State of Sales Enablement 2015
Transcript of State of Sales Enablement 2015
EFFECTIVENESS SALES ENABLEMENT SUPPORT PRODUCTIVITY ENGAGEMENT CONTENT TRAINING ONBOARDING REVENUE MARGIN QUOTA EFFICIENCY KNOWLEDGE ATTAINMENT GROWTH BEST PRACTICE QUALITY VELOCITYEFFECTIVENESS SALES ENABLEMENT SUPPORT PRODUCTIVITY ENGAGEMENT CONTENT TRAINING ONBOARDING REVENUE MARGIN QUOTA EFFICIENCY KNOWLEDGE ATTAINMENT GROWTH BEST PRACTICE QUALITY VELOCITY
EFFECTIVENESS SALES ENABLEMENT SUPPORT PRODUCTIVITY ENGAGEMENT CONTENT TRAINING ONBOARDING REVENUE MARGIN QUOTA EFFICIENCY KNOWLEDGE ATTAINMENT GROWTH BEST PRACTICE QUALITY VELOCITYEFFECTIVENESS SALES ENABLEMENT SUPPORT PRODUCTIVITY ENGAGEMENT CONTENT TRAINING ONBOARDING REVENUE MARGIN QUOTA EFFICIENCY KNOWLEDGE ATTAINMENT GROWTH BEST PRACTICE QUALITY VELOCITY
EFFECTIVENESS SALES ENABLEMENT SUPPORT PRODUCTIVITY ENGAGEMENT CONTENT TRAINING ONBOARDING REVENUE MARGIN QUOTA EFFICIENCY KNOWLEDGE ATTAINMENT GROWTH BEST PRACTICE QUALITY VELOCITYEFFECTIVENESS SALES ENABLEMENT SUPPORT PRODUCTIVITY ENGAGEMENT CONTENT TRAINING ONBOARDING REVENUE MARGIN QUOTA EFFICIENCY KNOWLEDGE ATTAINMENT GROWTH BEST PRACTICE QUALITY VELOCITY
EFFECTIVENESS SALES ENABLEMENT SUPPORT PRODUCTIVITY ENGAGEMENT CONTENT TRAINING ONBOARDING REVENUE MARGIN QUOTA EFFICIENCY KNOWLEDGE ATTAINMENT GROWTH BEST PRACTICE QUALITY VELOCITYEFFECTIVENESS SALES ENABLEMENT SUPPORT PRODUCTIVITY ENGAGEMENT CONTENT TRAINING ONBOARDING REVENUE MARGIN QUOTA EFFICIENCY KNOWLEDGE ATTAINMENT GROWTH BEST PRACTICE QUALITY VELOCITY
EFFECTIVENESS SALES ENABLEMENT SUPPORT PRODUCTIVITY ENGAGEMENT CONTENT TRAINING ONBOARDING REVENUE MARGIN QUOTA EFFICIENCY KNOWLEDGE ATTAINMENT GROWTH BEST PRACTICE QUALITY VELOCITYQUALITY VELOCITY EFFECTIVENESS SALES ENABLEMENT SUPPORT PRODUCTIVITY ENGAGEMENT CONTENT TRAINING ONBOARDING REVENUE MARGIN QUOTA EFFICIENCY KNOWLEDGE ATTAINMENT GROWTH BEST PRACTICE QUALITY VELOCITY
EFFECTIVENESS SALES ENABLEMENT SUPPORT PRODUCTIVITY ENGAGEMENT CONTENT TRAINING ONBOARDING REVENUE MARGIN QUOTA EFFICIENCY KNOWLEDGE ATTAINMENT GROWTH BEST PRACTICE QUALITY VELOCITYEFFECTIVENESS SALES ENABLEMENT SUPPORT PRODUCTIVITY ENGAGEMENT CONTENT TRAINING ONBOARDING REVENUE MARGIN QUOTA EFFICIENCY KNOWLEDGE ATTAINMENT GROWTH BEST PRACTICE MARGIN VELOCITY
EFFECTIVENESS SALES ENABLEMENT SUPPORT PRODUCTIVITY ENGAGEMENT CONTENT TRAINING ONBOARDING REVENUE MARGIN QUOTA EFFICIENCY KNOWLEDGE ATTAINMENT GROWTH BEST PRACTICE QUALITY VELOCITYEFFECTIVENESS SALES ENABLEMENT SUPPORT PRODUCTIVITY ENGAGEMENT CONTENT TRAINING ONBOARDING REVENUE MARGIN QUOTA EFFICIENCY KNOWLEDGE QUALITY ATTAINMENT GROWTH BEST PRACTICE QUALITY VELOCITY
EFFECTIVENESS SALES ENABLEMENT SUPPORT PRODUCTIVITY ENGAGEMENT CONTENT TRAINING ONBOARDING REVENUE MARGIN QUOTA EFFICIENCY KNOWLEDGE ATTAINMENT GROWTH BEST PRACTICE QUALITY VELOCITYEFFECTIVENESS SALES ENABLEMENT SUPPORT PRODUCTIVITY ENGAGEMENT CONTENT TRAINING ONBOARDING REVENUE MARGIN QUOTA EFFICIENCY KNOWLEDGE ATTAINMENT GROWTH BEST PRACTICE QUALITY VELOCITY
EFFECTIVENESS SALES ENABLEMENT SUPPORT PRODUCTIVITY ENGAGEMENT CONTENT TRAINING ONBOARDING REVENUE MARGIN QUOTA EFFICIENCY KNOWLEDGE ATTAINMENT GROWTH BEST PRACTICE QUALITY VELOCITY
2015 STATE OFSALES ENABLEMENT
RESULTS AND ANALYSIS FROM THE 2015 RESEARCH STUDY ON SALES ENABLEMENT
BY HIGHSPOT & HEINZ MARKETING
2015 STATE OF SALES ENABLEMENT 2
“Sales enablement” as a general business process has been around in B2B organizations for quite some time. That is, most organizations have had people in marketing and sales dedicate time to helping the Sales team be more effective. But in the last 5 years, its importance has skyrocketed, due to its ability to increase sales productivity and effectiveness. Leading organizations are forming Sales Enablement teams dedicated to this task and the market for Sales Enablement technology solutions has exploded.
According to Aberdeen research1, these leading organizations are seeing incredible results such as:
• 99% overall team attainment of sales quota
• 9% advantage in year-to-year revenue growth over average companies
• 7.4% year over year growth in average deal size (ASP)
But how many companies are taking advantage of this opportunity? And how well have they implemented sales enablement programs to achieve these results? What are sales enablement activities, how effective are they, and how actively are organizations executing them?
These were the questions at the heart of a groundbreaking study conducted in August 2015 by Highspot and Heinz Marketing among more than 400 B2B sales & marketing professionals.
The results may surprise you. The importance of sales enablement activities rank high across all organizations, but there is clearly a gap between the ‘have’ and the ‘have nots‘ in achieving the intended results. Many of the pains of sales-marketing misalignment exist across most organizations.
If nothing else, let these insights inform your prioritization and provide focus heading into 2016.
INTRODUCTION
JEFF DAYVP of MarketingHighspot@highspot
MATT HEINZFounder and PresidentHeinz Marketing@HeinzMarketing
1 “Making Sales Enablement Work: Nine Must-Haves for the Modern Sales Ops Leader”, Aberdeen Group, March 2015
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SALES TEAMS PERCEIVED AS NOT EFFECTIVE Across the board, organizations ranked the effectiveness of their sales teams functions pretty low—the majority scored them as “not effective.” Clearly respondents expectations are high and there is a need for increased attention on improving Sales’ performance. But there is a significant gap in reported effectiveness between those companies with focused sales enablement teams and those that do not. Organizations with sales enablement teams scored much higher.
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4SALES ENABLEMENT DRIVES REAL IMPROVEMENTS IN SALESReported business benefit of sales enablement efforts align with key sales performance metrics such as improving conversion rates, sales productivity and ability to sell.
3KNOWLEDGE IS POWER. CONTENT IS KING.When respondents ranked the activities associated with sales enablement, creating, managing, distributing and presenting content ranked highest. It is clear that quality content and knowledge transfer through training are critical activities that Sales Enablement teams must drive to reach their business objectives.
KEY FINDINGS
SALES ENABLEMENT FUNCTIONS RANK HIGH IN IMPORTANCE ACROSS ALL ORGANIZATIONSAcross all organizations, those activities that were identified as sales enablement ranked very important in their value to the company. Across the board, organizations recognize the importance of sales enablement activities, but few have focused their organization with dedicated teams in order to improve their effectiveness.
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THE MACRO PROBLEM: SALES ENABLEMENT EFFORTS ARE NOT
LIVING UP TO EXPECTATIONSB2B companies are struggling to increase sales
effectiveness. With 60%-70% of the buyer’s journey happening before a prospect ever talks to sales,
sales is in a tough position to increase their effectiveness once they are able to engage with
the customer. And according to our study, most organizations are coming up short.
Across all respondents, only 48% ranked their sales efforts as effective (4 or 5 on the 5 point
scale)—less than half. Surprisingly, those respondents from the sales side of the house, rated themselves worse; only 35% rated their
efforts effective or very effective. This is a discouraging sign.
But when segmented as those organizations that have sales enablement teams versus those
that don’t, 57% of organizations that have sales enablement ranked their sales efforts
as effective or very effective versus only 35% for those that don’t, indicating a correlation
between the existence of a sales enablement team and a more effective sales organization.
SURVEY RESULTS
QUESTIONHow would you rate the overall effectiveness of your company’s sales efforts on a 1–5 scale?
All Respondents With Sales Enablement (SE) Teams
Without SE Teams
33%
22%
35%
10%
25%
Very Effective Effective OK
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Poor Very Poor
15%
33%40%
11%
1%
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SALES ENABLEMENT EFFORTS ARE FALLING SHORT
Similarly, organizations are failing in their sales enablement activities,
despite reported high importance.
When asked about their sales enablement efforts, only 31% of all companies reported that their efforts
were effective (4–5 on a 5 point scale). Only 6% of the population rated their efforts as very effective, while 8% rated themselves on the far other side of the spectrum, very poor. This certainly leaves a lot
of room for improvement.
8%VeryPoor
23%Poor
32%OK
25%Effective
6%VeryEffective
QUESTIONPlease rate how effective you believe your company’s current “sales enablement” efforts are on a scale of 1–5
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QUESTION #1Please rate how important you believe each of the following activities are to the success of your company on a 1–10 scale
QUESTION #2Please rate how effectively you believe your company is currently performing and/or completing the following sales related activities on a scale of 1–10
A GAP BETWEEN IMPORTANCE AND EFFECTIVENESS
When asked to rate the importance of sales support related activities, many sales
enablement activities ranked high in “contributing to the success of your company.”
Unfortunately, most organizations report a stunning difference between rated importance and the
effectiveness with which they are accomplishing those activities. Organizations without sales
enablement teams report very mediocre effectiveness (scores 5–6) in
sales enablement tasks.
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
Training/Onboarding
ProducingContent
IdentifyingBest Practices
Helping SalesFind Content
Measuring ContentEffectiveness
MEDIOCRITY
Importance
Effectiveness
8.32
5.58
8.29
6.18
8.18
5.63
8.16
6.08
8.02
5.21
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Organizations without SE Teams
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QUESTIONDoes your company currently have some type of defined sales enablement team in place?
ADOPTION OF BEST PRACTICES IS LOWOnly 14% of respondents have
a sales enablement team.
This will be an interesting trend to watch. Other studies suggest that sales enablement is on
the rise. As we do this study each year, we will track the adoption rate of sales enablement.
Yes
No
Not Sure
14%
62%
24%
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COMPELLING BUSINESS BENEFIT
That’s the bad news, but the benefits and positive impact on key sales metrics for those investing in sales enablement are compelling
and highly encouraging.
Despite a current lack of investment in sales enablement, many of these same companies
recognize the benefit of effective sales enablement practices. There is also a clear, measurable
improvement in results for those with dedicated sales enablement functions.
Improving sales conversion rates and sales productivity are top priority objectives for any
business team and have a direct impact on increasing revenue. Improving Sales’ ability to
sell is inherently beneficial. Both ”improving knowledge” and “delivering quality content”
point to a key aspect of sales enablement; coordinating with marketing to create, deliver
and train the sales team on quality content, which in turn leads to higher conversion rates
and increasing revenue.
THE UPSIDE POTENTIAL
QUESTIONIn your opinion, which of the following benefits that could come from a successful sales enablement process do you believe would deliver the greatest value to your company? Select the top three.
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
ImprovingConversion
Rates
IncreasingSales
Productivity
ImprovingKnowledge &Ability to Sell
DeliveringQualityContent
% o
f Res
pond
ents
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QUESTIONHow would you rate the overall effectiveness of your company’s sales efforts on a 1–5 scale?
SALES EFFECTIVENESS UP IN ORGANIZATIONS WITH SALES
ENABLEMENTComparing the responses of effectiveness for those
companies with sales enablement teams in place vs. those without shows a stark improvement in results:
57% of respondents reported that their sales efforts were effective or very effective for companies with sales enablement teams versus only 35% without.
With SE Teams Without SE Teams
22%
35%
10%
25%
Very Effective Effective Not Effective
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QUESTIONPlease rate how effectively you believe your company is currently performing and/or completing the following sales related activities on a scale of 1–10
SALES ENABLEMENT DRIVES EFFECTIVENESS IN KEY ACTIVITIES
Organizations with sales enablement teams were also significantly more effective (by as much as 25%) on
key sales support activities vs. organizations without.
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
Training/Onboarding
ProducingContent
IdentifyingBest
Practices
Helping SalesFind Content
Measuring Content
Effectiveness
Without SE Team With SE Team
ManagingSales
Comms.
Choosing Technology
for Sales
Running Email Campaigns
for Sales
Coordinating Sales
Meetings
30%
25%
20%
15%
10%
5%
0%
% Improvement
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QUESTIONHow do you define sales enablement? Which activities do you believe should be included in sales enablement?
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Sales Related Activities Total MarketingTeams
SalesTeams
Sales Enablement
Teams
Making sure sales team can find content 65% 71% 62% 80%
Producing materials for sales 63 64 64 50
Identify/implement sales productivity tools 62 64 61 90
Producing content for sales 61 62 57 40
Training and onboarding sales team 61 65 55 70
Identifying best practices in sales 59 54 60 80
Sales playbooks 57 56 51 80
Measuring sales content effectiveness 54 56 47 60
CRM configuration 52 52 46 50
Choosing tech. solutions for sales 48 49 43 50
Email campaigns for sales reps 47 56 47 40
Managing sales team communication 46 46 42 30
Sale
s En
able
men
tN
ot S
ales
Ena
blem
ent
DEFINING SALES ENABLEMENTWhen asked what activities were included in
Sales Enablement the responses were pretty consistent, with some notable exceptions from
Sales Enablement practitioners, themselves.
In general, activities that the majority of respondents indicated were “in” included content for sales, training sales, identifying best practices
and creating sales playbooks. In other words, knowledge transfer, knowledge sharing and tools
and processes to identify and share best practices. These are all activities that were traditionally
part of the product marketing or field marketing role. And in many institutions, they still are.
We’re seeing a small, but meaningful shift in responsibilities from Product Marketing to
Sales Enablement.
Generally, activities that were left out were those traditionally in the Sales Operations role;
CRM configuration, choosing tech for sales, and managing sales communications.
The biggest difference in opinion was that Sales Enablement practitioners scored “Producing
content for sales” very low. We believe that is because Marketing is still expected to produce the content and Sales Enablement is in charge of training the sales team on it, ensuring they
can find it when needed and measuring the effectiveness of it.
BEST PRACTICES IN SALES ENABLEMENT
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6.5
7
7.5
8
8.5
9
Training/Onboarding
ProducingContent
IdentifyingBest Practices
Helping SalesFind Content
Measuring ContentEffectiveness
With SE Team
Without SE Team
QUESTIONPlease rate how important you believe each of the following activities are to the success of your company on a 1–10 scale
ACTIVITIES TO FOCUS ONOrganizations focused on sales enablement
place higher importance on the key sales enablement activities.
It is worth noting that three of the top five sales enablement activities relate to producing,
distributing and measuring effectiveness of sales content.
The activity with the biggest gap between the two segments is measuring the effectiveness of sales
content;those organizations with sales enablement teams are 20% more effective at measuring the
impact of sales content.
Rate
d Im
port
ance
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QUESTIONHow important is having objective quantifiable measurement of the effectiveness of sales enablement to your organization?
MEASURING THE PERFORMANCE OF SALES CONTENT
Despite a general lack of formal sales enablement functions, most companies still
rate the importance of measuring sales content effectiveness as very high.
More than 75% of respondents rated sales enablement measurement as important, very
important or extremely important.
13%
27%
36%
16%
3%
6%
Extremely important
Very important
Important
Not very important
Not important at all
Not sure
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0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
Email CRM Cloud-Sharing
SharedDrive
% o
f Res
pond
ents
QUESTIONWhat technologies is your company currently using to deliver sales collateral to the sales organization today?
ORGANIZATIONS STILL REPLY ON ANTIQUATED SYSTEMS TO DISTRIBUTE
CONTENT TO THEIR SALES TEAMSMore than 70% of respondents rely on email to
distribute content to their sales organization. More than 45% of marketing respondents rely on a shared network drive to deliver sales collateral and content.
Only 12% have a dedicated Sales Enablement solution in place—possibly another key to the
performance gap.
80%
WebPortal
Sharepoint SalesEnablementTechnology
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0%
5%
10%
15%
20%
25%
30%
OneSolution
TwoSolutions
ThreeSolutions
FourSolutions
FiveSolutions
SixSolutions
SevenSolutions
…And, 55% of respondents have three of more channels for sharing sales content, further
complicating the content delivery process for both sales and marketing, increasing inefficiency for the
sales organization.
20%
26% 25%
13%
7%
3%
2%
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KEY TAKEAWAYS Sales Enablement is growing movement with clear benefits to improving sales effectiveness.1
To achieve similar results, organizations would be wise to:
Identify or create a team dedicated to improving sales enablement
Develop a charter that focuses on these core activities
Establish cross-functional (sales and marketing) support to ensure good alignment and ability to execute
Provide the tools, resources and support to be successful
Set goals for better sales enablement in 2016
2Early adopters who have formed dedicated teams to improve sales enablement report much higher effectiveness in sales and sales enablement activities.
3Across all organizations, sales enablement is seen as a critical business function with meaningful impact on Improving Conversion Rates, Increasing Sales Productivity and Improving Ability to Sell. These have direct impact on both top-line revenue and cost-per-sales which impacts margin.
4Leading organizations are being successful by creating teams dedicated to Sales Enablement and its core activities including training the sales team, ensuring they have easy access to quality content, developing tools and processes to identify and share best practices and measuring the effectiveness of sales content.
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For more information on Sales Enablement, including getting started tips and implementation best practices, read “The Definitive Guide to Sales Enablement” online at www.highspot.com/sales-enablement.
ABOUT HIGHSPOTHighspot is the industry’s most advanced sales enablement platform, using data science to improve sales effectiveness. With Highspot, sales teams are connected to the most relevant content for each situation, have flexible ways to present content to customers, and gain real-time visibility into whether customers find the content engaging. By closing the loop across marketing, sales, and customers, Highspot uniquely delivers insights that help companies engage more effectively with customers, driving increased revenue and customer satisfaction.
For more information, visit www.highspot.com.
ABOUT HEINZ MARKETINGHeinz Marketing is a B2B marketing and sales acceleration firm that delivers measurable revenue results. By focusing on demand generation, lead management and sales enablement strategy & execution, the experienced Heinz team focuses on helping you build a sustainable, repeatable and predictable engine for sale & revenue growth.
Learn more about Heinz Marketing at www.heinzmarketing.com.