Sales Enablement – Declare MASTERS

Equipping a sales team with the necessary content, skills, knowledge, systems and tools to develop new business or work with existing customers or partners needs to form part of an overall go-to-market plan.  Whether this is for a specific product, solution set or corporate offering, sales enablement is a critical element in long-term growth.  In the same way as sports teams are coached and prepared to enter the field of play, so too sales teams must be equipped to win new business and manage customer relationships.

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Equipping a sales team with the necessary skills, knowledge, systems and tools required to develop new business or work with existing customers or partners needs to form part of an overall go-to-market plan.  Whether this is for a specific product, solution set or corporate offering, sales enablement is a critical element in long-term growth.  In the same way as sports teams are coached and prepared to enter the field of play, so too sales teams must be equipped to participate in business development and customer relationships.

Specifically in the area of sales enablement, training and development, we’ve developed Declare MASTERS – Managed Approach to Sales Training Enablement & Readiness.

So often technology companies focus solely on product training, focusing on the technical or functional capabilities of a given product or service.  But today’s customers require far more than pure product information.  In order to be effective, sales organisations of today must possess a broad range of disciplines and expertise including relationship management skills, financial acumen, industry and market understanding, competitive insight, as well as fundamental product and pricing knowledge.

Our managed approach to sales enablement uses our best practice 3-block model.  It starts from the minute a salesperson is onboarded; either new to company, new to role, or new to business unit, and continues throughout their tenure.  Whilst it’s been adopted on a global basis by the enterprise sales group by one of the world’s largest software organisations, its flexible, modular nature, are equally applicable to organisations of all sizes and geographic coverage.

The role of sales today is to work alongside customers to make it as easy and enjoyable as possible for customers to buy, and then buy again and again – rather than simply to sell, sell, sell!

Faced with aggressive sales targets, increasingly fragmented customer bases, and ever more knowledgeable customers, today’s sales people are increasing their dependence upon marketing to furnish them with the information they need, when they need it, how they need it in order to provide value to their customers.

Marketers ignore the value and importance of their sales teams at their peril!  Which is why it is so important to ensure that marketing and sales groups are more closely aligned than ever before.