text:
Sales Enablement Perspectives
Sales Enablement: A Master Framework to Engage, Equip, and Empower A World-Class Sales Force
A few weeks ago, Jonathan Farrington, CEO Top Sales World, interviewed Byron Matthews and me for the July edition of Top Sales Magazine to discuss the launch of our new book Sales Enablement: A Master Framework to Engage, Equip, and Empower A World-Class Sales Force.
JF: Your book Sales Enablement: A Master Framework to Engage, Equip, and Empower A World-Class Sales Force seems to be the first strategic, holistic, and research-based book on sales enablement in the market. What was your motivation for writing this book now?
BM: In a nutshell, it's because buyers are getting better at buying than sellers are getting better at selling. That gap has increased so much now that it's an inflection point and caused sales enablement to be born. Our selling models have to change fundamentally, from information to inspiration. And that's why sales enablement exists, to engage, equip and empower our sales force to engage differently with the modern buyers. We work with a few thousands of clients a year all over the world. We see a tremendous amount of investments in sales organizations of all shapes and sizes. The one thing that is just so pervasive right now is this sales enablement function. As we are researching sales enablement at CSO Insights for many years, we had to go out in the market to show what successful looks like in enablement because there was no blueprint, no playbook out there.
TS: Sales enablement is all over the place, it's the fastest growing movement in sales, from 19% of organizations with sales enablement in 2013 up to 59% in 2017. In parallel, the confusion about sales enablement was growing at the same speed because so many people got into new enablement roles, influenced by the functional bias of their executives but without a clear concept how to approach it successfully. In the age of the customer, traditional how-to-sell approaches, centered around what a product IS and what it DOES, are no longer valuable, relevant and differentiating for modern buyers. Instead, buyers want to learn how a product or service can help them to solve a business problem and to achieve their goals, and that's all about what a product or service MEANS in THEIR context. And that requires a very different way to engage buyers, an inspirational approach, as Byron said. And that requires different skills, different conversations, different content, different value messages, and different coaching. Building an enablement function to provide all these services in a consistent and effective way to transform sales forces in the age of the customer, that's what our book is all about.
JF: Whilst, as you suggest, Tamara, enablement seems to be a fast-growing movement, my understanding is that only one-third of organizations are successful with enablement implementation according to your research. Can we talk about the challenges organizations are running into at the implementation stage?
TS: The main challenge we see in our research and with our clients is how enablement is set up in an organization. Running enablement as a tactical program, in an ad-hoc or project manner without senior executive sponsorship and with no clear vision of what it should help to achieve is a recipe for failure.
The successful one-third run sales enablement based on a formal vision of success and a formal enablement charter. Such a charter defines how sales enablement helps to support the strategy, how selling challenges are addressed with different enablement services, for what roles and how success is measured. Organizations that run sales enablement this way see up to 27.6% better quota attainment rates. That's a lot!
Another key challenge is that enablement services are created around products instead of aligning them to the different phases of the customer's path, relevant buyer roles, and business challenges. We spend an entire chapter on the role of value messaging as the glue that holds, for instance, product training and value messaging guidelines and customer-facing content and internal playbooks together. If all these assets are inconsistent to each other they are neither used nor are they effective in any way. And the third key challenge is not to enable sales managers to become excellent coaches to drive adoption and reinforcement. Sales coaching is actually the most impactful enablement service, improving win rates and quota attainment up to 28%.
JF: All of that makes perfect sense. Byron, may I ask you what's the role of technology, especially CRM, when it comes to effective sales enablement?
BM: Technology plays a huge role. In general, sales and sales enablement technologies are promising to reduce the tedium, which means all the non-selling activities salespeople do (65%) and increase ingenuity (creating value in buyer interactions, 35%). The problem is that there are more than 500 technology companies out there that are dedicated to improving sales performance. Just a few years ago, there were a hundred. Let me focus on CRM because it's the foundation for all other sales technologies. This explosion of vendors won't continue like this. Let me share with you our perspective on this.
Initially, the idea of CRM was based on salespeople's personal Rolodex, let's call it CRM 1.0. In the nineties, Tom Siebel built a packaged CRM solution, an on-premise service that provided visibility into pipeline and opportunities. CRM 2.0. Then, Salesforce wiped out Siebel almost overnight, put the CRM in the cloud and made it much cheaper. And hundreds of companies started to provide various cloud-based point solutions for sales challenges. Technology drove this evolution, not salespeople. CRM still is very often about manager benefits, not about seller benefits. Guess what? Tedium increased, it didn't decrease. Now, there is CRM 4.0 on the horizon to fix what's broken by focusing on what drives sales results. And that's seller behavior. CRM 4.0 will be AI-based, insight led, and it will be powered by methodology, an ally in helping sellers to improve sales performance.
JF: I fully appreciate that the book is structured by the sales enablement clarity model, in fact, a diamond with different facets that has to be cut and polished based on an organization's context and challenges: Byron, what advice would you give sales leaders looking to create and sustain an enablement function?
BM: First and foremost, sales leaders have to understand why sales enablement was born, that it's not another word for training, content, technology or sales excellence, etc. In fact, sales enablement takes all this to a new level. And therefore, sales leaders have to fully understand the transformation needs of their sales forces. They have to understand that sales organizations have to speed up very quickly, have to become a lot more agile to transform their selling models so that the sales force can be valuable, relevant and differentiating for today's modern buyers. And a transformation requires their senior executive sponsorship, their priority, and commitment, to work with the enablement leader to develop a clear vision of success and a strategic set-up of the enablement function. Only then, as Tamara said, a solid approach based on a charter can be successfully implemented.
JF: Tamara, what advice would you give sales enablement leaders looking to evolve their function to even greater levels?
TS: If we want to get better at something, we should first assess where we are at right now. Even if an organization does not have any formal enablement initiative or function right now, enablement happens, usually in many different functions and in an inconsistent way. That's what you can call a rough diamond that needs to be cut and polished to be valuable and effective. Wherever you are in your organization, maybe having a rough diamond or a partially cut and polished one, our enablement maturity assessment model and the related tool on our book expert page would be the first step. Based on knowing their maturity level, enablement leaders should discuss the current state with their sponsors, map against the current business strategy and the state of sales strategy implementation to adjust and hone their enablement strategy.
General recommendations are implementing an enablement charter if that's not already done (we have a process and a template in the book!), ensuring a solid foundation of a sales process that is well aligned to the customer's path (together with sales operations), aligning the enablement services to each other along the customer's path to ensure consistency and effectiveness. And then, addressing sales managers, enabling them to become frontline coaches is key to success and should always be an element of a mature and scalable sales enablement approach.
JF: What are the main ideas and principles sales leaders should take from the book?
BM: The key message for sales leaders is to understand sales enablement as its core, as the engine to transform your sales force to engage in a different way, inspiring instead of informing, to meet the needs of the modern buyer. Sales enablement is all about sophisticating a salesperson to meet the needs of professional selling today, which is being valuable, relevant and differentiating in every interaction. Sales transformation was always a scary word for many sales leaders, now it's about time to change. Sales enablement is the engine to drive this transformation. As this is a massive undertaking, sales leaders have to understand the bigger picture, so that they can provide the resources and the budget needed for sales enablement leaders to actually implement enablement successfully.
JF: Tamara, may I ask you the same question, specifically, regarding how sales enablement leaders should leverage the clarity model?
TS: The main idea for sales enablement leaders is to get from sales enablement confusion to clarity and strategy, leveraging real-world enablement expertise, experience, and research. We support this idea in our book with a research-based sales enablement framework, the clarity model that allows enablement leaders to achieve different things: One is to assess their current enablement maturity stage to understand where they are at. Two is to leverage the framework to evolve and sharpen their enablement strategy, using the data we provide so that enablement leaders can get an idea what their outcomes could look like and why. Three is to use the related checklists, processes and practical templates in the book to actually implement enablement successfully. And four is to get inspired by the case studies, quotes, and examples we have featured in the book.
JF: Finally, Byron, what can we expect from Miller Heiman Group next?
BM: We are working on a couple of exciting things. We are proud to launch Scout! Scout is our new sales analytics platform that helps drive seller actions, change deal outcomes and replicate winning. With Scout, you will always "see the move that moves the deal." Additionally, we are proud to launch Strategic Selling with Perspective which is our contribution to evolve our services to the ever-changing buyers in the digital age.
JF: And Tamara, what's next in the world of research?
TS: We just launched our first ever Buyer Preferences Study. We are working on our Sales Effectiveness Study and, most important for me, we are already recruiting participants for our 2018 Sales Enablement Optimization Study.
Value Messaging And Why It's Key To Sales Enablement Success
Imagine this: Your marketing team has created new value messages for a product launch or update to support marketing's online content and demand-and-lead-generation campaigns. Marketing will incorporate the new value messages in all customer-facing content assets they are creating for the sales force.
In parallel, the product management team prepares product-training services for the same product launch. As you can imagine, their training approach is based more on the product rather than the business problems the new product can solve or the business results that can be achieved. Furthermore, and this is the crucial point in this context, the value messages they use (if they use any) are old ones from a similar product.
Additionally, the recently established sales enablement initiative wants to justify its existence and has created interactive playbooks for all major product lines, based on, yes, the previous value messaging approach they had access to. Sound familiar?
What does such a misaligned approach mean for the sales force? It means confusion, inconsistency, zero adoption and, of course, ineffectiveness.
How should salespeople get their heads around all these different, inconsistent enablement services that are pushed to them from different directions? Actually, it often feels like enablement services are thrown at them. What would you do in this situation if you were a salesperson? You would probably merely switch off the noise, decide you can only trust yourself, and do what you think you should be doing. And that's using what's on your laptop and what your colleagues used last week in a similar prospect or client situation. Now, let's look at some data:
The majority of organizations (64.7%) lives with enablement inconsistency. Their sales content and their product training services are not purposefully aligned with each other.
A bit more than one quarter are not directly aligned (26.8%), and more than one-third are only aligned at a high level (37.9%). The latter means that in most cases, the different teams may be aware of the other teams' activities, but without co-creating enablement services. And not being aligned at all is a classic silo scenario. This lack of enablement consistency should be considered as what it is: enablement chaos. And the cause can be easily identified. It's not having a consistent, overarching value messaging approach covering the entire customer's path that all contributing teams are required to use.
Aligned enablement services are worth it: If sales content and product training are aligned at least on the value message level, the win rates for forecasted deals are 7.5% better. The costs of misalignment, the costs of doing nothing, are worse: 22.6% decline in win rates.
Win rates for forecasted deals are remarkably better (55.7%) if content and training services are aligned at least on the value messaging level. Enablement services that are not aligned, or are only aligned at a high level, lead to win rate performance way below average (40.1%). Based on the 2017 Sales Enablement Optimization Study's average win rate of 51.8%, the improvement is 7.5% or 3.9 percentage points, but the decline or the cost of doing nothing is much more substantial: 22.6% decline or 11.7 percentage points.
Four ideas to improve your value messaging approach:
- Establish clarity – Who owns value messaging
Value messaging is often considered to be owned by marketing. But in the age of the customer, an approach that is only focused on the early stages of the customer's path doesn't work any longer. In the absence of a chief CX officer, a strategic sales enablement function that orchestrates all enablement efforts from content to training to coaching along the entire customer's path is in a great position to own the value messaging approach along those lines. That doesn't mean at all that marketing has nothing to do with value messaging any longer. In fact, marketing's role is growing because of the broader scope along the entire customer's path.
- Establish a standardized value messaging framework:
Orchestrating value messaging across various functions requires a solid foundation for all teams involved, ideally designed with the customer's path at the center. CSO Insights has developed a dynamic value messaging framework that defines the different value messaging types for each phase of the customer's path. Also, the framework shows how these different value messages impact your enablement content, training and coaching services. Without a standardized framework, you will never achieve enablement scalability and efficiency in the messaging space.
- Establish clarity on the criteria that impact different value messages:
These criteria can cover a broad range. Think about the business challenges your products and service solve, the business results they can help to achieve. Also, consider the relevant buyer roles and the different phases of the customer's path. Additionally, don't forget the impact of varying buying situations and their particular risks (renewal versus new problem to be solved), and also factor in your own position as a vendor (start-up vs. established vendor).
- Orchestrate the required cross-functional collaboration:
Initially, workshops with all teams involved (marketing, sales, product management, industries, enablement, etc.) are ideal so that this group can actually create the new value messages. But to ensure that you will end up with value messages that cover the criteria defined above, have a moderator who is familiar with your approach. Capture the rough value messages, structured by your specified criteria.
Sales enablement should orchestrate all value messaging efforts along the customer's path to ensure that all enablement services are consistent, valuable and effective. These efforts pay off, with 7.5% better win rates. The cost of doing nothing is worse: a 22.6% decline in win rates.
This article was initially written for Top Sales Magazine, May edition.
Photograph: Unsplash, Elija O'Donell
Check out Sales Enablement A Master Framework to Engage, Equip and Empower a World-Class Sales Force!
There is an entire chapter on value messaging, its relevance for sales enablement including a phased approach how to get started.
Why Effective Enablement Strategies Follow A Two-Step Approach
What's your focus when designing and creating sales enablement services? What are the sales enablement frameworks you work with? And what do they look like? I'm constantly amazed at how often the customers are not even mentioned, nor included in sales enablement frameworks and approaches that are applied.
"But sales enablement is about sales!" I hear you. However, to be successful in the age of the customer, salespeople must adapt their strategies, their messaging, their skills and techniques to the way their buyers want to buy. So, sales enablement should always have the customers at the core of its efforts. "But how do I address salespeople's challenges?" Things will fall into place if you give me a few minutes to explore the matter.
In the digital age of the customer, a high-performing sales force is not optional. It is mandatory. Effective selling requires sales professionals to align their strategies, activities, and behaviors to the customer's path.
In the age of the customer, salespeople have to deal with well-informed, over-informed, and also misinformed prospects and customers. Also, the specifics of the business challenges their customers are dealing with, matter as well. Is the business challenge new to the buying team, or is it well known? And how risky is the challenge for their organization and their individual careers? Highly successful sales professionals know how to create value at each stage of the customer's path for all involved buyer roles, based on their specific business challenges.
Creating value means different things at different stages of the customer's path, but it's always centered around being relevant, valuable and differentiating to help prospects and customers move forward with their decision-making process:
- Creating value in the awareness phase is about creating clarity regarding the actual business impact of a challenge, and it's about providing perspectives as to how prospects and customers can achieve their desired results. In this phase, all efforts are focused on helping prospects and customers to decide to tackle the issue or not.
- In the buying phase, creating value means providing detailed information about how the customer's desired results can be achieved with your solutions. It also means providing all the required financial data to be integrated into the customer's business case. Yes, into the customer's business case, because cost savings as such are only the door-opener to business impact.
- In the implementation and adoption phase, creating value could mean providing implementation assistance and tips for successful usage, tailored to the customer's steps. It also means ensuring that all initial executive buyers know about the value that has been created. That allows you to establish a foundation for additional business.
These examples show exactly why all enablement services have to be aligned with the customer's path. This applies to not only the content salespeople use but also the training services around skills, methodologies, processes, and product. Even if certain skills are the same (such as value messaging), they have to be applied differently in the different phases.
The two steps: Successful sales force enablement leaders align their enablement services first to the customer's path and then to the sales force's specific challenges
Working with an enablement framework that is based on the customer's path is the foundation of sustainable enablement success. If you design your enablement frameworks around your products or your internal challenges only, you lose the necessary focus on the customers. Your ultimate design point should be your customers and how they approach their challenges, how they want to buy, and how they prefer to use/implement/adopt your products, services, and solutions. The customer's path is not your only design point, but your first one. Consider your customers and their customer's path as your "true north."
Study results show: Dynamic alignment of sales processes to the customer's path drives double-digit improvement in win rates and quota attainment
The data from CSO Insights' 2016 Sales Enablement Optimization Study showed a 13.6% improvement in quota attainment (compared to the study's average of 55.8%.) based on dynamic – formal, responsive and adaptive – alignment.
In 2017, the results from CSO Insights' much broader World-Class Sales Practices Study showed virtually the same result – 13.5% quota attainment improvement. Furthermore, the 2016 data showed an improvement of 15.0% in win rates for forecast deals with dynamic alignment. In 2017, the results from the World-Class Sales Practices Study showed that win rates for forecast deals can be improved by 10.1%, compared to the study's average win rate of 51.8%. While there is a difference, both results show a double-digit improvement that cannot be ignored.
As you can see here in the examples and in the data, aligning the sales processes and all enablement services to the customer's path is key to success. Value messages that are in every single piece of content have to be tailored to the different phases of the customer's path. What works in the awareness phase is misplaced in the buying phase and the other way around. Once this is done, your sales force's specific challenges determine how you shape the related content and training services, and the coaching services for the sales managers.
This article was initially written for Top Sales Magazine, March 2018.
How To Cut And Polish Your Sales Enablement Diamond
Sales enablement is a very fast growing discipline: In 2013 19% of our study participants reported having an enablement initiative or function. In 2016, it was one-third, and this year it's 59%. Unfortunately, enablement success is not growing at the same speed. Only one-third of our 2017 CSO Insights Sales Enablement Optimization Study participants reported meeting or exceeding their expectations. It seems that the need for enablement clarity has never been greater than today.
Enablement clarity step 1: Defining the space
With our 2017 CSO Insights Sales Enablement Optimization Study, our definition of sales force enablement has evolved.
Sales Force Enablement — A strategic, collaborative discipline
designed to increase predictable sales results
by providing consistent, scalable enablement services
that allow customer-facing professionals and their managers
to add value in every customer interaction.
We have omitted the list of enablement services ("content, training and coaching services") and focused on what they need to be: consistent for salespeople and scalable from an organizational point of view. And the target audience has been expanded to "customer-facing professionals and their managers" (it was "salespeople and their managers"). This target audience, including the frontline managers, is also the reason why we call it "sales force enablement." At the end, we have skipped "powered by technology" because it's obvious that every single enablement service is based on some kind of technology even if it's only PowerPoint that has been used to create a training presentation. Instead, we wanted to focus on what really matters: to add value in every customer interaction, which also expresses the remaining design point of sales force enablement: the customers and their entire customer's journey.
A definition serves as a frame of reference to bring all stakeholders together on the same page. However, no definition is a sufficient guide for creating an enablement practice that allows you to achieve your desired results. This is where our newly developed sales force enablement clarity model comes into play.
Enablement clarity step 2: The Sales Force Enablement Clarity Model
The clarity model builds on the definition and serves as a guide as you assemble your sales enablement discipline step by step. Enablement leaders can assess how they are doing in each enablement facet and make better decisions about how to improve their efforts for better results. Wherever you choose to begin, getting to the next level is easier if you keep the holistic vision represented by the model in mind.
Imagine your enablement practice in your organization as a rough diamond. Leverage the clarity model to cut and polish your enablement diamond based on your context and your particular challenges.
Customer – In the age of the customer, your sales force can only be successful if they approach prospects and customers based on their preferences: how they handle challenges, how they want to interact with salespeople and how they want to work with your products and services. The reason is simple: whatever we automate internally, customers still make buying decisions.
Customer-Facing Professionals and Their Managers – While alignment with customers takes the top facet of our clarity model, your sales force enablement practice has internal customers, your target audiences. These target audiences include not only salespeople but also those roles that are focused on business and sales development as well as the roles that are focused on serving customers after a deal has been closed. Furthermore, we know that reinforcement and adoption of enablement services can only be achieved if sales managers lead and coach their sales teams accordingly.
Sponsorship, Strategy, and Charter – Next, we'll drop down to the bottom of our diamond and look at its foundation. Of course, you need to start with a strategy, but even the best sales force enablement initiatives fail if the team has the responsibility, but not the authority, to enact their strategy. This includes gaining the all-important executive sponsorship.
Effective Enablement Services – We put effective enablement services in green because these are the services the discipline provides to allow the organization to reach its desired results. If you think about customer-facing roles as your internal customers, this is the only facet they see. If someone outside the organization were to ask a sales or service professional what enablement does, it's likely that they would talk about how they perceive these services, usually around training, content, and coaching.
The remaining three inner facets focus on the mechanics necessary to design, produce and deliver these services as well as manage the discipline.
Moving from an ad hoc enablement discipline to a more strategic function, the three inner enablement mechanics – collaboration, technology, and enablement operations – are essential to drive consistency, scalability, and effectiveness:
Formalized Collaboration – We talk about sales force enablement as a discipline and not a function or a department because no one team can cover it all. Sales force enablement teams orchestrate the process, enlisting the aid of many other functions within the organization. Imagine that content, training, and coaching services have to cover the entire customer's journey. Therefore, you have to collaborate with many other functions to ensure enablement services are aligned and consistent.
Integrated Enablement Technology – Sales enablement technology is NOT the same thing as sales enablement, but these days, the right enablement technologies, deployed in the right ways, can extend your competitive advantage tremendously. This facet is all about integrating enablement content management solutions, learning technology, coaching tools, analytics, often supported by artificial intelligence into your CRM system. And, on top of integration, provide mobile access is mandatory.
Efficient Enablement Operations – Enablement operations is often seen as a "black box" because it includes the behind-the-scenes functions of the discipline, but this is where all the enablement magic happens. As it is poorly understood, it is also a facet that is often overlooked. Enablement operations cover three areas: enablement governance, an enablement production process that is closely aligned with the collaboration model, and enablement analytics: how do we measure success?
More questions? Download your copy of our 2017 CSO Insights Sales Enablement Optimization Study. As you will see, the clarity model serves as a structure for our 2017 study.
This article was initially written for Top Sales Magazine, December 2017.
Sales Enablement Society's Conference in Dallas: My Takeaways
Jonathan Farrington interviewed me for Top Sales Magazine to discuss my takeaways from the Experience Sales Enablement conference in Dallas.
JF: You attended the Experience Sales Enablement conference last week in Dallas. What are your impressions?
TS: The #SESociety conference was amazing, inspiring, and transformative, completely organized by volunteers focused on the attendees' experience. On the first day, enablement was discussed from different perspectives. Bestselling author Ori Brafman shared his wisdom about the power of decentralized networks based on individuals promoting agility versus existing command and control structures. His brilliant keynote pointed out that "the opposite of control is enablement." Sales Enablement Society founder Scott Santucci alerted the audience that we are living in a completely different economy but that we still apply old paradigms to our current business challenges. Dr. Howard Dover, UT Dallas, pointed out that the sales function as it exists today in most organizations is about to implode.
JF: How fast is the sales enablement movement growing compared to previous years?
TS: The Sales Enablement Society has gathered enablement professionals at the right time. In previous years, when I was myself an enablement practitioner and leader, the movement was rather small and not growing that fast. Based on our CSO Insights data, in 2013, only 19% of organizations had an enablement initiative or function. Last year, it as one-third, and this year, it's almost two-thirds. That's a tremendous growth rate. Many new people got into enablement roles in a very short amount of time. And that's the phase of any movement when the need for clarity is greater than ever before.
JF: What's different about the Sales Enablement Society compared to established industry associations?
TS: The Sales Enablement Society is by no means just another association. The society's culture – and that's what its members have created – is driven by creativity, innovation, and an infectious spirit of trying new things and doing things differently in a highly collaborative manner, following a decentralized and agile networking idea.
JF: That sounds amazing. Could you share an example of that spirit?
TS: Sure. Take the enablement definition project as an example. This project, led by one of the local chapter presidents, analyzed all enablement definitions out there and identified via a member survey the four favorite ones. These were the definitions from Forrester, ours from CSO Insights, and the definitions from Sirius Decisions and IDC. Then, they invited various delegations, such as for example academics, analysts, and vendors, to do the same. Organizations that are competing against each other contributed for the greater good of standards for the relatively new sales enablement profession. In Dallas, the members voted for the suggested definition, created based on the evaluation. This is an amazing, bottom-up achievement.
JF: Did the conference change any of your perspectives about sales enablement? If so, which ones?
TS: It didn't change but enhanced and enriched my perspectives. The discussion on "who is responsible for growth?" in several sessions was inspiring, as well as the discussion on the future home of enablement teams. Is it executive sales management, is it the CEO or another C-level role, such as the customer experience or chief growth officer? As an analyst, I'm used to talking to many enablement leaders, and each one has a unique approach based on similar patterns and challenges. In organizations where enablement is already established as an accomplished strategic function, the C-level expectations are huge. Consistency, scalability, adaptability, and effectiveness are key success factors. Those senior executives expect their enablement teams to do things like successfully onboard newly acquired sales teams in just a few weeks.
JF: Is there now more acceptance that sales enablement has to be a strategic approach?
TS: Absolutely! The conference definitely contributed to much more sales enablement clarity. There is consensus that sales enablement has to be strategic in nature to drive sustainable results, and that includes achieving growth targets. It's also consensus that enablement should have an orchestrating role along the entire customer's journey across various enablement services, targeting all customer-facing roles, which includes for instance service personnel as well as managers. And that scope requires enablement to collaborate with many other functions, not only with sales and marketing; this is a fact that was also confirmed by our data.
JF: As one of the leading thought leaders in the world on sales enablement, how was your session and what do you expect next?
TS: One of the trends that I already discussed years ago seems now to become a mainstream discussion: Will it still be "sales enablement" in a couple of years, or will it become "buyer enablement" or "customer enablement"? In more practical terms: how to evolve enablement to a more strategic function will be THE key challenge. The session I had the pleasure to lead was all about providing a framework, such as our enablement clarity model in the form of a diamond, that allows enablement leaders to perceive their enablement function as a rough diamond that has to be cut and polished based on the organization's context and challenges, addressing various enablement facets.
JF: Can the implementation of sales enablement arrest the downward spiral in quota attainment (down 10 percentage points in 5 years)?
TS: Yes, there is a downward spiral, according to our research, and the research of many others. However, our 2017 Sales Enablement Optimization Study shows a different trend. Organizations that already focus on sales enablement are not always as successful as they expect to be. But they already show slightly better quota attainment numbers: 57.7% instead of 53.0%. However, measuring a sales force's performance only by quota attainment does not necessarily reflect their real performance. A set of KPIs including leading indicators provides better insights.
Download your copy of our 2017 CSO Insights Sales Enablement Optimization Study here.
Sales Coaching: How To Get It Right
Imagine how you are driving now as a skilled driver and years ago when you just got your driving license. There are a lot of specific skills that must be mastered before a driver reaches the level of unconscious competence, e.g., what certain signs and symbols mean, who has the right of way, how to parallel park, and how to master European roundabouts. While all of these skills are important, some are more vital than others because they are critical to success. For sales managers, coaching is such a skill, regardless if they lead a field or an inside sales team.
For most people in sales, coaching is perceived as opportunity coaching even though there are many more aspects of the sales role that must be coached. Furthermore, many salespeople, not only in inside sales, don't feel "coached," even if their managers call it that. Let's start by defining what sales coaching means:
Sales coaching is a leadership skill that develops each salesperson's full potential. Sales managers use their domain expertise, along with social, communication, and questioning skills to facilitate conversations with their team members that allow them to discover areas for improvement and possibilities to break through to new levels of success.
As importantly, sales coaching is not asking things like, "What's your forecast this month?" or telling a salesperson, "You need to build more pipeline." Instead, effective sales coaches consider the salesperson's personal goals, their style, current strengths and weaknesses before engaging in a dialogue. Then, the focus of such a structured conversation is to discover areas for improvement regarding behaviors and activities that should lead to the desired results.
Coaching areas have to be defined: lead and opportunity coaching, pipeline coaching, coaching skills and behaviors, account and territory coaching
If coaching is reduced to opportunity coaching only, the organization misses out on much of the performance benefits of coaching. At CSO Insights, we separate coaching into five different areas that can be implemented step by step, according to your context:
- Lead and opportunity coaching
- Pipeline coaching
- Coaching skills and behaviors,
- Account coaching
- Territory coaching
However, in most organizations, sales coaching is currently focused on lead and opportunity coaching only. It's remarkable that the majority of sales managers in our 2016 Sales Enablement Optimization Study said they spent less than an hour a week coaching leads and opportunities. Lead and opportunity coaching is a great starting point. But it should soon be enriched by coaching skills and behaviors as a foundational coaching layer. Especially for inside salespeople who are working most of their time on the phone, lead and opportunity coaching should always be enriched by coaching skills and behaviors.
Coaching needs to be formal to be effective
Now as you have defined your various coaching areas, it's about developing a coaching process that follows the customer's journey. Ideally, your customer's journey should be mapped to your internal process landscape. If that's the case, your coaching framework sits directly between the customer's journey and your internal process landscape, bridging between both sides.
There are four levels of sales coaching maturity:
- Random: There is no coaching process defined. Coaching is left up to each manager.
- Informal: Coaching guidelines are available, but there is no formal coaching process. Managers are told that they should coach, but there is no monitoring or measurement.
- Formal: Coaching areas and the coaching process are defined and implemented. Sales managers are expected to coach accordingly, and there is a formal effort to develop their skills. Periodic reviews help optimize processes and guidelines.
- Dynamic: The coaching process is connected to the sales force enablement framework to ensure reinforcement of sales enablement efforts. Sales managers are required to coach; they are measured and compensated accordingly. Ongoing reviews help to not only optimize the process but also to adapt it to market dynamics and the changing selling environment.
In our 2016 Sales Enablement Optimization Study, almost 50% of our study participants reported operating based on a random coaching mode. A quarter is working on an informal basis, but only 21.7% have implemented a formal approach, and only 5.3% have made further efforts to align their coaching process with their enablement framework. Our study shows that the coaching approach matters a lot.
Almost 75% of sales organizations waste resources due to random and informal coaching approaches, and only about one-quarter leverage the huge performance potential of formal and dynamic coaching.
If coaching is left up to each manager, sales organizations have a hard time achieving even average performance. Let's look at win rates for forecast deals as an example. Organizations that use an informal approach end up 4.5 percentage points below the average win rate of 46.2%. That is an actual decrease of 9.8%! Informal approaches start to move things in the right direction, but they lack formal implementation and reinforcement, which leads to a result that's around average. However, when the approach gets formalized, the win rate improves a significant 5.3 percentage points above average for an actual improvement of 11.5%. The results are even more impressive for a dynamic approach that is based on a holistic sales force enablement program that connects the enablement and the coaching frameworks. In this case, the win rate climbed by 12.9 percentage points, which is an actual improvement of 27.9%.
How could a sales leader ignore a 27.9% better win rate? Investing in sales force enablement to build coaching frameworks and develop sales managers accordingly, especially their coaching capabilities, is the key to achieving the kinds of performance improvements sought by sales leaders everywhere.
This article has been initially written for Top Sales Magazine, September 2017 issue.
Image source: Unsplash Images
For Sales Enablement Leaders: Why Adaptive Competencies Matter More Than Ever
In an ever-changing world and complex buying environments, traditional selling skills and competencies are no longer sufficient to drive sales performance. The ability to quickly adjust and add skills and to align behaviors to new, changing and complex customer situations is what sets world-class sales professionals apart from the rest. Developing these adaptive competencies is a key challenge for sales enablement leaders to drive sales performance.
"Adaptive" in evolutionary biology
Adaptive competencies refer to the process that organisms follow to survive. The main components applied to sales are to maintain competencies, knowledge, and strategies that are important to be successful, to remove or modify elements that are no longer useful, and to develop competencies that lead to future sales success. As in biology, so it is in sales; it's evolution, not a revolution. Triggered by changing environments, adaptive competencies become a key differentiator.
Case for Adaptive Competencies
We all know that what products, services, and solutions are and what they do – compared to each other – is no longer differentiating in today's buying environments. Differentiating, relevant, and valuable for customers is to learn what a provider's products, services, and solutions could MEAN for them: their specific situation, their challenges, and their results. Working backward from the customer's specific context and the involved stakeholders' specific concepts require salespeople to quickly adapt relevant knowledge, activities, and behaviors to the customer's specific buying situation. And the term knowledge covers both: capability knowledge and situational knowledge. Additionally, the specific decision dynamic how an individual customer network is going to make a decision this time determines the engagement, the selling strategies, activities, and behaviors.
Even within the same account, every buying decision is made differently. And that's why a situational selling approach matters. More than ever before. This situational dimension requires adaptive competencies that will determine future sales success.
Adaptive competencies enable sales professionals to quickly connect the dots across selling skills and competencies, various knowledge areas and strategies, regarding customers and opportunities.
Being fluent in different customer situations, that's how we perceive sales professionals with highly developed adaptive competencies. Prerequisites to develop adaptive competencies are two-folded: Fluency regarding skills, knowledge areas, methodologies, and processes, as well as curiosity, open-mindedness, the joy to share and learn and the pursuit to become better every day.
Specific adaptive elements have to be developed to unfold the power of adaptive competencies. These elements are situational awareness, principles, creativity as well as critical and strategic thinking, relevant along the entire customer's journey:
- Situational awareness is a salesperson's holistic perception of a given situation. It's the ability to quickly catch and realize a situation in a holistic way, and then to focus on the relevant elements and dimensions. This situational awareness enables a salesperson to quickly draw the right conclusions how these elements fit together what's relevant and what needs to be clarified. Situational awareness combined with a customer management structure boosts salespeople's ability to quickly explore the customer's situational context.
- Principles instead of rules: Applying customer management principles instead of following strict process rules brings the accountability back to the salesperson. Principles require interpretation to be applied accordingly to a particular situational context. Engagement principles such as providing perspectives require salespersons to deeply understand the mechanisms to apply them successfully according to a particular customer situation. Salespeople must have completely internalized those principles beforehand. It requires them to be fluent regarding methods, skills, and competencies. Additionally, principles have the side-effect to widen the boundaries and to open a space that doesn't exist in the world of strict rules.
- Creativity: The open space between strict rules and principles should be filled with a salesperson's creativity to create differentiation, relevance, and value. How to provide perspective for customers, how to tackle their business issues and how to show them that alternative ways may lead to better results for them – the space is wide open for salespeople to be creative on how to develop new perspectives for clients and how to orchestrate a group of stakeholders to a shared vision of future success.
- Critical and strategic thinking: This ability is highly relevant in complex buying environments that are always changing. Based on a salesperson's fluency especially in sales methodologies, critical and strategic thinking are the ingredients that allow a salesperson to sharpen the deal strategies. This ability is closely connected to questioning the status quo and asking the tough questions, internally and at the customer. That's what makes the difference between a thought-through deal strategy and a wishful-thinking approach.
Building adaptive competencies is a journey with several steps. All adaptive elements require specific learning methods. As an example, situational awareness requires exercises that show people what they don't see but what's happening combined with techniques how to improve these awareness skills. Creativity requires to understand what creativity really is, and lots of different exercises how to unleash people's hidden potential of creativity. Critical and strategic thinking requires a focused development approach to unleash this potential and to put it in the context of specific sales situations.
The adaptive elements, based on the prerequisites, have to be put together in context-specific, highly interactive, simulation-based training scenarios. Situational awareness, for instance, to be valuable requires applying principles accordingly, strategic thinking and creativity to sharpen deal strategies and to adjust activities. The potential of all adaptive elements is much bigger than the sum of its parts.
This article has been written for Top Sales Magazine, the July 2017 edition.
What Simplicity Really Means And How To Achieve It In Sales Force Enablement
There is not a single day the topic of simplification, simplicity, or the imperative "make it simple" regarding sales force enablement is not discussed with great passion. And most of the time, it's a relevant topic. Especially when it comes to sales force enablement. Who doesn't want things to be simple? Salespeople prefer simple solutions and approaches, simple content assets and training services, simple tools, and simple value messages, etc. There are just a few small details most people overlook in the discussion:
- First, there is the macro view: The markets most sales organizations sell into are not simple. Most markets are complex environments with many different dimensions impacting them at the same time. Examples are trends and innovations, emerging markets here, saturated markets over there, politics and legal issues, trends, and regional and cultural differences that require tailored approaches.
- Second, there is the micro view: Our clients' environments are not simple either. Most customer organizations are complex environments, and each one is unique. Their context is specific, their challenges, goals and desired outcomes are different, and the roles that are involved in the buying decision and the implementation are different as well.
For sales force enablement, this means tons of work, because the complexity of the customer and market environments cannot be "reduced." We can't simplify without first understanding this complexity in its entirety. The customer's complexity cannot be reduced but only navigated.
The focus should be on all the complicated things you can influence and you can simplify. And that means you can reduce the complicatedness in your own organization because that's a self-inflicted problem.
Making things simple for the sales force is a highly challenging, often difficult, and always time-consuming responsibility for sales force enablement teams! Not easy. But worth doing it.
- Make the customer's journey your design point
This may not sound relevant here, but it is. Align all your efforts to what really matters, which is how your potential customers approach challenges, make buying decisions, and implement or use your products and services. That's the beginning of the move toward simplicity. Changing the perspective within your organization is key to success. For example, it's not about aligning sales and marketing to each other, but aligning and integrating them both with the customer's journey. Because the customer's journey is where your sales force has to be successful at the end of the day.
- Build a robust, simple process and methodology foundation with the customer's journey as the design point
A sales process, ideally an integrated process chain from marketing to sales to service, should be as simple as possible, but not simpler. Don't fall into the "simplification trap" and skip things that are important because you want to make it "simple." That leads to the wrong results. Examples are, for instance, when organizations try to fix everything with "one" process even if they have very different use cases from transactional to complex selling scenarios. The answer for a simple approach (and this means simple for the salesforce, not easy for the enablement resource!) requires the enablement and ops team to create process variations and a simple configuration that allows salespeople to get to the right process variation with a few clicks.
Don't forget to integrate your sales methodology into the process. A process defines the sequence of events, while the methodology details what to do and why. This will take a lot of work for the enablement and operations team. But the outcome for the salesforce will be simple, because a method that's integrated into the process, and ideally all in one place (one CRM), makes their life more productive. This will be a change they'll welcome, rather than another time-consuming "add-on."
- Assess your current enablement services and throw away what's no longer relevant:
This is an exercise that doesn't make a lot of friends, which can make people avoid or overlook it. But it's a necessary step to throw away all different versions of content and training assets that exist on multiple platforms. Throw away all content assets that are no longer relevant, that are not tailored to the customer's journey, or that are not valuable for whatever reason.
- Develop an enablement production and collaboration process to provide enablement services along the customer's journey:
You have to collaborate with many different departments, not only with marketing. So, defining collaboration goals and defining a simple process (such as "define, create, localize, provide, measure") for producing the desired services, and identifying which role is accountable for which content or training type, is essential to ensure a scalable and efficient approach.
- Invest in an integrated enablement content management solution:
For salespeople, enablement is only as simple as they perceive it. And the biggest obstacle is often that they are required to go to different places to find all the content they need. There is a marketing portal and an operations portal, and there is the one from product management and from legal for the contract attachments. And, most organizations (48.3%) still email their content to the sales force or have it accessible on multiple repositories. Only 10.5% work with an enablement platform that is integrated into their CRM. But that's the way to go if you want it simple. For the sales force.
I could list another five topics to look at in terms of simplicity, but that might "complicate" this article!
So, first things first: Implement a solid, simple, robust foundation based on the customer's journey.
Only then will the other four steps be effective.
This article was initially written for Top Sales Magazine, May edition.
The Enablement of Women in Sales
Did you know that the women's right to vote is a challenge that took more than 200 years and is still not achieved everywhere on the planet? The movement began in the 18th century.
But most countries only allowed women to vote starting in the early 20th century – the UK and Germany in 1918 and the US in 1920 – after decades of very painful processes. Many countries in Europe and around the world only followed decades after WWII.
I normally don't write about gender equality and gender collaboration, simply because it's not my research focus in my role as research director for CSO Insights. Today is an exception, because we celebrate International Women's Day on March 8, and because we have the March edition of Top Sales Magazine written entirely by women contributors. Furthermore, and this is probably the most important reason: Women cannot take anything for granted, including what we have already achieved, as recent political trends unfortunately show.
In general, there are always two sides to gender equality. One is the legal part as mentioned above, with the women's right to vote as an example. The other one is our cultural reality in all aspects of our lives. This cultural dimension is much more important because it shapes the political and the business landscape and the decisions that are made in parliaments and organizations.
Women in sales and sales force enablement – where are the women in sales?
It's still the sad truth that there are too few women in sales, especially in sales leadership roles. Data provided by LinkedIn suggests that women occupy 39% of sales roles, across the globe and across industries. That means there are far more women in typical female industries such as education and healthcare than, for instance, in technology or high tech. And the number of female sales executives is much smaller; the gap in sales is bigger than in other functions.
When I look at my current role as an analyst, I have to say that the number of female clients I work with is below 10%. And the few women I work with have marketing, sales enablement, sales training, or L&D roles. Just to give you an impression. Why are women so often found in enablement roles rather than in sales roles?
Women prefer a collaborative working environment
This is a personal experience as well as a perspective I hear from many women. Doing great work and creating great results in a collaborative environment seems to be much more attractive to women. And this is a prerequisite for working in a sales enablement role.
Based on our 2016 Sales Enablement Optimization Study, sales force enablement is a highly collaborative discipline that requires enablement leaders and practitioners to collaborate with up to eleven functions. It's much more than aligning sales and marketing only. Furthermore, the need to set up collaboration in a formal way has a tangible impact on sales performance: Quota attainment is 21% better compared to organizations with "ad hoc" collaboration only.
Based on my own experience in my previous role as the VP of sales force enablement in a large IT organization, setting up collaboration in a formal way across several departments, countries, and cultures is a huge challenge that must not be underestimated. It is by no means a "soft issue" that can be done with second priority or "when we have time" (which never happens in sales as we all know). Instead, it is a mission critical task that requires a clear vision, practical smaller steps, time-consuming calls, meetings, and discussions, and process development and adjustments. Finally, the different players find their "new" place in the game and recognize that they can now achieve even better results than before. Women are often, not always, of course, predestined for leading those processes.
Communication, listening skills, and empathy are excellent for sales enablement roles
All these skills are important for being successful in sales. And as women are often highly gifted with communication and listening skills as well as with empathy, they have great prerequisites to be successful sales professionals. Especially in the age of the customer, connecting products, services, and solutions to the buyers' desired business results is much more relevant and successful than talking about features and functions. A value-based selling approach depends on "soft" skills and the ability to connect the dots in increasingly complex buying situations.
These skills are even more important in sales enablement than in pure sales roles. Sales force enablement as a strategic discipline with an orchestrating character requires first and foremost a lot of internal selling to various stakeholders. And as anyone who has tried it knows, internal selling demands excellent communication and listening skills. Additionally, women often have a better connection to their intuition which leads to an excellent sensor for the "corporate weather forecast" and how to adjust their approaches.
Skills once called "soft" are now "must-haves" – More awareness is needed
This trend is a great opportunity for women in sales and sales enablement roles. What's needed in the industry and among male sales leaders is more sensitivity and more awareness of the situation and the facts at hand. Recognizing changed skill profiles has to be translated into changed hiring profiles and changed, gender-neutral, perceptions. Skills that are admired in men shouldn't be ranked inadequate in women, as, for instance, being "bossy." And that requires more women in sales leadership and sales hiring roles so that men AND women look together at candidates to ensure better hiring decisions.
This article was initially written for Top Sales Magazine, March edition, 2017
Getting The Most Out Of Your Enablement Technology
It's like having a car. You bought it in the expectation of achieving certain desired results. But if you don't drive it, you won't get the benefits of owning it. And that's not the car's fault.
Sales leaders have lots of expectations when it comes to sales enablement content management (SECM) solutions. Based on our CSO Insights 2016 Sales Enablement Optimization Study, improving access to content for salespeople leads the list with 57.4%, followed by reducing search time (33.1%), sharing best practices, improving sales and marketing alignment and increasing win rates (27.7% each), and reducing the ramp-up time of new hires (24.8%).
Now, let's look at the adoption rate of those SECM solutions. They are very mixed. Almost a third of study participants have adoption rates lower than 50%, and another fifth ends up between 50% and 75%. In both these cases (which amount to 51% of our study participants), there is no impact on sales performance to be diagnosed. Only adoption rates that are greater than 76% have a significant impact on sales performance. The good news is that 49% reported those adoption rates. So, if you are in the 49% group, you should experience, for instance, win rate improvements by 11.9%, and quota improvements by 6%. But if you did not experience this performance impact, look at these six ways to improve the adoption rate of your SECM technology.
#1 Set up your sales force enablement charter
Enablement charters are highly relevant because if there is no clarity on vision, mission, and purpose, and no clarity on goals and objectives and how enablement services impact productivity and performance, then your efforts will not produce results.
Energy has to be focused to create a movement. And that's the actual value of an enablement charter. These are the primary areas you should define in your charter: target audience, vision, mission, and purpose, objectives to achieving the vision and the related strategies to get you there, a timeline, and the enablement services you are going to provide for your target audience. And don't forget to define the metrics for measuring success.
#2 Clean up the content basement
Many sales content landscapes look like a chaotic basement: all sorts of content everywhere – old, new, relevant, and irrelevant. Assets exist in ten different versions and ten different content repositories. So, implementing an SECM solution is like moving to a new house: you don't want to bring all the clutter with you.
First, make an inventory of what exists, and where. Assess your content assets in terms of quality criteria, and then, be brave and throw away what's no longer relevant and what didn't match the criteria. Furthermore, our research indicates that only 39% of all the content salespeople need along the entire customer's journey comes from marketing. That means you will need a formal cross-functional production process and a related collaboration model to be efficient and effective in the future.
#3 Define and create enablement content services
Only content that's valuable AND relevant really matters, and that is determined by what's relevant and valuable to your prospects and customers. As they still make the buying decision, it's a no-brainer that content should be tailored along the customer's journey and for the different buyer roles. Dynamic value messaging is a big challenge to be mastered here. Instead of having value propositions only, you will need value hypothesis, value propositions in different levels, and value confirmation messages that have to be developed and integrated into content assets.
#4 Aligning content and training services
For those of you in an enablement role, this may sound familiar to you: "We need this, and we need that, and you have nothing for our role, but we are so special." It happens all day long. If people don't know how to use their tools, they will never have enough and always ask for more. Distributing content and tools is not enough; training is also important. So, "no content without training" should become your motto. Create, for instance, a short video about how to effectively use your newly developed playbook, or even better, let a salesperson explain it…
#5 Integrate your SECM into your CRM system
Now, once we have done all the preparation work, where do we put the SECM technology? Stand alone? That's probably not the best idea. It's much easier to drive adoption if you provide your SECM solution within the CRM system. This way, it's a "one-stop shopping" experience for salespeople.
Additionally, such an integration is the prerequisite that you can suggest, which will allow you to recommend sales content automatically within the CRM when a salesperson adds a new opportunity. Make sure that you align your content design criteria, as discussed above, with the selling scenario criteria in the CRM. All the work you have done so far pays off now in this step.
#6 Implement "Be Inspired!"
Now, the salespeople will have anytime, anywhere access to the right content, with the right value messaging, for the right buyer roles, and that addresses their business challenges at the right time. We call a content delivery mechanism like that "Be Inspired!"
Now, your focus should be entirely on a solid implementation, based on senior executive buy-in and their ongoing involvement, in the context of a change story that focuses on why, what, how, and when.
Last but not least: Please make sure that your sales managers coach their salespeople accordingly. Only then can an SECM implementation be successful.
And please don't forget to measure and to adjust regularly. And use the full analytics capabilities of your SECM solution – but that's a topic for another article.
Related blog posts:
Three Pillars of A Solid Sales Enablement Foundation
Sales Force Enablement Technology: How to Define the Functional and The Technology Layer


text:
Michigan State forward Denzel Valentine named Big Ten Male Athlete of the Year
Michigan State forward Denzel Valentine is only hours away from hearing his name called at the 2016 NBA Draft. But before Valentine will join the association, he received one last collegiate honor.
Valentine was named the Big Ten's Jesse Owens Male Athlete of the Year on Wednesday.
Congratulations to Denzel Valentine – the 2016 Big Ten Jesse Owens Male Athlete of the Year. pic.twitter.com/ff1RfIn3bw
— Spartan Basketball (@MSU_Basketball) June 22, 2016
Valentine is just the third Michigan State male athlete to win the award since its inception in 1982. The other two recipients were goaltender Ryan Miller and fellow Michigan State basketball alum Draymond Green. Miller spent the past season with the Vancouver Canucks, while Green's Golden State Warriors recently fell short of its second-consecutive NBA championship run.
Valentine averaged 19.2 points, 7.8 assists and 7.5 rebounds during his final season in East Lansing, Mich. He helped lead the Spartans to a Big Ten tournament championship, but their season ended shockingly at the hands of 15th-seeded Middle Tennessee State. Valentine is expected to be drafted in the first round of the 2016 NBA Draft.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Koey Rivinus' life was extraordinary
Congrats to Len Lear on his story on what would have been the 100th birthday of the late Koey Rivinus ("Legendary Hill historian would have been 100 this year," Sept. 10).
Koey led an extraordinary life and devoted much of it to preserving the Wissahickon Park. He was tireless and passionate. My favorite memory was Koey carrying around his pail of magic cleanser that he used to scrub off graffiti from walls and bridges.
Today the Wissahickon is enjoyed by millions of people – and it remains our community's most precious asset. Len reminded us that it was Koey who decades ago saw its beauty and did so much to preserve it.
It's actually hard to find reverential local journalism like this in print. Hit with declining print ad revenue and resources, many newspapers have cut back drastically their local coverage or resorted to filling space with bland press release material. Not the Local.
I think my all-time favorite example of how good the Local is was Jeremy Jones's fascinating history last spring of the giant 122-year-old Ailanthus tree living adjacent to the Community Center. We pass by it every day, but who would have known it had such a tale to tell? Not many newspapers would bother with such a story, but the Local's dedicated, talented staff does, and we should all be grateful they do.
Art Howe
Tony D'Lauro was 'the nicest client'
Thanks for your fascinating article on Tony D'Lauro ("Remembering Hill's corporate exec-turned restaurateur," Sept. 17). I worked with him just about every day when he was with Rollins in the 1970s. (Gray & Rogers had Rollins as an account, and I was part of the satellite office they established in the Rollins Building.)
Tony was one of the nicest corporate/client types I ever dealt with – and I dealt with a boatload. In all that time (three years) – I never learned that Tony lived in Chestnut Hill and did the same grim commute every day that I did. I think I knew about DiNardo's (seafood restaurant, which Tony owned) at some point, but I'm old enough now to have forgotten more stuff than I ever learned. Anyhow, thanks for the memories.
Dick Lee
Phila. U. paving over paradise?
A growing coalition of formal opposition is forming in response to the Philadelphia University garage development plan to "pave paradise and put up a parking lot" in the watershed. Discussions on how to proceed have been ongoing for several years between the university, community and local civic leaders and elected officials.
Local civic leaders, (stakeholders and taxpayers), were pleased and relieved today after learning new information from a formal evaluation of the park topography in question, with hydrology expert, Dr. Timothy Bechtel, Ph.D., P.G., of Enviroscan Inc.
According to the report, preliminary conclusions can be drawn that the Wissahickon will remain safe because of the watershed protection regulations in the Wissahickon Watershed Ordinance. The purpose of the Wissahickon Watershed Ordinance is that "the jewel of the Philadelphia public park system," the Wissahickon Valley Park, remain undisturbed. Comparisons of map overlays indicate that the proposed site for a transportation center lies within the Wissahickon Watershed Overlay District.
Paragraph 5 of the Wissahickon Watershed Ordinance states: "There shall be no new impervious ground cover constructed or erected within 200 feet of the bank of a surface water body or within 50 feet of the center line of a swale within the WWO overlay."
The stakeholders, civic leaders, environmental advocacy groups and city taxpayers agree that Philadelphia University, an institution which prides itself in teaching sustainability and has received a national award for such in 2013, must consider sustainable design planning of its campus in any further revisions.
Kris Soffa and Patty Cheek
East Falls
Welsh was right: 'too much power'
I take issue with Sam Gugino's letter this week (Sept. 17), which was highly critical of Greg Welsh's article ("Chestnut Hill restaurateur strikes back at reviewers," Sept. 10). As a former restaurant critic, it seems that Gugino is quite thin-skinned. Some newspaper critics are good at dishing it out but apparently cannot take it.
Yes, as Welsh conceded, Craig LaBan of the Inquirer is a brilliant writer, and some people I know who are "foodies" regard his words as coming from Mount Sinai, and they would never go to a restaurant that gets a bad review from LaBan.
But as Greg Welsh rightly said, LaBan's views are opinions, not facts, and those opinions are not necessarily any more valid than the opinions of any other diner like me or you. When it comes to movies or TV shows or books or music, we all have opinions, and we all like certain things and dislike certain things.
That is as it should be, but when one person has the power to hurt people's businesses, or even put them out of business because of his opinions – not facts – that is way too much power for one newspaper reporter who is not a trained chef and has never owned or run a restaurant himself.
One bad review of a movie or TV show is not going to kill that movie or TV show, but one bad review from LaBan can – and has – caused businesses to close and employees to lose their jobs and families to lose their means of support, not because they were serving bad food but because one person decided to trash them in print. That is way too much power for one reporter, and Welsh was right to point it out.
Casey Fraley
Thanks to Chestnut Hill
Thank you to Chestnut Hill for my recognition at Fashion and Food at the Fareway last Friday night for my seamstress work. I have the best customers in the world.
Maria Chiodo
Chestnut Hill
Hardly the ones to lecture others
Secretary of State John Kerry recently went to Cuba to reopen the U. S. Embassy there and said, "The time has come for us to move forward in a more promising direction."
That's good. But then he lectured the Cubans on human rights and elections. Really?
We bomb and invade countless countries around the world whenever it suits us – Libya, Iraq. We fly our killer drones anywhere in the world killing thousands of innocents, and chalking it up to "collateral damage." We support (in military aid) three of the most oppressive regimes in the world: Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and the latest member of the club, Egypt, because as the hypocrite Kerry says, "It's in our national interests to do so."
Have you ever noticed when the government has nothing better to say, it's always in our "national Interests." Well, it's not in mine, Mr. President.
What he – read Obama – doesn't say is that it's not in our national interests to lecture anyone, anywhere, about human rights, and particularly the Cubans, when we occupy the sovereign territory of Cuba (Guantanamo]) and harbor one of the most heinous terrorists in the world, Luis Posado, down in Miami, for his responsibility in blowing up a Cuban airliner, killing 73 Cubans.
Because of the hypocrisy of the United States, people around the world have their own views of our country, and it doesn't always coincide with "Land of the free and the home of the brave."
Lawrence H. Geller


text:
Stewart McKelvey's Labour and Employment practice group understands the unique, and often sensitive, situations that can arise in a workplace. With one of the most successful labour and employment teams in the country, we tailor our creative solutions and counsel according to specific client needs and develop workplace strategies that balance business realities with legal obligations. Our experience with Atlantic Canada's leading employers–large, institutional companies to small, family-owned businesses–in both the private and public sectors, has run the gamut and we have experience working with clients in every sector of the economy. Our skilled and experienced team has successfully guided clients through a broad range of local, national and international labour and employment matters.
For more information on what our team has to offer please download our Labour and Employment profile.
© 2018 Stewart McKelvey. All rights reserved. | Privacy Policy | Disclaimer| Contact | Careers | Site Map | HomeWebsite designed by Greenfield/Belser Ltd. | Powered by OneWeb CMS


text:
Jism 2 first weekend collection at Rs 209 mn
Mumbai: Jism2, starring porn star Sunny Leone, drew curious crowds as it opened but took a beating as the new week dawned. The movie known for its sleaze content, had a first weekend collection of about Rs 209 million, including Rs 7.4 million collected from paid previews a day before the regular Friday release on 3 August.
Kya Super Kool Hai did very well in its first week to collect Rs 352 million, the advantage being a low price tag. The second weekend proved decent enough with figures of Rs 55 million.
Aalaap, a film about Naxals v/s youth, fared poorly at the box office and collected about Rs one million in its first week. Mere Dost Picture Abhi Baki Hai, with total collections of Rs 1.3 million over two weeks, is a lost proposition.
Cocktail sailed through its third week with figures of Rs 39 million. Bol Bachchan added Rs 45 million in the fourth week to take its total collections to Rs 975 million so far.
Gangs Of Wasseypur collected Rs 800000 in its sixth week taking its total to Rs 261.5 million. Rowdy Rathore took its nine week total to Rs 1.39 billion, adding Rs 1.8 million for the week.


text:
It's free with no obligation - cancel anytime
Beautiful Fox Island home made move in ready w/ some fresh paint, new carpets & beautiful landscaping. Features: 3 bed plus den & bonus room, 2 1/2 bath home, the HUGE bonus room has views & full bath, great master suite with full bath w/ lots of tile work, jetted tub, separate shower, tall vanity. The home has lots of windows to take in territorial views & gorgeous cul-de-sac setting, open living/dining area w/ wet bar, great kitchen with double oven & gas cooktop, large deck off back of home.
Don't worry! We'll never spam you or sell your details. You can unsubscribe whenever you'd like.
Listing Courtesy ofWindermere Gig Harbor


text:
Posted on Sunday, April 15, 2012
by Cynthia Schmidt
My husband loves oysters. Me, not so much. Costco has U.S. harvested oysters that have been quick frozen and he likes to make oysters Rockefeller with them. I prefer a good piece of locally caught fish on the grill. But that with a salad and vegetable and we'll have a nice healthy meal. This is a change of pace for Joe. He's quite a carnivore so sunday grilling usually involves steak or ribs or a roast on the spit.
Funny you mention oysters, Cynthia..Bob's family would eat oyster stew every Christmas Eve for years and it really did not appeal to me..a little slimy looking..lol..recently, our son Steve wanted to make the stew and I hoped he would forget about it and he did, am I mean?..lol.
Tonight, we are having grilled chicken marinated in meyer lemon, steak, corn on the cob, steamed asparagus and a spinach salad with chilled crab meat.
post your dinner menus so others may mimick


text:
Project Mission
Working for all students at LUSEM interested in the IT area.
The IT Project is an initiative run by LundaEkonomerna to bring the IT students within Lunds University together. We aim to bring students with different backgrounds together that share a common interest in IT and do so by facilitating networking and knowledge-sharing activities. Do you have a business background and would you like to know more about IT related topics? Or are you an experienced whizz with hard technical skills?
It doesn't matter where you come from, our events are aimed at everyone that is interested in the IT domain. We offer workshops, guest speakers, weekly programming get-togethers and information sessions. Feel free to join our events and find out for yourself how you can improve your IT knowledge and network through participating in the IT Project! See you soon!
Programming huts spring 2017
Planned programming huts
21.03.2017 at 17.00
04.04.2017 at 17.00
18.04.2017 at 17.00
02.05.2017 at 17.00
16.05.2017 at 17.00
Past programming huts
Programming hut 1.pptx (2016-10-11)
Programming_hut_2.pptx (corrected version) (2016-10-26)
Project members
You are always welcome to contact our project members!
Josefin Frick
Project Leader - Collegial
Thomas Hughes
Vice Project Leader


text:
Airtel TRACE Music Star 2015 winner Mayunga Nalimi releases the music video for his breakout single "Nice Couple", set to air on TRACE Urban DStv 325 on 31 July 2015.
Earlier this month, TRACE Music Star winner Mayunga Nalimi touched down in Johannesburg from his native country of Tanzania to embark on the new beginnings of a promising musical career since reigning supreme in Africa's biggest ever talent search competition on 18 April 2015.
Crowned by international megastar Akon and awarded with a grand prize that includes a record deal with Universal Music, Mayunga hit the ground running during his SA visit with a full-on music video production for his latest single "Nice Couple", which was shot in Orlando East, "Nice Couple" is available for download on iTunes in 107 territories worldwide, as well as other online music sharing sites like Deezer, Beatport and Vevo.
TRACE is a leading urban and black entertainment group with activities in 180 countries. TRACE is a signature hub for black and urban entertainment content and offers TV channels, FM radios, mobile services, events etc. to millennial and young adults audiences.


text:
Thursday July 13, 2006
Today I went to the upper falls, to a trail accessed through a hole in a chain link fence. The trail ran down a narrow grade for a very short while before coming to a cliff-top overview of the lower part of Glen Park. I'd been here once before, and then only briefly, around sunset, and I'd come back to explore the little path that run along the cliff face to the south of the overview. The last time I was here, I saw a heron sitting on the peninsula down by the river, but he wasn't there today.
I went through the dense foliage and made my way down the path along the cliff. It was necessary to use hands to grab tree trunks and vines and roots that protruded from the cliff face to keep balance. As was the case with most of these narrow paths, the footing was loose and treacherous and required focus. But that is what I love so much about these paths…they allow you to slip into a zone and let your instincts and intuitions carry you; something that most people never ordinarily find the time to do. As a result, they start to lose touch with whom and what they are, and then start to feel ambivalent, uncomfortable, or even rigorously opposed to the situation when it does come up in their lives.
The narrow path traced down the cliff face, and then switched back where it came to a street water runoff. The runoff area of the cliff was not nearly as steep as the rest of the cliff…it had probably been erodes for some time by the water. The area also had a bunch of concrete poured down its face, cementing all the rocks and trees in place; to prevent further erosion, I suspect. I switched back with the path, which required me to lower myself down off of a huge limestone slab down to a small grouping of small pieces of limestone jutting out of the cliff some two or three feet below. The vines growing on the cliff face were a big help. I tested the stability of the limestone below gently with my foot. Luckily, they were solid; otherwise, I'd have been left hanging with quite a struggle on my hands to get back up to the big slab.
The switchback part of the path was just as treacherous as the first part, maybe even a little more so, but it was also farther down the face of the cliff, so the possibility of a slip and fall didn't seem quite so harrowing. Finally, I made it to the path's end: a little cove in the cliff was cut out by the waterfall, and above that peaceful little pool, a cave was carved out of the limestone, big enough for maybe two people to crouch in somewhat uncomfortably.
I sat down on a rock that faced the cave. The discovery of this neat little area would have brought me a lot of joy in the past, but now, it failed to move me. I began to wonder if maybe Katie had ruined the woods for me. The silence and solitude I once found so comforting and liberating is now where I am most tormented. She is everywhere…I can't look at the Swinging Bridge, or the river, or hear the crickets and toads at night without thinking of her. Everything momentary simple pleasure I experience is crushed under the weight her memory brings. I suppose that's the trouble with being friends with someone with whom you have so much in common...they haunt you everywhere when they are gone. She isn't just always in my thoughts; she's become a prism through which I view the world.
I sat facing the back of that cave for a while, emulating Dogen, the Zen master, but I found no peace despite the tranquil setting, and eventually I got up and left. I climbed down to the river bank and crossed the river on a series of rocks sticking out of a shallow part. I walked a cross the island in the river and crossed over rocks at another shallow point, and jumped up onto the west bank of the river, where I was faced with another near sheer cliff face. This cliff also had some paths that traced their way across it, and I climbed one that brought me underneath the Swinging Bridge.
This was a place where teenagers would come at night, and the place was littered with bottles and cans, candy wrappers and empty cigarette packs. It is so hard to see things like this, to see our greatest natural resource treated so callously, and it saps the hope in me.
I sat down and watched the river flow. Under the bridge, the river narrows and encounters many rocks, and gets a little noisy, but in a very calming way. My mind wandered and, as usual, found its way to my dead friend.
Before she died, life to me was like a daytime sky, with clouds, the sun, the moon, and birds; everything easily identifiable and sure. Now it was like the sky at night, with too many stars to count and an overwhelming infinity to it. The last time I saw her alive we talked about the stars…
Tears began to well up again. That is one thing I am certainly grateful to Katie for; she taught me how to cry. Before she died, I hadn't cried in about 25 years. I wanted to, but something in my psyche wouldn't let me. Pride, I guess, or machismo…maybe shame or fear. Lately, however, I cried all the time, and it really did help me.
I smiled a little at that. I began thinking now of the good times we'd had, about how funny she was.
"What do you call a black guy who flies a plane?" she asked one day.
"Umm," I replied, racking my brain for an answer. I knew the correct answer would be funny, but certainly not racist, as she was far too intelligent and sweet a person to be base or mean. What could it be? I thought. I wanted to show her how clever I was.
"A pilot, you racist!" she interrupted, smiling devilishly. I laughed. She was a great person and a great friend.
I thought about the papers and pictures she'd left behind, that Sy had rescued from being deleted. I'd read all of her papers save one, a paper entitled "Aesthetics". I would very much like to know her thoughts on the subject, as she was so intelligent and also a great artist, but I cannot bring myself to read that paper. I don't think I ever will. As long as I have that paper, I still have one last new interaction with her. I feel as though once I read it, that will be the true end of my communication with her, and that causes me a great deal of mental anguish.
Footsteps on the bridge, followed immediately by the noon whistle, brought me back to the present. With a sigh, I gathered up my thoughts and stood. I retraced my route, finding the climbing of the steep cliff paths a bit easier than the descent. One of the rocks I stepped on to cross the river was a little wobbly, and I ended up having to leave the stone and stamp my foot clumsily in the river to avoid completely falling in. I took off my shoe, wrung out my sock, and continued on my way.
Up on top of the cliff by the hole in the fence where I had first entered, I looked down. A tall, thin tree grew up over the cliff top; it was hard to believe it was the same tree that looked not so very impressive from down by the cove.


text:
|about Lucia
|Theater Review:
European Repertory Companys "THE TEMPEST" at The Viaduct
Perhaps as it celebrates its tenth anniversary, European Repertory Company wishes to explore its elemental roots and its desire to strip theater down to an essential core of humanity. That may be the reason co-artistic director Dale Goulding chose William Shakespeares most poetic and personal play, "The Tempest," to open ERCs season. But Gouldings misguided and rudderless production -- described in the directors notes as exploring "the human condition" shaves the Bards late romance down to nothing.
Those who have neither read nor seen "The Tempest" one of Shakespeares more emotionally accessible plays will feel as if theyve been placed under a spell of incomprehension. The production, in its efforts to deny a concept and eliminate most of the works poetic grace, renders this sweeping tale of tempered ambition and a wizened passing of the torch meaningless.
In fact, audiences familiar with the plays sensuous magic grounded in a blistering sense of reality, might find themselves scratching their heads and wondering how such a seamless work of literature could turn so erratic and incomplete in ERCs hands. This notion is even more shocking when one considers that ERC has long been respected for its ability to sensitively and inventively tap into the core of the human spirit.
"The Tempest" often has been regarded by scholars as Shakespeares farewell. The playwright may have had himself in mind when he crafted Prospero, the reluctant Duke of Milan who, following a shipwreck, rules with "white magic" over a mysterious island. Besides his beautiful young daughter Miranda (symbolizing the promise of a new world), Prospero is joined by the loyal chameleon-like sprite Ariel and the savage Caliban (who plots with futile bravado to kill his master and take Miranda by force).
When Prosperos brother, Antonio who has usurped the title of Duke of Milan gets swept onto the island with his councilors and shipmates, the benevolent magician takes them through a supernatural test of deceptions until they repent and fully understand the consequences of their actions. The two linked stories of this triangular plot line are Mirandas romance with the King of Naples son, Ferdinand, and Ferdinands own character-building trials instituted by Prospero; and the fools Trinculo and Stephano, who get lured into Calibans wrongheaded scheme to assassinate Prospero.
"The Tempest," whose title refers to the changing climate (both physical and psychological) and to time, extends beyond the reality versus illusion structure to one that reverses the very essence of what is genuine and what is conjured in ones mind for personal gain. Its also a lyrical meditation on the passing of time and its cycles planting, harvesting, birth, death, etc. and implies that life may be a dream from which we awake when we die. Furthermore, it comments on the dramatic art form and its capacity to unveil truths in a contrived environment.
But these multilayered ideas get lost in Gouldings flippant and plodding production, which can best be described as a kinky fashion show for the simultaneously omni-sexual and asexual Ariel rather than a fully realized examination of the powerful alchemistic pull of the elements.
The designers, no doubt mirroring the Mozart-style mechanical opera sets of the 18th century, do not carry their pared-down design motif full circle. A pond filled with real water bordering the spacious central stage of The Viaduct also comes across as mere decoration stopping short of poignant symbolic value.
And Goulding fails to bring out any provocative textures in his talented cast. Gary Houstons Prospero is too world weary and vocally monotonous to engender any urgency to his plight, while Heather Pretes Miranda stays at one shallow, shrill level. Kirk Andersons Caliban is reduced to a bungling clown. Only Aaron Cedolias Ferdinand and Fred Wellisch as gentle advisor Gonzalo burrow deep inside their characters multitiered dilemmas.
But the most disturbing aspect of ERCs "Tempest" is the campy yet ominous portrayal of Ariel by Rick Frederick, who is forced to parade around the stage naked or draped in pearls, faux fur, angel wings and spiky S&M gear not to mention his killer high heels and equally razor-angled blonde hair and the sort of white contact lenses actors wear in tacky devil movies. We cease to care about the story and wait in anticipation for Ariels next outrageous outfit.
"Tempest" audiences will feel like theyve been deposited on a desert island lost in a haze of psychological frustration, disorientation and emptiness that grows even more confounding with each interminable passage of soul-stripping time.
European Repertory Companys production of "The Tempest" runs through December 2 at The Viaduct, 3111 N. Western Ave. Tickets: $15-$22. Call 773-248-0577.


text:
Stewart McKelvey announced today that it will be expanding its team across Atlantic Canada. The firm has offered 17 of its articled clerks Associate positions within the firm. The group of 11 women and six men will commence work following their admittance to the respective Bars later this year.
"Our articling program is the future of the firm," says Stewart McKelvey's Managing Partner, John Rogers, Q.C. "We hire lawyers who have diverse interests and varied experiences, with the potential to become partners. It's a pleasure to welcome this bright and hardworking group of individuals to our team."
The 17 clerks who have been offered positions with the firm are listed by office below:
Halifax, NSJoseph Chedrawe Sadira Jan Jennifer Landry Graham Lindfield Laura Marr Melanie Petrunia
St. John's, NL Janet Grant Vanessa McCarthy Bill Sheppard
Charlottetown, PEJonathan Coady Susan Doucette
Fredericton, NB James Charlton Julie Gorman
Moncton, NBMelanie Marquis
Saint John, NBVanessa Anderson Andrew Carson Wendy Morgan
Stewart McKelvey is one of Canada's 15 largest law firms, with over 210 lawyers and 300 staff in six offices across the region. It was recently ranked Atlantic Canada's Number One Law Firm, according to Canadian Lawyer magazine in its second annual ranking of regional law firms. Stewart McKelvey also won the magazine's previous ranking in 2005.
© 2018 Stewart McKelvey. All rights reserved. | Privacy Policy | Disclaimer| Contact | Careers | Site Map | HomeWebsite designed by Greenfield/Belser Ltd. | Powered by OneWeb CMS


text:
ERIC Number: ED245252
Record Type: RIE
Publication Date: 1984-Aug
Pages: 19
Abstractor: N/A
Reference Count: 0
Public Relations Education for the 80's and Beyond.
Wakefield, D. Gay; Cottone, Laura Perkins
In a review of the literature regarding the current and projected status of public relations degree programs and major trends in public relations practice in the United States, this paper analyzes aspects of the political/economic/social/cultural environment (PESCE) affecting the practice and teaching of public relations. The paper covers PESCE implications for the education of future public relation practitioners, and offers specific recommendations concerning the development of effective public relations degree programs. It notes that the recommendations are responsive to PESCE trends, major developments in the practice of public relations, employment requirements in the field, and maturation of public relations as an academic discipline. (CRH)
Publication Type: Opinion Papers; Information Analyses; Speeches/Meeting Papers
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Note: Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (67th, Gainesville, FL, August 5-8, 1984).


text:
Hi! I finally bought GOS. So I remade my first orchestra music.
don\'t double click, copy and paste to your Browser\'s address input.
This is the link.
The title is \"Pegasus\".
Strings - GOS, AO, DDSS
Woodwind - AO
Piano - Giga
Brass - AO
Others - AO
Effect - Giga Studio
[This message has been edited by Ken-P (edited 11-14-2001).]