Sales Enablement Perspectives: A conversation with Tim Riesterer, Chief Strategy & Marketing Officer at Corporate Visions
By Jerry Rackley
Editor’s Note: This post is part of a series of interviews with sponsors and speakers at the upcoming Demand Metric Sales Enablement Virtual Summit, which will take place on April 3, 2014.
Tim Riesterer, chief strategy & marketing officer at Corporate Visions, is on the agenda to present “Winning the Complex Sale” at the upcoming Sales Enablement Virtual Summit. We asked Tim to share his thoughts on Sales Enablement:
Why is Sales Enablement so important?
Companies can do everything right with their products, go-to-market strategy, segmentation and personas, BUT, in B2B sales all this has to pass through the lips of a salesperson. Selling conversations are literally the bridge between company strategy and customer acceptance. Sales Enablement is about making sure those typically unstructured moments are consistent and high quality – on purpose versus by accident. Increasing sales performance comes down to increasing selling conversation competence… which is at the heart of Sales Enablement.
Our research shows that only half of organizations have a Sales Enablement function, and many that do have it aren't doing it well. Why do you think this is?
As with many ‘movements’, Sales Enablement seemed originally to be driven by a “technology-as-panacea” approach. “If you just buy this piece of technology you will be doing Sales Enablement. If you just centralize all of your education, commercial training, product information, etc. you will be doing Sales Enablement.” At its core, technology is always a tool to improve the efficiency of access and use of stuff and, what Sales Enablement technology showed us is that sales processes are failing or, at best, under-used. It also showed us that most selling content and training is off the mark (product and company centric versus customer centric), or at best misguided, and it showed us that the critical departments – Marketing, Sales, Training – are not aligned around the same objectives. So, now companies are grappling with the “stuff” that the technology solutions brought to light, which is more around organizational inertia and change management, which is always harder to fix than writing another check for a piece of software.
You'll be presenting during the Virtual Summit - what will attendees learn during your session?
Enabling selling conversations requires the ‘enablers’ to know the objectives and desired outcomes of the various ‘value conversations’ that take place across the buying cycle. My presentation will provide a simple, concrete way for looking at the key value conversation inflexion points, providing definition as well as three fresh ideas for how to improve each of the value conversations with enablement content and tools.
About Tim Riesterer
Tim has more than 20 years experience in Marketing and Sales. Prior to joining Corporate Visions, Tim co-founded Customer Message Management, LLC where he served as CEO until its acquisition by Corporate Visions in 2008. Tim is co-author of Customer Message Management: Increasing Marketing’s Impact on Selling (Thomson/AMA) and Conversations that Win the Complex Sale: Using Power Messaging to Create More Opportunities, Differentiate Your Solution, and Close More Deals (McGraw Hill).
