As the manger of all sales enablement efforts, you need to be able to respond to requests from the sales team in addition to proactively train them on skills, products and topics while also leading the team’s activities in the right strategic direction. Requests usually are related to needing content of some sort, insights on something, or help accomplishing something.
But what are some of those things that a sales team will request? Here’s my list:
Product-related topics
- Product feature details
- Product roadmaps and strategic direction
- Security and compliance details
- Personas per product
- Product and solution sales pitches, conversation openers
- Demonstrations (instructions and scripts for live demos and recorded videos)
Industry-related topics
- Industry trends
- Industry-specific competencies
- Target accounts per industry
- Key partners per industry and how to sell with them
Company-related topics
- Elevator pitch for the company (versus "regular" sales pitches)
- Strategic direction for the company
- Sales strategy (why we sell the way we do)
- Compensation plans
- Support information and plans
- Consulting and implementation options
- Case studies, customer quotes and references
Competition-related topics
- How to compete in general and against specific competitors
- Company and individual product differentiators
- Win/Loss reports
- How the competition sells
- SWOT analysis
Prospecting-related topics
- Cold-calling and cold-emailing tips and scripts
- Social selling guidance
- Navigating org structures in large organizations
- Lead nurturing campaigns
Tools-related topics
- Guidance and how-to help for the various sales tools
- Review and purchase new sales tools
Process-related topics
- How to decide when to nurture a prospect, and how to do it
- Help knowing when to move an opportunity forward
- Help knowing when an opportunity is dead
Most of these items can, and should often, be focused on a specific industry and persona. For example, a "win report in the financial services industry when selling to a sales VP" versus a "win report in the healthcare industry when selling to a CFO".
And this list doesn’t even touch on the proactive efforts of training sales skills or sales coaching!
Much of the content for the list above needs to come from peers in marketing, customer success and others. However, I’ve often found that there are no clear owners for many items, so sales enablement either needs to create it or make sure someone creates it and owns it moving forward.
Leave a comment if you have other items that your sales team often requests.
Brian Groth - Sales Enablement 