by Paige O’Neill, CMO at Seismic
The B2B customer journey is longer and more disjointed than ever before – and, as a result, go-to-market (GTM) teams have to work harder to break through distractions and get in front of their customers. Today’s digital-first world poses significant challenges for sellers as their buyers can be easily swayed by the information at their fingertips and they’re choosing to interact with salespeople less.
In fact, new data from Gartner found that only 5% of the buyer’s journey is now spent with a salesperson. Because of this new challenge, B2B marketers are finding new ways to work with their enablement teams to drive more impact, break down silos, and enable the entire revenue-generating organization for success. But while enablement can have a lasting impact on organizations when done correctly, there are also roadblocks to adoption that can prove hazardous if left unaddressed.
With organizations poised to increase their investment in enablement tools this year, it’s critical for leaders to overcome these adoption hurdles as soon as possible to reap the full benefits enablement technology has to offer.
Enablement is inevitable, so what’s the hold up?
While enablement technology has been on the scene since 1999, it has become a growing priority for executive leadership in recent years. Today, enablement is a key aspect of day-to-day work and supports an employee’s overall career success and satisfaction – and its capabilities continue to grow year over year.
So much so that, according to a recent study, enablement technology is no longer a “nice to have” tool – it’s now an essential component for GTM teams. In fact, the data found that 82% of senior marketing and sales leaders reportedly use the technology at work. The benefits of enablement run deep as they can lead to increased revenue and hitting major goals for client-retention and marketing teams.
With a host of benefits, one would think revenue teams would be apt to leverage every single aspect of their enablement tools. Yet, many teams still struggle to overcome hurdles and reap the rewards.
Why? Let’s dive in:
Challenge #1: Lack of Executive Buy-In
New tools can spark a lot of questions from employees across the board. Too often, the onus falls on company leadership to make sure every employee understands the power of enablement and how it can help them do their jobs more effectively.
It’s up to executives to ensure revenue teams are up to speed and committed to being partners when it comes to implementing enablement tech. Without this buy-in and support, teams often run the risk of creating operational gaps.
Challenge #2: Insufficient Training Programs:
When companies adopt new technology, training is oftentimes uniform and doesn’t meet teams where they’re at. Each generation is unique with some easily able to embrace new tools and others requiring more time to get used to the technology.
Today’s workforce is extremely diverse, which is essential for sales teams. Diversity brings together new skills, knowledge, and networks to a team – all critical components to reach buyers. However, many teams struggle to address generational diversity, specifically. Executives might consider holding team training sessions that cater to each employee’s learning style and hosting sales team office hours to answer questions and discuss best practices for leveraging new technology.
Eighty-nine percent of sales and marketing leaders agree that providing a variety of learning and training experiences encourages different generations to feel confident navigating new tools. Which is proof that when multiple training formats are provided, teams can quickly feel confident in their abilities to use emerging technologies.
Challenge #3: Siloed Business Functions
Over the last decade, enablement tools have dramatically changed and their purpose has evolved alongside it. In today’s business landscape, these tools are the bridge between customer-facing teams, ensuring the seamless delivery of assets and one, consistent brand. However, when the rollout of this tech is siloed, it leaves a lot of the technology’s benefits behind.
Enablement software is uniquely poised to provide additional benefits when utilized by multiple teams, including streamlining typical content chaos, solving for disparate processes, and aligning on company expectations. Notably, 97% of companies that use enablement technology have implemented the tools across multiple departments. And a mere 3% leverage the tools for a single team. This paints a clear picture that enablement should be leveraged collaboratively across business functions in order to reap results.
The case for technology adoption
With the rate at which the adoption of enablement technology is growing, companies can’t afford to miss out on the full potential of these tools. Successful implementation of any kind of technology is critical in getting the most out of a tech stack and pushing teams to achieve new heights.
By anticipating and proactively accounting for internal roadblocks – from a lack of executive buy-in to deficiencies in enablement training and siloed business functions – teams are setting themselves up to best tackle these challenges head on.
