The Core Enablement Framework you Never Knew you Needed
By Lee Bartlett
BACK
A common situation we see between Sales, Operations, Marketing and Enablement is inconsistency in each department’s interpretation of the sales-execution model and its alignment with the buyer journey.
I am not referring to a lack of alignment with standard buyer decision-making stages, but a granular, schematic representation of the buy and sell-side process that highlights how decisions are made.
This common framework for sales execution may have never existed, and part of the issue is justifying the need. This is particularly the case for sales teams who feel they know the process and go about “business as usual”.
Where this framework is missing, the greatest impact is on the Support function, particularly Sales Enablement, as they strive to define and empower a buyer journey with too many subjective elements.
This results in revenue teams interpreting key aspects of the buyer-process from a unique perspective when each department should quantify and agree on a procedure and/or data-point. The problem is compounded with the complexity of the buyer process, solution type, and scale.
I’ll summarise what we see in teams that lack a common and consistent buyer-seller process framework.
Coaching efforts
Coaching efforts become subjective and inconsistent without mapping the buyer-process and aligning it with the sales-execution model, and this is a proven recipe for poor adoption.
Most salespeople know what to do but lack guidance in how to do it, which makes the difference in a coaching program.
For example, you can coach on Solution Fit, Discovery, and Territory Strategy. How will you coach on politics in the sales process without identifying every point of potential political conflict?
More importantly, how can an Enablement team coach enterprise sellers on a process that doesn’t align with their own?
“If you cannot model ideal, then you cannot coach (or scale) it”
If a coach fails to demonstrate superior knowledge of the execution process, the salesperson will not respect their advice.
The impact on coaching efforts is that salespeople see the internal landscape as a mess they need to circumvent, rather than a positive asset they can leverage to better serve the customer and support success.
Data Collection and Context
Data must have a context to how it impacts the buyer process, and especially when the data-set is large. This is not intended to be a flippant comment but an area we see companies struggle the most.
Much data is collected and circulated without a thorough understanding of the context. The result is the data is deemed irrelevant and ignored.
For example, we have seen sellers receive a daily dossier with customer activity over the previous 24 hours. Each seller may interpret and act upon the data as they choose, leading to inconsistent effort and results. This situation is difficult to enable at scale.
Let’s not be overly dramatic here.
Most data has perfect context. However, when optimising the revenue ecosystem, peripheral activities make the difference.
Internal Efficiency
The buyer-seller process framework defines how internal teams support deal execution. It identifies inefficiencies in company processes and highlights operational effectiveness with data-backed insight.
An example of this is transparency in the standard of service from supporting teams such as legal onboarding and finance and control.
“The way to open communication channels and agree responsibility for complementary aspects of the buyer-process is to systemise and define each element.”
Bringing clarity into how these departments impact the sales process helps drive accountability and consistency across the in-house functions.
The more granular alignment of the buyer-seller process, the more effective the revenue engine and failure to align internal teams to a common framework leads to working in silos, duplicated effort, wasted time and resource, and counter-productive political agendas.
Customer Retention and Experience
Without perfect, data-driven clarity into how company processes impact the customer, it is impossible to optimise the customer experience at each point in the buying cycle.
“The buyer-seller process framework is the nucleus of customer experience efforts.”
The impact of this is greatest when selling complex applications with long sales cycles. The customer judges supplier behaviour and service levels over several months, and their perspective of the supplier as a potential partner forms a large part of their decision-making criteria. It’s a snapshot of what it’s like to work together.
It becomes difficult to align internal team efforts without understanding how the sales execution model aligns with an optimal buyer process.
What is the solution?
Nobody teaches you how to build the buyer-seller framework, and companies can operate without it. However, it’s a lot better to have it in place because it strengthens inter-departmental efforts and the collaborative data model between the Operations, Enablement, Marketing and the Sales team.
Responsibility for the buyer-seller process framework sits in one of those grey areas between departments.
Once you have built the framework, defined and agreed each element, you are left with a collaborative, silo-free model to synchronise coaching and enablement efforts.”
At Bartlett Schenk & Company we have rich experience in building these frameworks for B2B, B2C and B2B2C processes.
If you are struggling to enable your team due to lack of process clarity, installing a new coaching program, or want to adopt a clearer, more data-driven sales execution model, drop us a line.