When I’m not walking my dogs, skiing, kayaking, traveling or mixing cocktails for friends, I tend to wear wild paisley shirts while focusing my business and technical acumen skills on (1) improving sales and partner strategies, (2) streamlining sales and partner processes, and (3) helping sales reps improve their skills at selling and using their sales tools to win more deals in the smartest ways possible.

See my profile, articles, and work history at http://www.linkedin.com/in/bgroth

But since you’re here, many of my articles are about starting and running a sales enablement program. Using a few of my articles, below is my guidance if you’re starting up your own Sales Enablement program.

SETTING UP SALES ENABLEMENT:

  1. Ensure Cross-Functionality can happen by establishing good Organizational Alignment
  2. Set the Vision, Mission & Strategies for the sales enablement team (even if it’s just one person) who leads the charge across the company on behalf of the sales organization
  3. Establish the Measures/KPIs to track the impact of the enablement efforts overall and specifically for measuring sales productivity

THEN START WITH THE BASICS:

  1. Create a Value Proposition to build messaging in the sales content, both all-up and per industry, possibly per persona too
  2. Find out what’s working from the subject matter experts (top sales reps, etc.)
  3. From that, figure out the right Sales Methodology and the right Sales Process , which go hand-in-hand together and identify the interactions between the buyer and seller that will, I assume, involve some mix of solution selling, consultative selling, and value selling while integrating the right method to apply at the right time during the sales process so reps know why, when and which approach, and skills, to apply.
  4. At that point, it makes sense to select the right sales tools, beyond the basics of CRM and e-mail
  5. While also making sure we have good Competitive Intelligence and eventually a Win/Loss program

MAKE IT REUSABLE & REPEATABLE:

  1. Create the Sales Playbook that includes a variety of guidance for the sales team, including specific guidance per Persona and Industry, but also general guidance too, such as Social Selling, and Open-Ended Questioning, and Unlocking your Decision Maker’s the Buying Process
  2. Ensure the sales managers are Managing and Coaching their reps
  3. Make sure the Go-To-Market Plans include the sales training and the right sales content too

ESTABLISH & RUN SALES TRAINING:

  1. When ready, bring the sales team together for a Sales Kick Off that includes training on the new content
  2. While improving ramp time for new sales reps with a 30-60-90 Day On-Boarding Plan and a Sales Boot Camp (training)
  3. Eventually, a Sales University of training courses and guidance can be created that covers the internal sales team as well as partners, with curriculum that’s specific to each, but with overlap when possible
  4. That Sales University should include a variety of courses, one example might be teaching Business Acumen to your sales team.

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