Why It's Time for CMOs to Take Sales Enablement Seriously

There have never been more ways for marketers to reach an audience, but cutting through the noise is only getting more difficult.

Buyers are bombarded with marketing messages every day, and have become experts at tuning out anything that isn’t tailored to their needs. Now chief marketing officers can add dramatic changes to workplace routines to their list of worries, with remote work jeopardizing the efficiency and productivity of marketing teams.

It falls on CMOs to support their teams while also ensuring salespeople are armed with content that captures buyer attention and closes deals. It’s time for CMOs to tap into the power of sales enablement strategies and technologies.

Sales enablement – the act of providing salespeople with the content, tools, knowledge, skills and coaching required to optimize buyer interactions – presents an ideal way for marketing leaders to meet the demands of their jobs.

Change is accelerating

The way organizations work is changing across the globe, and there’s no telling if and when we will return to business as usual. Our new normal — remote workforces and uncertain markets — has thrown a wrench in most marketers’ carefully planned strategies, demanding a significant shift in priorities as well as day-to-day operations.

Not only must CMOs make sure content and campaigns are quickly updated in the face of this new reality, they must do so while ensuring individual marketers working from home stay organized and on task – a difficult job when in-person communication and collaboration is no longer an option.

This transition has signaled the pressing need for marketing leaders to empower their teams and connect with audiences using modern tools that provide strategic insights.

As Doug Bewsher, CEO of Leadspace, said in a recent article published by MarTech Series, “Those that take a targeted and data-driven approach will see better results and survive, even thrive, in the wake of this global pandemic – because better data gives marketers a better understanding of ROI.”

The time for transformation has arrived

The need for change shouldn’t come as a surprise.

Today’s sophisticated buyers are doing more research and taking their time vetting products and services. For example, the average B2B buyer consumes 13 pieces of content before making a purchase decision, according to FocusVision.

And buyers aren’t just concentrating on quantity; they want relevant, personalized information that speaks to their needs and where they are in the sales cycle. Based on research from Salesforce, over half (59%) of customers say tailored engagement based on past interactions is very important to winning their business.

Beyond the changing behaviors and higher expectations of modern buyers, CMOs also still struggle to overcome one of their most persistent challenges: Tying the work of marketing to revenue generation, especially when it comes to middle- or bottom-of-funnel content that isn’t easy to track through website analytics. A lack of visibility into content usage and impact on sales pipeline leaves marketing teams no choice but to make assumptions when creating and updating collateral for sellers.

Of course, making sure salespeople have messaging and collateral that successfully addresses buyer pain points requires alignment between sales and marketing teams in addition to effective content management tools. While the physical distance brought on by remote work has certainly taken its toll on collaboration, the chasm between sales and marketing, as well as how content is shared and accessed, already existed, leading to wasted work and missed opportunities.

In fact, according to International Data Corporation, sales and marketing misalignment related to processes and technologies costs B2B companies 10% or more of revenue per year.

Sales enablement is the answer

The bigger the challenge is, the greater the opportunity.

Recent events have hardly made CMOs’ jobs easier, but now is the optimal time to make impactful changes that support marketing teams and improve business operations as a whole.

As illustrated in our recent eBook, “No more half measures: How to identify and maximize sales enablement ROI,” sales enablement strategies that incorporate content, training and coaching, and are powered by the right technology, allow CMOs to tackle their key challenges head on: demonstrating the financial impact of marketing, improving team efficiency and keeping sellers on-brand and on-message, all while increasing alignment between sales and marketing teams.

Now is the time to turn complications into competitive advantages via sales enablement. Ready to get started?

Download “Boosting Marketing Impact with Sales Enablement A CMO checklist” to see how you can start amplifying impact at your organization today.