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15 Things Only Sales Enablement Professionals Understand

Aug 28th, 2017

 

The sales enablement role is so unique that there are some things only sales enablement professionals understand. While there are many parts of the job that bring sales enablement folks joy, there are also many distinctive challenges that they face in their day-to-day.

Here are 15 things that will ring true for any sales enablement professional.

1. When your job requires you to basically be three different people

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Sales enablement professionals are part trainer, part strategist, part superhero. But it’s okay, because you know you’ve got that in your DNA.

2. When you realize it was a terrible idea to do sales training the morning after a sales dinner

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Knowledge retention and attention span are at an all-time low the morning after a raucous sales dinner or awards banquet. Note taken.

3. Your reps say they want more training, but then when you give it to them, they tell you it’s too much

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Sometimes it feels like you can never find the perfect balance when training your sales reps. The most effective sales enablement programs have a balance of both formal and informal training. Here’s to finding the happy medium for your team!

4. When you’re trying to explain the concept of sales enablement to family and friends

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Now you know how nanotechnological bioinformatics system integration researchers feel! While it doesn’t seem that complicated to you, even sales enablement professionals don’t exactly agree on the definition of sales enablement.

5. You remove that one piece of content that no one’s used for 6 months, and 30 seconds later get a phone call “what happened to that?

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You try to be proactive about only including the most important and most viewed content for your sales team. But just when you thought no one was using a particular piece of content, it’s the first thing someone asks for. Today’s sales enablement technologies provide critical content analytics so you can see who is viewing what and how often.

6. You’re in sales enablement. That doesn’t mean you’ll be able to recommend the best restaurant in Dallas, be IT support, book travel, or fill out expense reports

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As a sales enablement professional, you play a lot of roles but personal assistant and concierge shouldn’t be one of them! Sometimes you just have to “shake it off!”

7. No matter how much you communicate, you’re always doing too much or too little

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Good communication is one of the most critical skills a sales enablement professional can have. If you’re having trouble getting the word out about new sales content, try some of these tips

8. When you meet another sales enablement professional…

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Sales enablement is such a new and emerging profession that it’s exciting (and sometimes rare) to meet another professional in your field!

9. …But then you realize you have very different jobs

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Depending on the company, sales enablement can mean very different things. Some sales enablement professionals are in charge of dynamic programs with training and coaching, while some have purely training-based roles.

10. When the number one response to new sales training is “But I need to sell!”

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The sole job of a sales rep is to bring in more revenue for your organization. They have quotas to meet and are in competition with their fellow reps. So they often see training and coaching as something that’s taking away from their selling time. One of the most important things you can do in this situation is put yourself in your sales reps’ shoes – this will make you a more effective sales enablement leader.

Related: 4 Ways to Be a More Effective Sales Enablement Leader

11. Your sales rep needs that success story that doesn’t exist – and they needed it yesterday!

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Sales reps need content to send to prospects, and sometimes they need it on the spot. To prevent this scenario from happening, adopt a tool that will allow your reps to view applicable content within the CRM.

12. You value social selling so when you get a prospecting message on LinkedIn, you have to resist the urge to critique their approach

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You are an expert on outreach techniques and you help sales reps hone their social selling skills. So when someone contacts you on LinkedIn, you can’t help but critique them and think of how you would coach them if they were your rep.

13. You’re not a psychologist, but sometimes you play one from 9 to 5

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Steve is approaching your office again and you can’t help but think “is this conversation going to be personal or work related?” But you take it in stride because it means you have credibility with your sales reps and they trust your opinion.

14. How you feel while planning sales kickoff

Sales kickoff is your time to shine and it takes a lot of time and effort to plan. You know that this event sets the stage for the quarter or year, and everyone’s counting on you to make this event the best one yet.

15. How you feel after another successful sales kickoff

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You know you totally rocked it. But it’s no surprise to you, because you always do!

Help your ‘B’ players learn from your ‘A’ players with this exclusive eBook, Peer Learning for Sales: Managing the Chaos.