4 Takeaways from the 2023 Sales Enablement Summit in NYC

Last week, Enablix attended the Sales Enablement Summit, hosted by the Sales Enablement Collective in New York City. It was our first time sponsoring an SEC event in-person, and it did not disappoint– Zoom is fine, but nothing beats face to face conversations.

The best conversations happen while waiting in line for food or while grabbing a cup of coffee, and these discussions are what can give you the best read on the industry and tell you what people are focused on right now.

So, today I’m sharing my 4 takeaways, in no particular order, from those conversations:

Measuring Impact and ROI Of the Sales Enablement team

I noticed nearly every talk and workshop touch on this idea in some way or another. In the past, win rate and revenue growth have been used to measure the benefits of SE teams - both of which may be slipping for many organizations today. With win rate down, revenue stalling (or falling), and rep success or morale at a 5-year low - how do you prove the impact of enablement?

The conference make it clear that SE teams are searching for better and more concrete ways to prove their impact to the c-suite and secure their positions. A few ideas I heard:

• Building strong relationships with sales through active listening and empathy (Accredible)
• Controlling the chaos by defining an impactful strategy (Seismic)
• Ensuring the c-suite recognize the ROI from enablement (Gympass)

_The Takeaway:_While there is no magic bullet, SE teams are searching for effective ways to prove their value within the sales organization that are tailored to how they work with other revenue teams.

Speaking of doing more with less, check out this clip of Enablix's CMO, Nick discussing how pre-mortem can be used to identify ways a project could go wrong before it's too late:

Combining Tools And Doing More With What You Have

Many vendors (including Enablix) shared ways to get more out of their platform with added tools and capabilities. Current economic conditions are (rightfully) stressing the ROI on sales tech spend - so organizations are looking at ways to centralize and combine tools to get more from what they have.

Discussions we saw take place:

• Many traditional content platforms now include learning management systems, partner management and more. There does still seem to be some skepticism about whether those combined tools can be as effective as the standalone versions, but the future of this will be interesting to watch.
• Another vendor was talking about how they combine contract lifecycle management with document automation, analytics and more to make lifecycle management more efficient. This raises questions about how many tools is too many tools-- if you have a tool that can do 10 things, but you actually only use 2 of them, is a combined tool really worth it?

The Takeaway: More than ever, users want to get as much out of their platforms as possible - highlighting the ROI of each enablement or RevOps tool, and magnifying potential overlap between toolsets.

The Difference Between SE and RevOps, and Where Each Sits

The Sales Enablement Summit was co-located with the RevOps Summit, and bringing the two teams together seemed to be a theme from both events. There was a lot of overlap between the talks in terms of how the two teams should be working together. My favorite talk (from Mirakl and Flowcode) shared the message that the two functions are better off working together to drive ROI.

Both teams are working to support revenue and sales, but there doesn't seem to be a clear answer on where the line is drawn between the two. However, both are emerging industries that are still solidifying their definitions, so it will be interesting to see how these teams are functioning in another 5 years.

The Takeaway:While some organizations have really thought out and defined roles to aid the sales team, there is still some confusion over who owns what between RevOps and Sales Enablement.

AI Has Hit SE… And Just About Everywhere Else

One of the most popular follow up questions after the generic “what does your platform do”, was by far, “how are you using AI”. With the rise of ChatGPT and other AI tools, people are asking themselves how else we could be using AI– and SE is no exception. A workshop by Thomas Cheriyan even highlighted ways to get the most out of ChatGPT with strategies and prompts specific to sales enablement.

However, this isn’t a topic that many vendors were openly highlighting in their messaging, making me wonder if this is something that will cause companies to shift their messaging in the future, or if the AI wave will pass?

To end the blog, I asked ChatGPT for creative ways to end this post. Here's what I got:

• "With these valuable insights and strategies, I'm excited to put what I've learned into practice and enable our sales team to achieve even greater success."

• "The 2023 Sales Enablement Summit has equipped me with a wealth of knowledge and inspiration to elevate my sales strategies and drive business success to new heights."

• "As I return from the 2023 Sales Enablement Summit, I'm more convinced than ever that empowering sales teams with the right tools and strategies is the key to unlocking business success."

_The Takeaway:_AI is popular, but we still have a ways to go.