You could feel our category’s momentum at the 2019 Sales Enablement Soirée.
The world’s largest sales enablement gathering brought together thousands of leaders, practitioners, analysts, and investors from around the world to network, share best practices, and discuss success metrics for sales enablement.
Analytics took center stage, both literally and figuratively. Notable keynotes from Paul DePodesta, the mind behind the game-changing Moneyball strategy, and Gartner’s analyst Brent Adamson, co-author of the Challenger Sale, discussed how analytics can move us past our biases — and those of our buyers — and unlock strategic thinking unencumbered by the status quo.
But this was just the beginning. Here are five key Sales Enablement Soirée takeaways:
Embrace “Growth Enablement”
The majority of attendees agreed that there is a growing imperative to enable all customer-facing teams, from sellers to customer success. We wholeheartedly agree. Our CEO Robert Wahbe recently presented this concept, examining how sales, marketing, and enablement can partner on guiding anyone who speaks with a customer through compelling conversations.
Focus on Metrics That Matter
From Paul DePodesta’s keynote to panel discussions, there was significant urgency about improving our ability to track the impact of sales enablement on growth metrics. An interesting example was during a panel on enabling front-line managers — panelists discussed the notion of “return on front-line manager enablement,” which measures managers’ success in creating a culture of continued learning and readiness in their organizations. If you’re interested in how sales readiness has evolved, check out this eBook.
Improve Your Customers’ Experience to Drive Growth
The shift toward the “subscription economy” across industries is making it more critical than ever to ensure that all of your customer-facing teams can not only win customers, but delight and retain those customers. Salesforce’s Tiffany Bova synthesized this imperative in a terrific keynote, mapping enablement’s charter to sales, customer satisfaction, account management, and more.
Drive Executive Sponsorship
From analysts at CSO Insights, Forrester, Gartner, and SiriusDecisions to leaders from a variety of businesses, the imperative for executive buy-in rang clearly throughout the Soirée. Attendees discussed challenges related to obtaining executive support for enablement, and those who had recounted the benefits of this critical element. During her presentation, CSO Insights’ Seleste Lunsford shared a simple, powerful framework to drive executive support:
- Find the executive stakeholder
- Identify one specific metric for growth
- Align sales enablement to the achievement of that metric
- Measure the impact, then optimize
For more of CSO Insights’ actionable recommendations for enablement success, read their fifth annual industry study.
Join the Community
Arguably the most inspiring part of the Soirée was seeing the community come together. Attendees spanned industries, geographies, company sizes, and had a range of disciplines. They clearly shared a strong desire for the chance to share best practices, learnings, and insights with each other — and the Soirée delivered. Everyone enjoyed a unique opportunity to hear different perspectives from all of those collaborating on an exciting path forward. Even if you didn’t attend the event, you can be a part of this movement — join the conversation at Sales Enablement PRO.
The Soirée may be over, but our opportunity is just beginning. Ensure that your strategy delivers measurable results in 2020 by using the event’s keynotes, panels, and recaps.
How was your Soirée experience? I’d love to hear your thoughts on LinkedIn.
