I wrote a recent blog on how to provide sales a 360° view on product and services offerings. I recently recapped the key learnings form my meeting. And when I wrote about Communities of Practice and Knowledge Management, I just noticed that from my personal experience there are many connection points in terms of collaboration and engagement included.
From a sales enablement perspective we are always looking for achieving the following:
- Provide information how to engage with other parts of the organization during a sales cycle
- How do typical compensation and discount models look like
- How do you compete and/or partner with additional/other offerings in your market
- Provide any examples and showcases where sales successfully positioned your portfolio
However, when looking at the key characteristics of CoP (domain, practice and community), to me there is a natural connection between sales effectiveness and CoP.
When looking at sales, you need to make knowledge available in order to ensure sales colleagues selling successfully. In this case it is about connecting sales to a community, that has a certain domain expertise, exchanging practices and collaborate. So at the end you might drive sales effectiveness though CoP via the following mechanism:
- Enable collaboration: invite sales to CoP discussions and knowledge exchange. This will provide a comprehensive outside-in perspective to your solutions and services portfolio
- Provide a knowledge base: every CoP should provide a knowledge base where sales have access every time and everywhere. This knowledge should be structured according certain characteristics, such as key words, etc.
- Enable feedback: include feedback from sales during your CoP discussions and intenerate this into your content review cycles. Fresh, relevant content is always appreciated by sales colleagues
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