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I received a question from Keri. She just joined a big tech company. Her job is to enable sales. But there is a catch: she is not part of the established sales enablement team. She is part of the corporate marketing team. When we talked, she was 3 weeks into her job and was not sure what her job is. She feels that there is duplication between her role and that of the sales enablement team, even though her manager assures her that this is not the case. These sales enablement tips helped her, and I hope they help you too.

Here is what I told her based on a quick 15 min conversation:

First of all, there is no duplication between her and the entire sales enablement team. Sales enablement, in general, focuses on onboarding and training. Their job is to “train” sales and make sure that sales are ready to sell. Their job is all about training. I told Keri that her job is to enable sales from the marketing side, not about training. And there are many ways marketers can help sales:

Content:

Marketing creates a lot of content. She can suggest and recommend marketing content which can help sales accelerate their engagements. That’s not something that the conventional sales enablement team does. But there are a couple of pre-requisites before she can do that.  She needs to get a sense of the current content landscape. Understand the top content by-products, by personas, and even by buyers’ stages. Also, she needs to understand her sales team’s processes and methodology. Having the knowledge of the content landscape and sales stages, she can map the most relevant content to the sales stages and share that with the sales team.

Partner Marketing:

Another way to help is partner marketing. Sometimes, sales will identify strategic accounts to target for co-marketing or co-selling. Great examples are HP and Intel partnering together to sell PCs or Walmart and Coke working together to sell Coke at Walmart during the holiday seasons. Marketing can work with sales to create and execute co-marketing efforts. This is another great way to enable sales as a marketer.

Account-based marketing:

One more option I shared with her is account-based marketing. Working closely with sales on strategic accounts to close deals. Use existing marketing elements to create tailored and personalized campaigns to complement sales engagements with certain accounts and the target persons in these accounts. Again, this is not what the typical sales enablement team will do.

I told Keri that her job is not to duplicate the efforts of the sales enablement team. There are many things she can do to help support sales in her own way as a marketer. The way she should position herself in her company is as a marketer enabling sales so there will be no confusion about what she does and how she is different from the sales enablement team.

Keri is very smart and she connected the dots right away. She told me that she will keep me posted about how it goes. Well, Keri, I am looking forward to hearing from you.

If you have any questions, and want to learn additional sales enablement tips, you know where to reach me. Just google Pam Didner.

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So keep hustling, my friends. You got this.

What can Pam Didner do for you?

Being in the corporate world for 20+ years and having held various positions from accounting and supply chain management, and marketing to sales enablement, she knows how corporations work. She can make you and your team a rock star by identifying areas to shine and do better. She does that through private coaching, keynote speaking, workshop training, and hands-on consulting. Contact her or find her on LinkedIn and Twitter. A quick note: Check out her new 90-Day Revenue Reboot, if you are struggling with marketing.