The Future of Enablement
By Tamara Schenk
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This interview with Jonathan Farrington was first published in Top Sales Magazine, November 2021 edition.
JF: What was the sales enablement journey since the pandemic, and where is it right now?
TS: Let's review the enablement journey since the pandemic hit the economy last year to answer this question. Enablement went through a journey of, in most cases, hard awakening and ongoing adaptation in all areas, such as what’s the right set-up, how to lead it, what to provide for whom to achieve what, the role of senior executive involvement and, of course, the role of technology. To understand the challenges and–at the same time–the great opportunities for enablement, let's look back and uncover what really happened.
Before the crisis, many companies hit the top-line revenue numbers due to a good economy and did not address the hidden but existing selling and enablement challenges. Many of the studies I enjoyed being involved in showed that only a tiny percentage of organizations had set up enablement formally and strategically and achieved tangible results. Most organizations had an enablement program somewhere in the business, providing fragmented services, not aligned to the business strategy, and unable to measure success. That led to the temporary end of enablement in many organizations.
Now, the opposite is the case. Enablement's relevance grew from 64% before the pandemic to 75% thereafter (see Showpad's 2021 Modern Selling Study) and available enablement job openings are increasing.
As in previous crises, the customers adjusted their buying behavior faster than most sales forces changed their way of selling. In this study, we learned that buying decisions were temporarily put on hold while buying priorities and criteria were adjusted to fit the massive push on digitalization.
Interestingly, we didn't find new selling challenges. Instead, existing challenges were amplified, such as not being able to find relevant content, lack of readiness for remote selling, and having a hard time addressing the economic buyer. These "broken things" are not new. Still, they have become more urgent now as we live in a VUCA world (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity) more than ever before.
JF: Sounds very interesting. Is there anything you didn't expect?
TS: Yes, indeed. I didn't expect such a big digital misunderstanding: Imagine, 82% said that they had access to the right digital tools to be successful. Asking more details, 77% said that these tools were video meeting solutions, and only 44% had an enablement content solution in place. No wonder that the most significant selling challenge was not being able to access the right content at the right time. So in digitalization alone, we found frictions and fragmentations that are neither productive nor effective. However, enablement has more to fix than digitalization only.
JF: Isn't digital transformation a key challenge? And what are the other critical enablement challenges?
TS: Yes, digital transformation is a crucial challenge for enablement leaders. However, any enablement challenges should always be addressed from the organization's business goals, current state, context, and, of course, their customers' journey and selling motions (e.g., transactional, complex, enterprise). If the enablement strategy is derived from these parameters, you can also answer the related technology questions and make the right decisions. But not the other way around. I don't recommend throwing in technology before performing thoughtful conceptual and strategic alignment work first.
Other key challenges? One is that many organizations still underestimate the need and the power of effective orchestration across all involved functions and business units. And that's combined with another -- the lack of senior executive involvement. And one and two usually bring the third challenge, a lack of robust and scalable cross-functional frameworks such as mapping a comprehensive buyer’s journey and aligning each element to the sales process.
JF: Sounds interesting. Tell me more about a buyer-seller journey framework.
TS: Sure. That's the framework organizations use to define and collaborate upon each element of their buyer’s journey and decide how the sales process can empower buyers to make better decisions. It is also the foundation of the data model used by the operations and enablement teams to continuously learn and improve their services. Connecting each phase of the buyer’s journey to each step of the seller's journey is the key to making sure that this framework is robust, scalable, and adaptive at the same time.
This is a critical architectural foundation for the entire selling system as you can connect each enablement initiative to this framework, ensuring that everyone is on the same page right away. It also serves as a blueprint for the selling system's tech stack. And if several selling scenarios exist, such as mid-market, enterprise, or a partner landscape, there are several of those frameworks to be implemented.
Often forgotten, but if enablement programs and services are floating around and people don't understand their purpose and where they exactly belong on their buyer/seller journey framework, you won't be able to drive adoption. And adoption is the key to moving the performance needle.
JF: Could you elaborate a bit more on orchestration?
TS: Of course. Orchestration is more than collaborating cross-functionally. Orchestration is a leadership philosophy when leading in a "dotted line manner." This is the case for all enablement initiatives when various functions are working together, coming with different points of view on how things should be from their functional perspectives, resentments, and prejudices. Orchestration is a way of allowing everyone to be heard, of accepting different perspectives, and understanding data in the context of the challenges at hand, so that you can then co-create a shared vision of success for all functions involved, with a unified goal, to achieve the organization's desired customer experience and sales results. It is really powerful although it takes time to get there.
JF: Why is there still a lack of senior executive involvement?
TS: Great question. In my experience, this lack of senior executive involvement has two root causes. One is the mistake of considering enablement solely as a tactical program at a mid-management level or lower. Two is a homemade challenge: many enablement managers and leaders talk "enablement slang" instead of a business language that their executives can clearly understand. So, they talk about playbooks, content ideas, technology, and onboarding programs. That's of no interest for a sales leader unless you can connect them to sales results. We want our salespeople to translate features and functions into business-related messages. And rightly, enablement should help them to do that. But enablement leaders also have to translate their feature and function slang into business language that senior executives understand and care about. Enablement is a lot about internal selling, and that has become even harder since the pandemic.
JF: We’ve discussed the current challenges a lot. Now, what's the future of sales enablement?
TS: The future of sales enablement is about scaling enablement excellence in a VUCA world. This requires applying agile principles, creating adaptive enablement services, and consistently leveraging insights to drive tangible results—the way to get there is via effective orchestration. Of course, scaling enablement excellence this way requires a digitally integrated enablement technology platform, incorporated in the CRM ecosystem, able to grow and scale with an organization's ever-changing needs.
JF: That's a lot to digest. What are agile principles in an enablement context?
TS: The need to be more agile is based on the volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world we live in. Most of us didn't imagine the massive changes in all areas of our lives we experienced since Covid. But it happened. Given the magnitude of global challenges at hand, we must prepare now to thrive in a VUCA world.
The initial ideas of the Agile Manifesto apply to enablement as well. For instance, the focus on the customer experience. For enablement that's empowering the customer-facing pros through the lens of the actual customers–and the need that businesspeople and those who design and implement enablement services work together daily are crucial in our VUCA world. Covid showed that there were organizations that could shift their teams to work entirely from home immediately, while others needed to figure things out for a few months. It's not that the fast ones had everything prepared, but they had mechanisms and prerequisites in place that allowed them to shift gears very fast. And that impacts leadership principles. Are they current-state-oriented and slow, or are they agile and adaptive? The latter is what we need more than ever.
A key enablement challenge for this decade and the VUCA world we live in is to develop adaptive fluency in all customer-facing roles to be able to master various buying scenarios.
JF: What does adaptive fluency mean for enablement specifically?
TS: Fast-changing buyer behaviors require adaptive enablement services for sellers–because they are asked to adjust their selling behaviors, messaging, and approach to each selling situation specifically. That's why foundational frameworks such as the buyer-seller journey framework are essential. They provide the much-needed orientation and get everyone on the same page, including the managers who can tailor their coaching also based on the said framework. You can think of those foundational frameworks as the sheet music for effective orchestration.
Established enablement programs that worked elsewhere just a few years ago are most probably no longer sufficient, adequate, or effective. Sellers must develop adaptive fluency, especially in all digital ways of communication at all stages of the customer's journey, while simultaneously addressing changing buyer behaviors, decision criteria, and requirements. It's a lot to cover, to learn, and to master. If an organization is on a growth path with an exploding product portfolio, things can become overwhelming for most sellers.
Enablement must empower sellers to develop this adaptive fluency for these conversations with, for instance, various value messaging approaches for different buyer roles and challenges. Pre-configured frameworks and tools must be adjusted. This requires content and a lot of skill development and ongoing coaching so that sellers can develop the necessary adaptive fluency. The goal of any guided selling script is to make it obsolete as sellers practice and receive insights-based tailored coaching to develop the required adaptive fluency for any selling situation. And that drives buyer engagement which is more crucial than ever to winning deals. This is where sales content management, sales readiness, sales effectiveness, and buyer engagement come full circle.
JF: Final question, how do you measure the business impact of enablement?
TS: Showing the impact of their enablement efforts is crucial for any enablement leader to survive. First, the enablement strategy must be aligned with the company's market and sales goals. Enablement is very different for a start-up, a scale-up, or an established player in the market. Aligning with the executives’ vision and goals is essential to ensure senior executives' involvement, advocacy, and engagement.
Second, it's essential to establish a baseline set of leading indicators, such as conversion rates per stage, to show the before and after the impact of an enablement pilot. An example pilot might be a new value messaging approach for a particular industry/buyer role. Enablement leaders should identify ambassadors / early adopters across the organization and then provide clear communication follow-up of the results.
Afterword:
As Jonathan Farrington sadly passed away in November, this interview is the last one he conducted. I am humbled and honoured at the same time. Thank you, Jonathan, for all you did for the sales profession.