Mimecast's Nick Saunders' Sales Enablement Foreword pt2

For our whitepaper on the future of Sales Enablement, Mimecast's Nick Saunders was kind enough to grace us with an accompanying foreword on sales enablement, centered around the moon program of the 1960s. Find the first part here.

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There was a phrase in JFK’s speech which is often missed. “We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard” I specifically want to call out the “other things”. There has been some debate about these two words, but here is my take on it.

JFK made it clear he wanted to land humans on the moon by the end of the decade. SMART goal right? But he also recognized there was a need for thousands of innovations, activities and commitments to achieve that goal. Effectively by stating the need to get to the moon, he created the opportunity for a whole series of adjacent innovations to start – reinventing material sciences, new math, different ways of working, while fundamentally redefining how people organized themselves.

Doing the other things means having a clear goal in mind but knowing that you need to ask the questions that help you understand what is needed for that goal.

In enablement, we need to do the other things like onboarding, skills development, product training, etc. These are the launchpads to help sales be successful. But don’t stay there. Focus on the goal. Don’t be afraid to ask questions that redefine the definition of enablement. Just because you have to build an onboarding program at the start, doesn’t mean the onboarding program defines enablement. Build it because you need a launchpad, but ensure you’re always looking beyond that to ask yourself, what are the other things. By choosing bold, audacious goals in enablement, it creates the opportunity for adjacent innovations that quickly help you make an impact for your business.

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Grab the future of sales enablement whitepaper here.