On January 17, 2012, Rich Vancil (IDC) published “B2B marketers need to keep sales enablement at the top of their to-do list” at BtoBlog:
“[…] In IDC’s research, we observe the broad and long process of how marketing assets are created, and then how those assets are provisioned and used by the selling teams. […] tech sales reps are overwhelmed with sales tools, collateral, presentations, etc. […] Sales reps use just one of every five “things” that marketers produce for them! They spend a lot of time trying to get prepared and ready and smart—or in other words “enabled”—but more often than not they leave the office to go on a sales call in a state of un-readiness. […] Tech buyers give tech sellers consistently poor scores on preparedness. […] tech sellers are ranked poorly on product knowledge, account knowledge, relevance of their presentations, and other factors. The purchase cycle from awareness through to P.O. (purchase order) is now 19 months for big-ticket IT purchases, and this expanded by two months just in 2011. […]”
When you combine this with the statement form the Forrester Sales Enablement Forum, that 86% of B2B buyers source information independent of interactions with vendor sales, then it is clear that in many cases the buyer knows more than the seller.
B2B Sales Enablement and Sales Tech SaaS 