I had the pleasure of recently attending sales & marketing researcher SiriusDecisions’ 2011 Summit (Alinean has been sponsors of this event since its inception six years ago!)
During the conference SiriusDecisions polled the audience of 800 marketing and sales enablement executives with various questions, and one of the key questions posted to the audience at the conference kickoff was, “What were folks looking to get from attendance?”
I was surprised that the response was for Solving Sales Enablement Problems versus other marketing / sales challenges, networking and all other responses.
I think this is because sales is uniquely challenged today in the face of more empowered, skeptical and frugal buyers - a condition we have termed “frugalnomics.” It seems from our research and those from IDC, Forrester, and SiriusDecisions that buyer sentiment towards sales value-add is at an all time low, sales folks are being invited later and later into decisions .... it is not too farfetched to think of many of these sales folks being disinter- mediated all together ... not too different than what has happened in the B2C space because of the Internet and buyer empowerment.
Wondering if other folks agree / have a different take on why Sales Enablement was the number one priority for attendees?
1 comment:
You are 100 percent right. The decision process is drawn out. The staff that are evaluating the proposed solution are in part unqualified. The priorities of the CIO is sometimes different than that of the end user. The CEO and CFO does not want to get involved. Of course this is where you come into the picture. A good sales man presenting your ideas as part of his sales argument can wake management up. He can compare himself to that of his competition.
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