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| What has ship building got to do with global sales enablement? |
So what kind of organisation am I talking about?
- Very large (more than 100,000 employees)
- Dynamic (ever-changing technology, market place, competitive pressure, organizational structure and product portfolio)
- Complex (ever-changing and non-uniform matrix organisational structure allowing alignment by geography, line of business, product sectors and market channels, as well as complexity of processes and products)
- Global (a truly global footprint)
In an organisation like this, formal organisational structures and roles aren't always clearly defined, so it can be more helpful to define people in terms of the objectives they are working towards, rather than their job title. If you need to get something done, asking “Whose job is it to do this type of thing?” will only get you so far – it’s more useful to ask “Who else might have a stake in getting this done?”
This means your focus must be on clearly identifying and articulating your own goals, finding others who share the same or similar goals, then finding creative ways to work together. If you maintain this approach over time, you will establish a network of people from all over the organisation that you can continue to collaborate with and rely upon, and they can do the same for you in return. But where do you start?
Global sales enablement is about leading projects
Project management could have been invented for sales enablement. Here is a definition of a project according to the Project Management Institute: “It’s a temporary group activity designed to produce a unique product, service or result”. Perhaps this doesn't resonate with you, but for me, this is a pretty good summary of how I execute my sales enablement strategy. I have challenging and unique deliverables, and they cannot be achieved without bringing together a large team of people to make each one happen (160 people is my record so far).Another advantage of the term ‘Project Management’ is that it is a credible, respected and established profession. Like architecture and accountancy, it even has a professional body, the PMI, with a ready-made set of well-tested tools and principles that you can use and adapt in your role. People know what you mean when you talk about project management. They often have some experience of working as part of a project team, so when you invite them to join a sales enablement project, and lead it using established project management methods, they are on familiar ground. I find people are more willing to collaborate with you if you define what you want to do in familiar terms and use methods that they trust.
For me, project management is the perfect vehicle for bringing people together to work toward a shared goal while building a network of people with the right skills that you can trust. What better way to collaborate?
Having said all this, not all of Project Management is relevant to sales enablement. After all, some of the tools and principles (e.g. Gant charts) were invented for very complex Project Management such as ship building! But some methods you can put to immediate use: using actions list to keep track of what needs doing, who will do it, and by when; ‘putting your risk hat on’ to make sure you have an idea of what you will do if (and when) things don’t go to plan.
Probably the most important aspect is placing yourself in the role of project leader so that everyone knows that you take responsibility for the project’s success or failure. This gives you the moral authority and respect to lead the project, chair project meetings, hold project team members to account and coach them.
Getting support
I hope that in your role as a sales enablement leader you are lucky enough to get some kind of administrative support, perhaps from someone who works directly for you, or from a central admin team or the occasional intern. But you’re wasting this precious resource if all they are doing is organising logistics for you.When you start running sales enablement projects using Project Management tools, you use a set of defined processes, and as it happens many of these are relatively easy to delegate. This means you can create an opportunity for your support people to elevate their role from ‘admin assistant’ to that of ‘project coordinator’ or even ‘project manager’. Not only can you delegate many Project Management tasks to them, allowing you to focus on higher-level strategy and leadership, but you are giving them direct experience in Project Management which could serve them well in their personal and career development, if this is what they want. At the very least, they become more directly involved in your sales enablement projects, and they are no longer just the recipient of isolated ‘do this, do that’ instructions. Not only does this make the work more rewarding and varied, they very quickly will understand the big picture of each project they are managing and can more easily take the initiative to do what is needed to support it. Best of all, you have a partner in managing the project – someone to remind you when you overlook something!
What’s your experience of using project management in sales enablement or training?
Picture: GrahamAndDairne, Flickr
