My lightbulb moment occurred at the beginning of my tenure with Stages Cycling, when I realized that my love of "translating geek into sales & stakeholder speak" made for rapid and measurable gains across the organization. Without knowing it, I had stumbled into the world of sales enablement. I spent the next decade+ honing deep expertise and a wide range of knowledge across every department. This led to to yet more realizations and questions:
If sales is feeling optimistic, it will trickle down throughout the entire organization.
What assets/training does sales need to not just talk about, but evangelize, every product they sell?
Having amazing visual assets doesn't matter if sales doesn't know how to access them quickly or how they are organized.
How do we best convey to operations and order management teams that the sales team isn't intentionally trying to make their lives miserable? In other words, how do we foster and train cross-departmental empathy?
Change management always takes more time and communications effort than you will ever plan for. In other words, don't tell your organization that you're rolling out a new CRM or ERP next week and then require them to use it.
I talk to B2B organizations every day with ground-breaking products and incredibly skilled sales reps just trying to hunt, but for all the reasons mentioned above (and more!) revenue teams are struggling to achieve abundance. Or they’re hunting at all costs; at the cost of everyone else in the organization, that is. But honestly, it's not their fault. Without a cross-communicator, without a translator, without a person shepherding the strategy and holding everyone accountable, your organization is literally selling itself short.
Our number 1 objective at Surve is to Let the hunters hunt!
We are not on a mission to convert natural born hunter-gatherers into organizers; that’s a recipe for disaster and dissatisfaction at every level. As fractional sales enablers we guide your reps to a more efficient hunt.
And you know what? They like it.
Why?
Because we sharpen their proverbial spears.
We provide the map.
We do everything in our power to get the snares and underbrush out of their way.
And we do this in such a way that your non-sales teams are feeling like for once people are respecting and following their processes. I am happiest when I know we're making everyone's lives easier - sales, marketing, ops, support, order management, executive team - you all deserve to have your voice heard and translated into action.
When the hunting is good, we all feast.
<end>Cam Rant</end>
