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 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 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


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.

1

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.

2


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


Poor Very Poor

15%

33%40%

11%

1%


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



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


Organizations without SE Teams


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%



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



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



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


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


QUESTIONHow do you define sales enablement? Which activities do you believe should be included in sales enablement?


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


6.5

7

7.5

8

8.5

9

Training/Onboarding

ProducingContent

IdentifyingBest Practices


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



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



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



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%



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.


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.

http://www.highspot.com/sales-enablement

http://www.highspot.com

http://www.heinzmarketing.com