Sales Enablement. Why? Just...Why?
Sales Enablement
definition*: "Sales enablement is the iterative process of providing your business's sales team with the resources they need to close more deals. These resources may include content, tools, knowledge, and information to effectively sell your product or service to customers."
Sometimes, what bothers me isn't that improper or illogical names are associated with different marketing concepts but rather that useless terms and practices are created that are unbearably ridiculous. Such is the case with Sales Enablement. The definition above basically suggests that the entire concept revolves around giving salespeople the tools they need to succeed. Um...is it me or...when wasn't this a thing?
Gartner, a company I tend to like notably more than full of shit companies, such as Forrester, has developed a framework** for Sales Enablement. At first glance, I thought (maybe) I was being a bit hard on the idea of laying out such a framework but after I digested it a while, I have concluded that it is just another attempt to distance people from doing any (actual) work, focusing instead on more processes that take their eye off of an ever-moving ball.
Before the Internet, did anyone call buying stationary for a salesperson, Sales Enablement? No! It was just the materials they needed to do their job. It is no more involved, here. I am not discounting the components that Gartner has laid out but at the same time, I believe there is also no need for a framework. People go to school for marketing...nobody goes to school for sales and the reason is that sales requires an unbridled need for street smarts. Who have you met that has a Master's degree in sales enablement? If you start to distract a salesperson with irrelevant marketing jargon and force them to take their eye off the ball (networking, relationship building, yes, training), you will hurt your sales efforts.
If all of those surrounding sales are doing their jobs, salespeople should be enabled. Maybe on its merits, it is nice to try to demonstrate a deliberate focus on structure for sales departments...but in my experience, all this will do is distract and piss them off.
Thanks for reading!
*https://www.hubspot.com/sales-enablement
**https://www.gartner.com/en/sales/trends/sales-enablement-framework
