Jim Ninivaggi is the Service Director, Sales Enablement Strategies at SiriusDecisions. SiriusDecisions is an advisory firm focussed on B2B companies providing data, advice, research and industry events for practitioners in the field of marketing, sales and product development.

This week’s podcast is focussed on ‘Building the business case for Sales Enablement’. Almost everyone who wants to start a Sales Enablement function or expand an existing function will have to go through the same justification challenge: Why invest in Sales Enablement? What will be our return for the company? Why not invest in something else?

The answer this question we need to start at the beginning. Jim will share his views and definition of Sales Enablement. According to SiriusDecisions Sales Enablement is the orchestrating function between sales, product marketing, sales training & sales operations and should be focussed on three different key areas:

• Sales Talent Management – How do we attract the right sales talent to the organisation, retain and give them the right skills?
• Sales Asset Management – Which sales assets do we need to develop?
• Sales Communication Management – When do we communicate what to the sales teams to make sure we don’t overwhelm them?

When done right these three key areas will enable the sales teams to have the right conversation with the right customers at the right time according to SiriusDecisions.

After discussing Jim’s view on Sales Enablement we focus on how to create the business case. Jim shares some practical advice on how you can make some simple calculations to show your leadership the impact you will deliver over time. How do you calculate sales rep productivity? What will be the impact if they can find content within 10 minutes vs 1 hour? How can you leverage data points like this to create your personal business case. Jim explains it all.

As always we end with 3 practical tips you can start using today in your sales enablement programs.

We would love to hear your feedback! How did you create your business case for Sales Enablement? Did you have to prove the value? How are you measuring your impact? Leave your comments, feedback and suggestions in the comments below.