Over the years, we’ve partnered with thousands of organizations on their journey toward enablement maturity. Through these relationships, we’ve developed a maturity framework for what makes good enablement. This is the final post of our five-part blog series and provides an outline of Seismic’s Enablement Maturity Growth Framework. You can read the first post here, the second post here, the third post here, and the fourth post here.
My name is Liz, and I am on the incredible product marketing team at Seismic. Every day, I have the privilege of supporting our equally incredible services team. It’s been awesome to work closely with our strategic consultants on this blog series focused on our award-winning Enablement Maturity Growth Path and framework.
HEADS UP: before you read the next sentence, I need you to sit down.
By the time we publish this, it will almost be the middle of 2023. So, how will you spend the rest of this year? Regardless of when you come across this post, the most pressing question is this: are you ready to take the next steps toward enablement maturity?
If so, you don’t have to do it alone. If you’re interested in partnering with our strategic consulting team, you can get more information here.
If not, we’re going to get you ready to move forward on the path to maturity. The benefits of a well-crafted enablement program will impact your entire organization. These include decreased ramp time, increased time actively selling, increased deal sizes during decreased sales cycles, and so much more.
I spent five years as a strategic consultant to brands across multiple industries and have had numerous conversations about program maturation, sophistication and optimization, and how to progress from one phase to the next. Without fail, customers who chose to follow proven methodologies faced fewer challenges as they moved to transformation. After evaluating many maturity frameworks and roadmaps over the past decade, I can confirm that Seismic’s Enablement Maturity Growth Path and Framework lay out a disciplined and prescriptive plan to navigate the complexities of enablement. Customers who follow this strategic approach will be prepared to create, deploy, measure, and optimize best-in-class enablement and readiness initiatives.
Finally, I can’t say it better than our strategic experts, so I’ll close by sharing some of the top recommendations from each phase. These suggestions resonate both strategically and tactically, and they’ll help you get quick wins while you build for long-term success.
Controlling Chaos
Look at how chaos may manifest within your organization:
- Examine your content management process for red flags. Are teams collaborating or operating in silos?
- Gather feedback from different end-users to understand unique use cases. Are sales reps complaining that content is hard to find, or doesn’t meet their expectations?
- Confirm high-level coordination such as a steering committee or cross-functional, executive buy-in. Are you struggling to find sponsors who will champion the use of the platform, and/or help define and drive outcomes for success?
Understanding Impact
Establish, implement, and adhere to repeatable processes that will allow you to assess the effectiveness of your enablement program. It’s not enough to know what you’re doing. You also need to assess how well you’re doing it, and improve as you go.
Track and measure the success of your enablement initiatives with a clear process in place:
- Set clear objectives.
- Define key performance indicators (KPIs).
- Regularly review and analyze data to determine which initiatives are successful and which need to be improved (learn more about analytics in Seismic that will help you understand the impact of your enablement efforts!).
Driving Transformation
To drive transformation, organizations must foster a culture that welcomes innovation, change management, and continuous improvement. Enablement leaders should encourage teams to think creatively, challenge the status quo, and embrace change. This can be achieved by promoting a growth mindset, rewarding innovation, and providing opportunities for collaboration and knowledge sharing, such as:
- Cross-functional workshops: Bring together sales, marketing, customer success, and product teams to brainstorm and share insights.
- Regular training sessions: Cover topics such as sales techniques, negotiation best practices, and industry trends.
- Platform best practices: Leverage a sales platform that promotes real-time collaboration and integrates with your existing tech stack.
Another heads up: you might be starting to Understand Impact, and a new business initiative or challenge puts you back into Controlled Chaos.
Remember the title of this post: The journey never ends. It’s an ongoing process of iteration and optimization. Imagine enabling a whole new set of employees, going through a giant content refresh, or aligning everything to a new selling philosophy. Seismic customers, as well as our own Seismic team, have faced these scenarios. If you have a well-defined plan, don’t be discouraged by this possibility. Once you have a strong strategy in place to move through these phases, you’ll be ready with the processes, mindset, and efforts that will get you back to Driving Transformation and exceeding your desired outcomes.
If you’re ready to get started on your own enablement maturity journey, we can be your partner! Reach out to us if you want more guidance on how to start or continue the journey to enablement maturity.
More about Seismic
Seismic is more than just technology. It represents a new way to sell. While many tools can help organizations sell more efficiently, Seismic is unparalleled when it comes to selling more effectively. Instead of using outdated sales methods faster, Seismic enables truly transformative and intelligent management of the customer conversation.
In an upcoming webinar, Seismic President Hayden Stafford and Market-Partners Inc. CEO and Founder Martyn Lewis will explain why and how you should tap into the transformational capabilities of Seismic to meet the needs of today’s buyers. Register today to learn the five hurdles to overcome with your Seismic adoption, as well as the five must-do’s to drive sales enablement transformation.
