AMA: Adobe Head of Product Marketing (APAC), Jeremy Wood on Sales Enablement

This is definitely one of the trickier elements of sales enablement and the quantifiable value driven through product marketing into sales enablement. In short much luck the majority of PMM KPI's and metrics, its hard to have 'absolute' metrics but I have no hesitation in owning the influence on key business metrics by way of strong sales enablement. A good example of this is things like decreased Time To Close (TTC), increased Average Contract Value (ACV), and higher win rates. If PMM is enabling sales in the most impactful and effective way, with the strongest value propositions, the most disruptive competitive differentiators, and the most aligned messaging to the customer..then metrics like the ones above will happen! There are alway 'softer' metrics you can use too like attendance (of enablement sessions) and content downloads/usage through your content/enablement portal such as Highspot but in my opinion the real value shows through the key business metrics..more revenue, quicker, and stickier!

I mentioned this elsewhere but in my mind there's two key dimensions to sales effectiveness. One is the core sales skills side..i.e how good are they at discovery? how do they navigate objection handling? How are their deal progression skills and so on. These are typically built up over time with more and more experience but are enhanced through 'sales skills' training. The other dimension is product/solution enablement. How well do they know the product? How well can they position the value of the product to suit the customers needs? Do they know how to flip between various solutions based on customer input? And can they effectively position the product over and above it's competitors? These are key areas that we as PMM's can heavily influence. And so, if you think about it that way then 'properly enabled' at least on the product/solution side would be indicated by how effectively they deposition competitors in deals. How quickly they show value and thus close deals (time to close) and of course how bought in the customer is to the current and future value of the products thus increasing the deal size. You will also find (in my experience) that there's a direct correlation between the sales members who eagerly participate in enablement training, they download and use all the assets you've produced and their effectiveness!

Full disclosure, I've never 'started' sales enablement in a company so I'm just going to tackle this from my point of view but it's not based on real world experience! I would keep things very simple and frame them up the same way you would with a GTM for a new product/solution/service. What is the value proposition, messaging, competitive stance etc and how do you in turn ensure your sales team(s) understand that. Also, who is the customer what is their pain point and why will your solution be a great fit for them? You'll likely have built out a pitch deck (or similar) and leverage that to enable sales first and foremost. From there try to plan out a semi-regular cadence of sales enablement activities. i.e monthly or quarterly 'brown bag' or 'office hours' for instance. Get sales folks to present as peer-to-peer is always hugely beneficial. Try 'art of the deal' (deal deconstruction) from a leading salesperson to help train their peers on what actually works! Over time you'll start to build up a catalogue of assets and materials along with your regular sessions that will work itself into an enablement plan!

Great question and one which I've had to tackle quite a few times over the years (and not always successfully might I add!) I think the key here is to get sales on-side by having them actively participate in the process. At one business where I owned sales enablement, we did a yearly survey of the sales teams around what assets they wanted prioritised. As expected the dominant results were around customer stories and case studies/1-sheeters. When we collated the results we went back to sales with some of the data from prior assets of a similar nature. i.e how many were downloaded from our content portal (Highspot)? How many were tagged in deal wins in salesforce? How many were anecdotally leveraged to close new business? A lot of the time the 'value' of these assets was inconsequential or even ZERO! Alternatively when we surfaced the impact of. updated messaging/positioning and usefulness of Ideal Customer Profile (ICPs) in closing deals with higher value and at a higher win rate they couldn't counter that value! So I'm not saying dismiss 'transactional' assets but find the balance and track everything! It will incentivise the right behaviour either way and you'll have a baseline to be able to leverage in future conversations about asset creation etc.

The biggest one I've seen not just with new programs but existing is not incorporating/including sales into the plan itself! I've found in my experience that sales can be less trusting of marketing/product marketing "telling them" what to do vs having some buy in to the process. I've always found consulting with sales leaders or a few 'ambassadors' to be very handy! They will also act as advocates to ensure you get strong attendance and participation from the rest of the sales teams. Also include sales in your actual enablement! i.e did someone just land a great deal or new customer? Have them come and speak to their peer group about it. What worked? What didn't? How can we replicate what worked?? Hearing this from their peers will be much more appreciated then having a non-sales person (i.e PMM) tell them! Find the right balance of where sales themselves can lead vs when PMM is the true domain expert and needs to lead!

Ah I remember this stage a few times ;) Again, I think keeping things simple is key. Don't overthink as it will only complicate things and in turn likely create the opposite impact you're aiming for! Prioritise a handful of key initiatives and activities that are inline with the business. Think along the lines of these steps: 1. Based on the product or service you're selling, ensure your value proposition, messaging, competitive differentiators, and other USP's are clearly articulated. Again, keep it simple and in the language of your key customer base! 2. Build out 1-2 key assets based on the above for sales to leverage. Think along the lines of a Pitch Deck, 1-pager (or Elevator Pitch deck), and potentially an FAQ for the sales team to be able to leverage in customer conversations (and to help with discovery and objection handling) 3. Have a lightweight marketing plan based on your product(s) and customer base and leverage channels that are inline with those prospective customers. Keep costs under control by leveraging owned channels first! 4. Enable sales (and continously check in with them) to ensure they're confident with positioning the value proposition of your products and services. Itterate based on their feedback and customer conversations to ensure you're messaging is accurate and appropriate! Thats probably more then enough to get you started and hopefully not too overwhelming for a limited team!

In my experience customer testimonials and case studies are always the #1 most requested asset from sales. In a couple of my roles we ended up polling the sales teams on what their most requested item(s) might be from Product Marketing (because we were all bombarded with various requests!) This way we could stack rank them and focus on one or two key items based on the inputs. Furthermore this gave us a strong mechanism to take back to Sales when they demanded more items or ones not prioritised (i.e 'you told us that x and y are your key asks!") But it shouldn't just be about delivering on what they want and in an ideal world you would help quantify the value of any of these assets including case studies. i.e Did they help close deals? Is there any revenue attribution you can put against these assets? What is the ROI on case studies? etc. Outside of robust tooling that helps you with attribution this is often very difficult to track but putting some level of rigour into quantifying the value helps you align better with Sales and also provide insights in to the value of any given asset!

I always like to go back to basics and follow the same principals that we as PMM's follow when it comes to positioning to our customers. What is the customers pain point? What use cases are they trying to solve for? How can our products/solutions help them achieve their key business objectives? If we take those similar principles and apply them to an enablement curriculum you ensure you're aligning and delivering value to sales. * How are you helping them? * What will they be able to achieve from being enabled? (i.e more deals, higher contract value, close deals quicker etc) Lastly, pay attention to some of the process/frameworks that sit around enablement. What is the best frequency (to avoid burnout and sales switching off or not showing up) and what level of training is needed for a given audience. Make sure these are well thought out, calendared well in advance, and appropriate amount of guidelines provided leading up to session (and after) to ensure the highest level of success.

This is a great question and probably one of the hardest to actually achieve depending on the topic and the environment you're doing the enablement in. I think the trick is to ensure THEY know why they're there and why it will be beneficial for them to pay attention! The same way you would always design your product messaging, value proposition etc around the customer and the benefits they will get from your products, make sure you are clearly articulating what the sales teams are going to get out of these enablement sessions. Speak their language! "You will be able to sell more x product when we're done" and "You will be able to retire more quota, do bigger deals, and sell faster once you go through this session" and the like. This will help reinforce 'why they should care' and set the right expectation around it being of value to them!

You have to be very clear up front around the objectives of the enablement effort itself. That is to say if you're running an enablement session on X product and its for sales that are brand new to the product, then outline within the calendar invite itself that this is a '101 level' training and you should not expect deep dive nor overly technical information to be part of the delivery. This helps level set first and foremost what they're going to get out of the session (and what they aren't!) I've always also found it helpful to have a really strong opening slide/talktrack around what they should expect to learn from the given session. Lastly, be sure to finish with 'Find out more' type resource slides and even better, when will there be further learning delivered? i.e if this was a 101 session, when is the 201 session etc? That lets them know that this is just the beginning and there's plenty more to come!