Sales Enablement is the hot go-to-market topic of 2014-2015. It’s all about equipping sales people with content and tools to help advance opportunities to close. Last week I had the chance to co-present on Sales Enablement with KnowledgeTree customer Brian Groth from Xactly. It was a great session at the Open Lounge during Dreamforce. I’ve summarized the presentation below, and included our slides from the session. You can also access a recap of Brian’s portion of the session here. The Challenge of Sales and Marketing A classic business problem has long been the sales and marketing divide. Hundreds of blog posts and articles have been written on the topic. We ourselves have written and surveyed extensively on the topic too. It’s now time to move on. We can move on by looking into the core reasons for the friction and how to solve them. The friction generally stems from a misalignment in terms of goals. So, what are the primary goals of marketing and sales enablement for B2B companies? They’re twofold: First, generate qualified leads that translate into qualified opportunities and won deals. Second, create and deliver sales tools that help sales teams to advance deals through to close. The sales and marketing / sales enablement divide arises because of misalignments in achieving these two goals. But the good news is that as an industry we’re making great strides on both fronts. The Rise of Smarketing Increasingly sales and marketing are no longer two solitudes that stand apart. Instead, they are intimately connected. That’s because it is no longer enough for marketing to generate high lead volumes. Marketing must deliver leads that are qualified, that translate into genuine opportunities. Sales and marketing are now jointly responsible for revenue numbers and are signing Service Level Agreements to that effect. Holding marketing accountable and closely monitoring conversion rates at all stages is vital to helping enable sales teams with truly qualified and prioritized prospects to work. But What About Sales Enablement Tools? As an industry we are making great progress on the first cause of the divide. But what about working toward getting great sales tools into sales teams hands. This is where marketing and sales enablement teams can get ahead of the market with a strong focus. Let’s explore why sales enablement tools are so critical today to address the sales and marketing divide. The New Sales Funnel If you’ve ever bought technology for your company you were likely faced with a burning issue that rose to the top of your priorities. After all, you weren’t waiting by the phone for a sales person to call you. Instead you were likely ranking the challenges of your company, and investigating solutions to those problems. Jill Konrath in her fantastic book Snap Selling discusses the concept of the ‘harried buyer’. That is, a buyer who has so many competing priorities that it is