During the last couple of weeks, just arriving back to business from my Holiday vacations, I just started to re-connect with my sales network in order to finalize my Sales Enablement planning for 2013. During those sessions we discussed what worked and did not show us successful in 2012 and how we could do better in 2013.
One of the major observations during these meetings has been, that there still seems to be a lack of alignment between corporate functions, such as operations, portfolio management, marketing in order to drive successful Sales Enablement. Most functions do still seem to do sole planning cycles and does not interact/communicate very well.
Based on those observations, I come to the conclusion that Sales Enablement is becoming more and more of a cross-functional discipline, bringing all relevant parts of the organization to the table when it comes to planning, executing activities and measuring success. With that, Sales Enablement is taking more and more of a moderating role between marketing, portfolio management, and operations. It needs to make sure that strategies from all parts of the organizations are considered holistic.
Sales Enablement is no longer just a simple appendix of sales. It is an integral part of the whole planning and execution process of a sales strategy, and at the end, making sure that KPIs are being met. It is like a sailing journey, a sailing team is only as strong as every individual is contributing to the team's success.
