Month: March 2010

Job opening – Sales Enablement Director at Axway in Phoenix, Arizona

Old! Out dated!

Sales Enablement Director ~ Visionary Needed to Launch Financial Services Solutions

Job Information

Company: Axway
Location: Phoenix, Arizona
Position: Sales Enablement Director
Type: Full Time

As a Sales Enablement Director for Axway, you’ll be a key contributor to the strategic direction of Axway’s financial services business in the U.S. and U.K. In essence, this is a marketing role within sales; your charter is to work with sales management and product/solution marketing to map Axway’s technology offerings to financial services industry trends and develop go-to-market programs for lead generation, targeted prospecting, and industry events. This position is directly responsible for managing the rollout and execution of these initiatives and is jointly responsible for the education of the broader team accordingly. Your thought leadership and creative energy around mission-critical programs will directly impact Axway’s bottom line. The position will involve 25% to 33% travel, and should hold strong appeal to individuals who value autonomy and can effectively drive change as required to meet business objectives.

Axway recently merged with Tumbleweed Communications to become the leading global provider of multi-enterprise solutions and infrastructure, serving more than 11,000 organizations in more than 100 countries. Axway speeds and secures business interactions – both inside and outside the enterprise – by optimizing the way information is moved, managed and protected. Axway provides professional and managed services, as well as cloud computing and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) offerings. […]

Headquartered in Phoenix, Arizona, Axway’s global presence spans 20 countries. We offer a full benefits package including medical, dental, vision, and a 401K matching program.

Working from either our headquarters in Phoenix or in Redwood City, California, you’ll take on the challenge of working with cross departmental internal groups, introducing and bringing to market a mix of financial services solutions. Other locations will be considered based on the strength of the candidate. Your mission will be enabling our sales teams to grow their businesses through effective and results-focused research, training, field tools, communication and marketing programs. You’ll leverage a solid understanding of various financial service markets, and work with the available analysts and trade publications to help you understand what the trends are in that industry. While competency in this role is weighted 70% business to 30% technical, you still will be tasked with mapping financial industry trends into our technology offerings: including managed file transfer, business-to-business collaboration and mail systems. Axway’s solutions are used within wholesale banking, securities, wealth management, brokerage, investment services, life insurance, property and casualty insurance, consumer banking, and payments. You will be conversant in several of the above to effectively understand and size addressable markets for our solutions, and to make viable analyses using Excel. Armed with this information you’ll create and assemble effective go-to-market kits/sales playbooks that allow our reps to understand problems in the vertical and how our technology addresses the issues. We’ll look to your superior written and verbal communications and well conceived PowerPoint presentations to get your information across to all pertinent stakeholders within the company. To help generate leads, this position will also coordinate/develop webinars and attend various industry events.

Related Keywords:
sales enablement, business process analysis, demand generation, planning, analytics, […] electronic collaboration, managed file transfer, business integration, […]”

IDC says Sales Enablement and Content Audits are great ways to save money

On March 31st, 2010, Matthias Roebel from MING Labs posted ‘IDC says Sales Enablement and Content Audits are great ways to save money’:

“‘IDC Forecasts Tech Sales & Marketing Expenses to Grow Faster Than Revenue in 2010′, press release from March 30, 2010:

“The International Data Corporation (IDC) Executive Advisory Group forecasts that global sales and marketing expenses will to grow at 4.7% and 3.5% respectively in 2010, outpacing the projected 3.2% growth in worldwide IT spending. These expense gains will lead tech executives to accelerate their initiatives to improve the productivity and cost efficiency of sales and marketing.

In addition, executives may continue to seek greater sales and marketing alignment through dramatic organization and reporting changes, as a way to solve the costly misalignments that have continually undermined sales and marketing integration and efficiency. […]“

We have been addressing sales and marketing misalignments for large b2b enterprises since 2006 and it is great to see that IDC shares our point of view that sales enablement, content audits and improved campaigns are the way to go:

“Within the typical tech marketing organization, IDC sees that executives have numerous opportunities for savings and efficiency. “Sales enablement, content audits, and campaign vs. product go-to-market programs are all great ways to save money, and to make customers happier at the same time,” noted Rich Vancil, vice president of IDC’s Executive Advisory Group.”

For our approach to content audits please see our blog post on Content Intelligence.”

What helps sales reps to achieve their targets? Case studies, case studies, case studies, questions and answers, customer testimonals

On March 1, 2010, Lilia Shirman (@B2BGuru) wrote the post To reach the moon, match enthusiasm with (sales) resources. These 5 really help! on her blog revenueorchard.com:

“[…] Setting big goals at a sales kickoff and barraging reps with information about the newest products just isn’t enough. The top reps will deliver the numbers in any case. The rest will struggle without extensive resources and support.

Sales reps report that the following are especially effective in helping them achieve their targets:

  1. Case studies, case studies, case studies. Repeatedly and consistently rated as the most useful sales tool. […]
  2. In-account deal support from subject-matter, industry, or technology specialists. This is especially critical in larger companies, where account managers must be relationship experts, but cannot possibly know the details of every product, business process, or industry (unless they are vertically-aligned). The very fact of bringing in an expert who is perceived as more senior by the customer is often enough to move a deal forward.
  3. Business-level messaging and sales tools targeted at the high-level decision makers and budget holders. These should complement detailed product-focused content, which is necessary but insufficient bu itself.  Business messaging targets the audience evaluating the investment rather than the people evaluating your product.
  4. Training & tools that enable sales reps to ask great questions and have intelligent conversations with customers at multiple organizational levels and functional roles. Asking great questions accomplishes three critical things: Positions the sales person as an ally and advisor, demonstrates that they can listen, and provides valuable information about the customers that can guide the rep in structuring the deal.
  5. Quantitative results achieved for other customers. While compliments (customer testimonials that discuss how easy you are to work with) are good, hard numbers about specific improvements they achieved are always more powerful. Numbers in the elevator pitch get attention and meetings, and numbers in the business case  help close the deal.

[…]”

The two links above have been added by the author of this blog. In relation to point #4 above: In a Sales Enablement solution with rating, commenting, uploading of user generated content and similar web 2.0 (enterprise 2.0) features all employees not only sales reps can ask and answer questions. At the same time, marketing can benefit from the feedback from the field. This created a closed-loop knowledge management in the enterprise where new industry trends or customer needs which sales people hear about get shared and addressed. Through content audits (content intelligence) areas for which no marketing assets have been developed yet get a red flag and so do areas where content is outdated.

sharing around content experiences with peers in BizSphere

Enabling your sales channels with content for each situational context

On March 29, 2010, Matthias Roebel from MING Labs posted the blog post ‘Enabling your sales channels with content for each situational context’:

“Just a few days ago, I had a very interesting conversation with the Sales Leader of a large IT distributor. In the past they’d naturally been focusing on optimizing their distribution processes from vendors to resellers. However, as IT products are more and more becoming a commodity and supply chains and ordering processes have become more and more streamlined over the years, there is pressure to think about some differentiation against their competitors.

How do you enable your sales channel with messages?

One aspect brought up in the discussion by the Sales Leader is to start focusing on the actual knowledge delivered around the products, services and solutions distributed. Here we’re not just talking about speeds and feeds, but about how to effectively communicate which products, services and solutions are addressing which specific customer needs. Delivering such value to resellers means that they could better serve their customers, which eventually will make all parties involved happy. In a way, the Sales Leader said, it’s about to setting up a content logistics framework.

Yet, setting-up content logistics like this is more complicated than you might think, as knowledge can’t be forced into transaction-oriented systems and processes. The reason is, that content is something multi-dimensional – its meaning depends on the situational context it is applied in. Only if applied in the right way, content turns into knowledge and eventually into a successful conversation with the customer.

In order to successfully implement a content logistics framework a variety of ingredients are important. ‘Content needs’ have to be defined, content production responsibilities need to be assigned, ways of content delivery should be thought through end-to-end… just to mention a few things that need to be put in place. To make the whole model work in the long run – to match actual customer needs for the right information with the content delivered to them by the reseller’s sales teams – the content logistics framework should be based on a semantic knowledge management framework.

Well, you might think, this sounds complicated, like trying to boil the ocean. I can tell you, the opposite is the case once you’ve got your head around it – I’d be more than happy to discuss this in more detail with everyone interested.”

Market Intelligence Information

BidManagementTools.org posted ‘One Company’s Approach to Marketing Intelligence’, on March 26, 2010:

“[…]

Market Intelligence Is More Accessible Than Ever

Thanks to improvements in technology and to the social Web, even bootstrap/small companies can cost-effectively access and process market information.

Examples of relatively, inexpensive easy-to-use sources of market information include highly-specialized blogs, search engine analytics, off-the-shelf customer relationship management (CRM) and sales enablement systems, and hybrid solutions that integrate basic functions from several of these technologies to help businesses determine what’s working and then replicate success.

Larger, better-capitalized companies have even more options. They can purchase better systems, and they can afford the human resources to make better use of the systems already in place.

But Resources Are Tighter

Still, everyone is trying to do more with less. Which means that companies that formerly invested in market intelligence as well as strategic and tactical marketing are now figuring out where to make cuts. If the want ads are any indication, many smaller companies are beefing up marketing communications at the expense of strategy and market intelligence.

On the other hand, some of the larger companies are taking the opposite approach. One sales executive told me recently: “A few years ago, we had lots of opportunities and pursued those that were easy to close. Now that everyone has to justify every penny they spend, we really have to understand and communicate our unique value to even get in the door.”

Consequently, his company has stepped up its market research and invested in honing its value propositions in each of its major market segments. […]”

 

See below BizSphere’s view on the information architecture for Sales Enablement where Market Intelligence (MI) and Competitive Intelligence (CI) have their place as well as value propositions for each industry vertical etc…:

information architecture for sales enablement

We don’t just need more information – we need more information organized in a way that helps to get the job done faster

web 3.0 with BizSphere

The following is a collection of posts from around the blogosphere that make the case that we need to improve on how we organize the firehose of information every B2B enterprise aims at its sales reps (especially in times of web 2.0 / sales 2.0 / enterprise 2.0). BizSphere thinks that semantic search (web 3.0) and providing context in which you can filter down to what is relevant to you, are the approach to take to overcome information overload.

‘Winning in the New World of B2B Sales’ by Sham Sao, CMO InfoGroup’s OneSource:

“Before you can win over your prospects with your charming personality and deep knowledge of how to address their business needs, you need to first open the door by getting in contact with them and holding their attention long enough to get them hooked – or at least hooked enough to continue the conversation. Sure it’s true that effective sales professionals need to be persistent, knowledgeable and confident, self-motivated and good listeners. But these qualities alone are not enough.

They also need accurate information that helps them get to the right person and gives them something valuable to say right out of the gate.

In a recent B2B SalesPulse survey conducted by Infogroup’s OneSource, sales professionals responded that they are relying on business information significantly more today compared to a year ago. It confirms that business information is becoming more and more critical for B2B sales. Using accurate, timely business information is especially important for sales professionals today who are under pressure to raise their quotas while sales staffing and resources remain tightly constrained, or are even being cut.

While sales teams need to access every relevant piece of information they can get from every source they can tap, they don’t just need more information – they need more information organized in a way that helps them get their job done faster. When sales teams spend inordinate amounts of time browsing the web and searching for those tidbits to help them get into the right company or to make a compelling pitch, they spend less time selling. The key is making this information actionable so sales reps can spend more time selling and less time researching.

This includes information from Social Media sources. Respondents to OneSource’s B2B SalesPulse survey rated LinkedIn as the most useful social networking tool, followed by blogs, Facebook and Twitter in that order (and closely grouped together). LinkedIn also showed the most growth with 48 percent of respondents saying they are using it more now versus a year ago. Surprisingly enough, even though LinkedIn showed the most growth, nearly a third of respondents are still not using it. […]”

 

Sort of along these lines is the post ‘#6: Focus on Internal Sales Enablement and Cutting to the Chase’, from March 25, 2010:

“Keep the emphasis on quality of collateral and programs, not volume. By providing Sales with top-notch materials and in-depth brand knowledge, they’ll be better positioned to do their job successfully and bring in new business.

Some companies, as the Senior Director of Services Strategy at one large technology corporation points out, have implemented a whole playbook program – internal prospecting, packaging content together, streamlining messages – to deliver content succinctly.

“Better organization of what is already out there makes it more usable and digestible in the field,” allowing Sales to get to the point quicker and, in turn, touch more prospects and generate more sales. […]”

I have not double checked the following numbers I found in the post ‘Sales people who research cost you big time!’:

“[…] So, what is the actual hourly value for a B2B salesperson? We’ve developed an excel calculator to help do the math. Let’s use a typical experienced B2B enterprise salesperson at a software company and apply these sample figures:

  • Annual compensation (at plan, or meeting quota): $200,000
  • Benefits Paid (20% of a 70K salary): $14,000
  • Annual Quota: $2 million
  • Include 2 weeks vacation and holidays

This salesperson’s true “hourly value” is $1,198!

For companies with higher quotas (I’ve seen annual quota’s as high as $14 million), this figure is even higher!

If you’d like to figure out your own salespeople’s hourly value, send me an email at silvia@industrygems.com and I will email you the calculator.

The next time you see your salespeople doing research, take interest. Using salespeople for anything other than selling, negatively affects your bottom-line. Find ways to remove those activities from their daily to-do list. It could be costing you over $1,000 an hour! Your sales people must focus on the thing they do best… selling!”

Let’s look at the Knowledge Management or Sharing aspect of Sales Enablement

sharing experiences in context in BizSphere

On March 27, 2010, Sumeet Moghe (@sumeet_moghe) posted ‘Enterprise 2.0 – Community Spaces can lead to Walled Gardens’ at LearningGeneralist.com:

“[…] community spaces are not only overhyped, but also if done incorrectly, a deterrent to knowledge sharing. This is a spin-off from Andrew Mcafee’s concept of walled gardens. Let me explain this through a scenario:

  • Company Foo establishes a knowledge sharing platform that allows every group of people to create their own space, with a separate set of access privileges.
  • The platform doesn’t have a way to search across different spaces, because every space is almost like a site in itself.
  • Soon, different groups of people (communities) set up ‘community spaces’ and restrict access only to members of the community. Sales has their own space. Technology has a separate space. Marketing has their own space. Support and Evolution has their own space. The story goes on.
  • One fine day a new salesman trying to put together a proposal needs information about:
    • Company Foo’s previous work in the space;
    • case studies of successful deployments in the domain;
    • Company Foo’s track record and capability supporting this kind of work;
    • and the various technology platforms they have expertise in
  • Given that each community has it’s own space (walled garden), the new salesman doesn’t have a way to search across all communities for the information he needs.
  • Over a painstaking few days, the new salesman eventually finds all the information he needs by signing in to every individual community space and searching separately on each space. He has to wait a couple of days before he gets approval to join a couple of community spaces, and that delays his proposal.

We could go on with this story but I guess you can see how tough things can be when every community builds their own isolated knowledge sharing space. Community knowledge can never become organisational knowledge this way, and over a period of time, the system becomes extremely difficult to manage. This is the classic nature of walled gardens in the enterprise.

Tear down the walls first

Organisational knowledge sharing can do without walled gardens. What we need instead is one place for all communities to share knowledge and the structure to emerge from user generated tags and metadata. This is where a certain bit of knowledge housekeeping comes in. I believe that leadership and knowledge management teams need to strongly discourage internal groups and communities from creating inaccessible islands of knowledge. There needs to be a strong incentive to contribute knowledge to one platform, that is powered by search.

Yes, there’ll always be the need to have team wikis and collaboration spaces. This is where it becomes important to clearly define the scope of team collaboration and organisational knowledge and create some clear (but porous) boundaries between the two. Which is to say for example, that it’s absolutely OK for a team to set up their own wiki or workspace and do so with minimal friction, but when some team knowledge becomes organisational wisdom the team has the incentive to contribute to the organisational knowledge base. The challenge for knowledge managers is to make this contribution as easy as possible so that people don’t have to make the same effort twice and the structure doesn’t come in the way of knowledge sharing.

My beliefs about post-modern Knowledge Management

In my current world view, I have a few beliefs:

  1. Enterprise knowledge needs to be public (to all employees) by default and private only if there’s a very, very good reason for it.
  2. Knowledge sharing needs to move from being part of closed channels to open platforms.
  3. People should have a choice to collaborate privately, but have the support to easily make their private knowledge public.
  4. Discussions and conversations should get organised using tags and metadata as against separate mailing lists and groups. People should have the option to subscribe using email, but this shouldn’t be the default.
  5. Knowledge managers need to define, maintain and protect the structure of ‘no initial structure’. The structure should emerge over time using tags, ratings and user input. This however needs continuous involvement with all communities and is by no means easy.
  6. Content stewardship is key — things don’t happen on their own. Knowledge managers need to keep their eye out for quality content on private channels/ spaces. They need to have the agility and presence of mind to move this to being organisational knowledge with a strong incentive for the authors. This is essential to the process of long lasting change.”

content intelligence via SVA BizSphere AG's Content Landscape

On the topic of keeping track of quality content (Which collateral works, which doesn’t? What is being downloaded, rated or commented on the most? Which author should be rewarded for successful content? Which area only has content that is older than two years? Etc…) I recommend the following further reading on content intelligence.

On the topic of email subscriptions I would remind not to forget offering an RSS feed, which for some people is preferred over email subscriptions, especially in case there are a lot of updates.

On the topic of letting users tag their content and having a good search engine, I would like to add the importance of aligning the information architecture in an enterprise, which could mean that in addition to free tags everything also needs to be tagged with the names of applicable offerings, services and solutions from the enterprise’s portfolio.

expansion of Sales Enablement roles within marketing headcount

On March 21, 2010, Kathleen Schaub LinkedIn account Twitter account posted ‘IDC 2010 Tech Marketing Barometer’:

“The 2010 forecast for marketing is partly sunny, according to the IDC 2010 Tech Marketing Barometer. Watch for organizational winds to shift and the atmospheric pressure from declining sales productivity to rise.

Marketing Leaders Forecast for 2010 – Partly Sunny

The 43 survey participants (my company, Sybase, participated in the study) will increase marketing budgets by an average of 3.5%. This follows an 8.3% reduction in 2009. So, we’re not quite where we were before the recession but doing better.

Blowing Down Silo Walls

Rich Vancil, IDC Vice President for CMO Advisory Service reports that marketing’s three pillars (corporate marketing, product marketing, and field marketing) still get the lion’s share of the marketing budget. However, Vancil says, their tendency towards silo orientation doesn’t sit well with buyers. Prospects disdain the way that corporate marketing tends to brag about solving world hunger, product marketing inundates them with product pitches, and field marketing treats everyone like a lead.

One antidote to silo-ism is the expansion of three new integrating roles. Collectively, these three roles now comprise 12% of the average tech company’s marketing headcount. The three roles are:

  • Campaign managers (managing integrated, themed, cross-silo, campaigns) are at 5.5% of the marketing organization
  • Marketing operations specialists( covering things such as systems, processes, metrics, benchmarking, planning, budgeting, learning and development, and CMO chief-of-staff) are at nearly 5% of the organization
  • Sales enablement staff (focused on getting the right tools to sales at the right time) are at about 2% of the organization

The biggest beneficiary of the expansion of these three roles may be the sales team.

Sales Productivity Under Pressure

A whopping 80% of survey participants will invest in Sales and Marketing Alignment this year – up from a not-too-shabby 60% last year. Here’s why:

Sales productivity is a train wreck. I don’t care which expert’s numbers you use – IDC, Forrester, SiriusDecisions, CSO Insights- they all show alarming trends. IDC reports that a full 50% of sales people didn’t make quota last year (sales managers expected only 30% to lag in the downturn). Customers told IDC that 2/3 of vendor switching is due to sales relationship problems. The average cost of sales is now at 11% of revenue and has increased above revenue growth rates for years. IDC estimates that there are about 4-5 margin points of waste in the sales budget.

Wow! That’s more that the whole marketing budget for some companies. Is it any wonder that companies are FRANTIC to get this puppy under control?

Surveyed companies will start alignment at the top, tightening relationships between the CMO and sales executives. IDC sales advisory group reports that about 20% of large companies are going farther, mashing up field marketing and sales. Some are even putting sales and marketing under a single executive. In 2010, companies intend to improve sales support (thus the increase in sales enablement roles). They intend to better integrate planning, budgeting, processes, and metrics (getting help from marketing operations). And, of course, they will invest in the never-ending quest for more and better leads (campaign managers will help here).

Digital, Social, and Influencers Continue their Dominating March

IDC reports that digital marketing continues to replace traditional programs, with a huge chunk coming out of paper-base collateral. Eighty percent of companies will add more digital marketing specialists and many will formalize social marketing dashboards. Spending for direct marketing, for analyst relations, and public relations will also expand. Automation continues to be a big focus – primarily systems that support the three new roles described above. Survey participants view lead management, CRM, campaign and database marketing systems to be the most important.

Looks like some very interesting trends are heating up.”

Buyer Enablement

On February 4, 2010, @3forward blogged the following (this URL does not exist anymore: 3forward.com/sales-leaders-blog/sales-2-0-may-put-you-out-of-business/)

“[…] recently hosted a brainstorming coffee meeting with a couple business owners considering dipping their toes into […] weekly blogging, modest social networking and establishing an entry level in-bound lead generation programs.  They could clearly envision the potential benefits once things were up and functioning, but still were not ready to pull the trigger on this overhaul to the way they have always sold.

Their reasons for delay were the same objections many others have when considering these new tools and new model for selling.  Those being: time to learn both what to do and how to do it; concern they won’t have enough value-added content to make it work and the lack of internal resources to launch and manage the new operation.

What I’m afraid may not have sunk in during our talk is that not participating in this new customer engagement and acquisition model is conceding to a guaranteed demise. That some industries and segments are not as far along as others is the only thing saving some of these companies who fail to recognize or admit to what’s happening in the marketing and sales world.

Bottom line: the time is fast coming when you won’t be able to hire enough reps, make enough cold calls or push enough brochure-ware to keep your revenues above the breaking point.   As more and more buyers (business, consumer, small, large, etc.) move to ‘Buying Process 2.0’ every industry will eventually reach the stage where those suppliers not active, participating and engaged in the new marketplace will become irrelevant.

For more on what’s changing and the impact it’s having, here are a couple excellent blog posts by some other leaders in this movement that we follow.

Could Sales 2.0 Turn Your Company Into a Victim of Change?

The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing No Longer Apply“

 

Sales Executives indicate Sales Enablement Tools Vital to 2010 Success

18-Mar-2010, Tom Pisello (@tpisello) wrote ‘Sales Executives indicate Sales Enablement Tools Vital to 2010 Success‘:

“A recent IDC Executive Tele Briefing on Sales & Marketing Strategies for 2010, results of a survey of 40+ worldwide technology sales executives, indicates that sales enablement is one of the top priorities, and the highest expected investment growth area over next 12mths.

Over the past six months, with frugalnomics reigning large with spend-thrift customers, it should not be a surprise that that it takes more leads and a longer sales cycle to acheive sales goals. The survey indicates that:
> 62% of respondents indicate that they need more leads in order to generate the same amount of sales
> 72% of respondents indicate an increase in sales cycle time over the past 6mths

To help address the close effectiveness and sales cycle issues, sales executives indicated that they are very focused on sales productivity and preparedness.

When frugal customers were asked how prepared sales reps are for meetings with them?

> 24% indicate that they are not prepared at all
> 30% indicate that they are somewhat prepared
> Only 29% indicate that they are well prepared

IDC indicates that the recommended best practice for this is to “Better Enable Sales Reps to Engage with Customers”, getting sales reps the right information and intelligence at the right time and in the right format, so they are prepared for customer meetings, and productive in meeting this need. This investment includes better Customer Intelligence and Sales Enablement tools such as interactive assessments, ROI business case & TCO comparison tools.

Sales executives are indeed aligned with this best practice advice from IDC, with 65%of sales executives indicating that sales enablement investments will be increased or significantly increased over the next 12 months. This is the largest increase compared to all other investments such as partners / channels, automation, training, and inside sales.”

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