what the better companies are beginning to do by establishing formal sales enablement roles in both marketing and sales. Within marketing, 3 out of every 100 marketers today are sales enablement professionals. On the sales side, sales enablement has begun to take hold in the better sales operations teams, however, the roles and responsibilities are not quite as consistent across companies as in the marketing function. (Sales enablement is one of the key levers in IDC's Sales Productivity Framework)

These sales enablement teams will be focused on driving new processes, new technologies and new metrics. A few examples of these include:

• New Processes:
• Marketing and sales asset creation lifecycle
• Campaign and sales program management
• Customer intelligence for sales
• Sales readiness
• New Technologies:
• Sales enablement platforms
• Social media applications
• Sales intelligence applications
• New Metrics:
• Marketing and sales alignment metrics
• Sales and marketing investment as a % of revenue
• Marketing to sales expense ratio
• Marketing investment per sales person
• IDC's sales enablement proficiency index
• Sales platform usage metrics
• Registered users
• Log-in frequency
• Page clicks, views, downloads
• Content usage (ratings, favorites, recommendations)
• Search term results
• Content and asset relevancy by sales cycle stage
• Content and asset leverage

The organizations that treat sales enablement as a strategic initiative instead of a tactical maneuver will be best positioned to compete in an increasingly competitive and complex market.

Please contact us if you are interested in IDC facilitating a two to four hour on-site sales enablement strategy session for your sales and marketing teams. This session is free of charge for clients of IDC's Sales Advisory Service.

Please do provide any comments on this topic below or reach out to me at mgerard@idc.com for additional discussion on this topic or to participate in our upcoming sales and sales operations research.