1. Tips for Sales Enablement
Sharing ~20 years of experience as a way to give back to the sales
community and others who are focused on helping sales teams win
As of March 2013
@BrianGroth

2. Details to guide a sales enablement program
Mission: Positively impact revenue through the creation of sales content, management of lead generation, and
effective on-boarding and on-going training of sales employees on the products/solutions, sales processes, sales
skills and related industry knowledge. [yes, a thorough sales enablement program cuts across marketing, operations, product, and sales]
Goals: (1) The sales force is empowered to competently and competitively sell products & solutions so they can exceed their sales
quota, (2) the sales process is well understood and followed, and (3) qualified leads are getting into the sales pipeline
Plans and deliverables to achieve the goals:
1. Sales Training: Establish and manage the rhythm for an annual training strategy, budget, calendar and detailed training plans,
along with the associated content and curriculum. This includes driving logistics and training sessions via the appropriate
medium (1-to-1, as a group, remote office, central office, online, on-demand) for both the sales materials and the sales
process. Manage, track, and analyze training activities tied to the CRM system to offer the right training at the right time.
2. Sales & Lead Marketing Content: Establish and manage the rhythm to (1) create impactful sales presentations and supporting
materials that articulate value proposition, unique differentiation and success customers can expect from the solutions; then
communicate the availability of these to sales, including partner channels. (2) Create overview and reference materials for
the sales process, skills and tools, with insights into how following the process drives product and sales improvements. Both
should be tied to the CRM system to expose the right content at the right time.
3. Qualified Leads: Establish partnerships between operations, marketing and sales to generate, manage and hand over qualified
leads to sales that enable them to drive new opportunities. Measure the impact on sales via the CRM system through marketing
qualified leads (MQL) that result in opportunities won.
4. Closing the Loop: Gather feedback from sales regarding customer, partner and sales needs to create and update the training
and content, while providing input to engineering teams. Also get input into upcoming product releases and marketing events
or campaigns that sales needs to be aware of and possibly trained on, which will also be leveraged for lead generation.
Measures of Success: Overall employee satisfaction of the training, content and leads, delivered on budget & per the established
rhythms, increased adoption of the sales process from lead generation to close, and increased sales revenue per sales employee

3. Schedule & rhythm to Requirements
: Product, Planning &
build, deliver training Field, &
Customer
Budgeting
Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q4 Q1
• Field Needs Analysis: Solutions, Competitors, Processes
Feedback
& Input
• Engineering: Product Release Plans
• Marketing : Event & Campaign Q1 Content &
Plans Training Q2 & Q3
Curriculum
Feedback
• Annual Planning Creation
Planning
• Budget Approval
Q2 & Q3
• Sales Pitch Creation • Sales Pitch Updates
Creation
Deliver
Content
• Industry Skills Materials
• Sales Process Materials • Sales Skills Materials Training
• In Person: Europe
• Onboarding New Employees: Overall value prop, Top
• In Person: US West
• In Person: Japan Solution/Product sales pitches, Overview of supporting
• In Person: US East products and solutions, Sales process overview, Tools how-to
• Semi-Annual In-Person: Solution/product pitch updates, tool
Training
Training Feedback after each in-person session and after every online session
HQ: On-boarding for new employees updates, sales skills training, with a focus on gathering field
feedback since verbatim is always the best
Web-based (On-Demand)
• On-Demand: Process & Tools training and saved skills training
• Live webcast: Product/Solution updates & special skills
training

4. Training Curriculum: 3 primary groups of training
(1) Solutions & Processes (2) Sales Skills
Products & Solutions (details + sales pitches) • Networking skills to validate
• All-up value proposition; market positioning Prospecting opportunity and identify an owner
• Individual value proposition; market positioning
• Understanding the customer’s industry
Qualificatio to qualify an opportunity
Sales Processes & Tools n
• Sales Cycle / Pipeline Management • Understand the customer’s business to
• CRM Needs
Analysis
identify their needs
• Booking & Billing
• Presentation skills to pitch a solution
(3) Industry Technology & Competitive Strategy Value Prop that exceeds the customer’s needs
Competitive Sales Guidance needs to be focused on a single • Ability to handle sales objections and
competitor and quickly explain: Proposal final details of the proposal
1. How the competitor sells (their sales pitch, with/through
partners, etc.) • Negotiation skills to finalize the
2. Overcoming sales objections versus the competitor with Negotiation contract
guidance
3. Sales guidance to take the lead against the competitor using • Finalize the deployment plan and
our strongest selling points Close execute the solution
4. Insights from competitive win/loss analysis against the

5. Content Example:
competitive sales and marketing materials
Competitive Sales Content Competitive Marketing Content
This should be focused on a single competitor and quickly 1. How the competitor presents themselves in the
explain: industry at/with details focused on:
1. How the competitor sells (their sales pitch, • Events they participate in or host
with/through partners, etc.) • Advertising for their products and overall brand
Guidance
2. Overcoming sales objections versus the competitor • Social media efforts
with guidance when a defensive position is needed • Case studies
3. Sales guidance for times when you can take the lead 2. How the competitor markets with or through
against the competitor using our strongest selling partners
points 3. Customer satisfaction ratings for the competitor
4. Insights from competitive win/loss analysis against versus us
the competitor
1. Details of the competitive product 1. Details of the competitive product
Product Details
2. Their strengths versus our product 2. Their strengths versus our product
3. Their weaknesses versus our product 3. Their weaknesses versus our product
4. Screenshots and/or videos 4. Screenshots and/or videos
5. Opportunities we have in the marketplace against
the competitor’s product
6. Threats we face with the current or assumed future
of the competitor’s product

6. Lead Generation: Part of the sales pipeline
Demand Generation through Demand Generation: Focused on collecting leads, run specific campaigns,
inbound & outbound utilize an editorial calendar with call-to-actions in the content, regularly
marketing pose questions on social media, attend and run events
Capture the right leads: Through online forms and social media listening, social tools
Marketing Leads
and marketing automation. Plus manually during & after industry and networking
Captured events (online and in-person events). Marketing Automation tools should be used here.
Marketing Call-Downs / Lead Nurturing: Using a standard script (or e-mail template if no phone #),
Leads ensure there is a need/pain-point, an owner to solve it, budget to solve it and within a known
Qualified timeframe. All qualified leads are in CRM at this point.
Hand-
off to Hand-off: Leverage CRM so sales execs can easily see their list of new leads and take ownership of
Sales them. Some of this can be automated with marketing automation tools.
Agreement
Negotiate
Prospect
Qualify
Needs
Close
Pitch

7. A few Marketing Automation / Lead Management Solutions
These solutions often have a strong focus on using social networking to generate, drive
and manage leads. Many of these offer CRM integration options, e-mail solutions, lead
scoring and so on.
I am not endorsing any of these, but they have all come across my radar when looking
into automating some lead management tasks.
 Marketo and Eloqua (Gartner considers these to be the top two)
 Lithium Technologies
 Hubspot
 Optify
 SilverPop
 AbleBridge
 LeadMD
 Pardot from ExactTarget
 Salesforce Marketing Cloud (since they purchased Buddy Media and Radian6)
Similar options, but with less focus on full marketing automation and more on social
integration with your website include:
 Get Satisfaction, Ning, Jive Software and many others

8. LinkedIn Solutions for Lead Generation
In the B2B space, LinkedIn is a unique player so it makes sense to review what they offer and consider how to
leverage the service. I categorize their solutions as this, with a focus on lead generation even though the solutions
can be used for a variety of other marketing tactics:
 Content Marketing (see Influencing Through Content) to generate leads
 Slideshare with a customizable, geo targeted, pop-up (lead form) during a presentation to gather contact details.
 Groups – manage and participate in groups to be part of the community
 Influencers – an opportunity to participate with top individuals across industries
 LinkedIn Today – an opportunity for publishers to get their content noticed when the LinkedIn audience starts talking about
and sharing the content
 Company pages to develop your community and build relationships
 Advertising and Marketing Solutions to drive your target audience to your content (to then generate leads)
 Content Ads, including Expandable Video
 Sponsored InMail
 Content Ad Overlay in Slideshare
 Targeted Display Ads: 160x600 (tall ad to the right of the page), 300x250 (standard almost-square ad) and Textlink (text ad at
the top of the page)
 Targeted Status Updates
 LinkedIn Ad Network, which leverages the LinkedIn audience across the Google Ad Exchange
 Contact / Lead Solutions to get yourself introduced
 LinkedIn Sales Navigator with the TeamLink feature to help get introduced to the right prospect by the right contacts

9. About Brian Groth
(or, why listen to what I have to say about sales enablement?)
I have had a career focused on sales and technology, which I summarize as:
 Field & Partner Enablement by creating Demos, Presentations, Competitive Insights, Strategy,
Win/Loss Programs & Reviews, and Sales Training
 Presenting & Consulting with customers and partners, such as presenting from 1 to 1000
employees (sales reps to executives), CxO-level customers, partners about a variety of topics
including software solutions, competition, social media marketing strategy and a variety of
technologies. A few technical solutions I have presented include: Full Microsoft stack solutions,
Individual technologies, Brand advertising
 100% quota attainment
 Grassroots approach to every project I start up
Interesting Examples:
 My team and I built, deployed and versioned Microsoft’s largest demo platform. Then trained
JP, HK TW, and CN sales engineers to do Consultative Selling using this demo. This included
selecting and integrating partner solutions into the platform.
 I built a globally dispersed community of “compete champs” including sales executives and
partners who discuss and share competitive insights as part of a larger competitive intelligence
program, focused on improving sales with a strong emphasis on insights derived from win/loss
analysis.
More details are at http://briangroth.wordpress.com/my-work-history/