Sales Enablement: A Master Framework to Engage, Equip, and Empower A World-Class Sales Force

The authors look at the sales enablement function holistically and as services to enhance sales productivity. Practical and realistic guide.

The fact that we need to transform how we engage and collaborate with customers is clear to top sales executives, how to successfully do that is not. In Sales Enablement - A Master Framework, Tamara Schenk and Byron Matthews provide field-proven insights into how sales enablement teams can optimize the performance of the sales forces they serve.

Good read for those in or seeking to be in this field!

A very well written book on an key emerging sales topic.

Great book

This right now is the best sales enablement book out there. It lays out a clear foundation for building a sales enablement organization and the case for why it is so important. It also helps benchmark your existing program against best practices with a focus on outcomes. If you are familiar with CSO Insights research, a lot of what is in the book may seem repetitive however they did a nice job of tying together the research into a flow that works.

This book could not be timelier. Sales Enablement is a fast-growing discipline as evidenced by the rapid proliferation of the Sales Enablement Society. This book provides a roadmap for building a sales enablement organization.Tamara is one of the top 50 sales bloggers in the world. She has been highly regarded as a speaker and writer for years. She along with Bryon Matthews, the CEO of the Miller Heiman Group, have provided a Sales Enablement Framework that takes the reader through a pathway to improving sales performance. The authors provide data and insights from empirical research conducted by CSO Insights along with real-life data from clients to illustrate and prove their recommendations. Readers can use the data and insights to benchmark their organizations against best practices.The book is divided into five parts.• Part One: Lays the foundation by defining what enablement is and how it helps to improve performance.• Part Two: Introduces the Enablement Clarity Model, a framework that can help guide your efforts to create a scalable, adaptive discipline.• Part Three: Goes deeper into the scope of services that enablement offers and how they must be aligned to be effective.• Part Four: Focuses on how to create and deliver these services using a formalized, collaborative process. The authors also examine the role of technology and how to measure results.• Part Five: provides a look at where the profession of sales is headed and how a formal sales force enablement discipline will be a must-have for future sales success.This is a must read for every sales enablement professional, Chief Revenue Officer and President/CEO that wants to understand the keys to growing sales performance. Order your copy today; you won’t be disappointed!

.Not only because it uses the diamond as metaphor for a very comprehensive clarity model for Sales Force Enablement. The term Sales Force Enablement by itself already provides more clarity about the target audience to be enabled than the generic term Sales Enablement. The book combines anecdotal evidence, gained from several years of field experience, developing sales enablement from a project into a discipline, with pertinent research to arrive at a very useful set of models providing a master framework for professionals interested in starting or augmenting a sales enablement discipline.Right at the beginning, we are reminded, with the Sales Relationship/Process (SRP) Matrix, that selling is very situational and there is no single way to become a world-class sales force. Consequently, the book provides maturity models helping to adapt the Sales Force Enablement Discipline to the context in which a particular sales force operates.The Clarity Model is a good vehicle to build a common understanding among all stakeholders involved in Sales Force Enablement. The Clarity Model comprises the following facets (aspects) to be considered for fostering a common understanding of who should be enabled by whom and how.At its core, the model suggests an inside out view and therefore it starts with the customer in mind. This customer orientation is the guideline that all customer-facing professionals and their managers (Customer Facing Departments) need to provide a positive customer experience by fulfilling the customers’ expectations.Anchoring the common view in the firm’s strategy and building a leader-sponsored charter gives the sales enablement professionals the needed legitimacy to orchestrate the collaboration of the various silos (e.g., Sales Operations, Marketing, Human Resources, Product Development, Learning & Development, IT) to successfully enable the Customer Facing Departments to provide a positive customer experience.The facet of Effective Enablement Services then describes the elements to be offered to the Customer Facing Departments to enable them to provide the customer experience. While the aspects Content and Training are expected topics here, Coaching Services only come into focus when the whole sales force (salespeople and their managers and leaders) is defined as the target audience.Three further facets: Formalized Collaboration, Integrated Enablement Technology and Efficient Enablement Operations describe the Inner Workings of Enablement; helping sales enablement professionals to understand with which other constituencies and how they will have to interact to provide valuable offerings.The Customer’s Path provides an extensive view of how customers buy. It comprises 3 phases (Awareness, Buying, Implementation & Adoption). This model is the foundation for the Sales Enablement Services Framework, which is developed during the detailed discussion of the Enablement Services. The mapping of these services to the customer’s path enforces the outside-in view.An important part of the book is dedicated to building a Charter. A first chapter is dedicated to giving an overview about the topics to be covered and how to cover them. The detailed discussion of the services, collaboration, technology and operations then allows the authors to define a required overall maturity model for a specific context in which a particular sales force is operating. How to arrive at quantitative targets to be included in the Charter is covered in a separate chapter. For people who learn better from examples, a sample Charter is provided in the appendix of the book.The strong emphasis on the Charter seems merited, considering that building and operating a Sales Enablement Discipline has important transformational aspects. For a transformation to be successful, an alignment of the mental models of the constituencies involved or concerned is needed. The Charter is the vehicle to arrive at and ensure this alignment.Throughout the book, research data is provided to underline the pertinence of the topics discussed by showing the positive correlations on performance indicators that could be found in various recent studies. Sales Enablement Professionals are thus also well equipped to underpin the relevance of the topics addressed in the Charter for business outcomes.Finally, the book also provides insights about the attitude needed by an individual for having a successful career as Sales Enablement Professional. One must be aware and willing, not wanting to do everything him/herself but rather to convince others to contribute their efforts and sometimes even their budgets to achieve the desired outcomes. This is no easy task, as some constituencies will claim to already be “enabling” sales and might consider the Sales Enablement Discipline as an intrusion into their domain.

I work in the sales enablement space and the biggest compliment I can pay this book is to say whenever I speak to someone who has read it, the conversation is always focussed on the key aims of to the business and how sales enablement can help address this is tactical and strategic ways, elevating the position to where it needs to be.The foreword by the excellent Amy Borsetti sets the scene of the 'why' perfectly and hits on a number of the key challenges and opportunities facing sales organisations in 2018.It's an excellent read, full of practical advice, backed by data. It is clear to anyone in the industry that Europe is behind the US in sales enablement today. If executives read this book or have access to the key messages, the gap could be closed very quickly!

To be honest, I couldn't get on with this book. I must admit I had expected something different. Maybe a chapter on why Sales Enablement and then an overview on what it is and why it's needed. The book assumes you know all that. We then jump in, with loads of data and diagrams, but without the upfront "why" I found it difficult to concentrate. I'm sure it's a good book, but it just didn't seem to work with me. Sorry.

I think this is one giant e-book masquerading as a hardback. Turgid, hard to read and unnecessarily lengthy. Structure is difficult to follow. Overall, not my favourite book on sales enablement.

Well written in the context of modern selling. Authors take you through journey of selling from product based selling to perspective selling. Second part where recommendation starts is the climax. I read it twice as I was new to Sales enablement but in second effort was effort worth taken. Implemented learnings from them and saw good results.Much appreciated for beautiful craft.

Good book if someone looking to know more about Sales Enablement