Often the behaviour of employees (and business units) is driven by measurements. How is Marketing measured: based on the number and type of collateral created? Based on usability of material? Based on effectiveness of material? Perhaps the high tech company that you are speaking about should examine alternate ways of measuring Marketing (and incenting the outcome that they are hoping for).

To create impactful sales enablement material I suggest you adopt a (consultative) “sales approach”. Great Sales Reps ask their prospects insightful questions, they listen to responses and, in the end, they gain an understanding of the client’s process, measurements, challenges, PRIORITIES and more. This consultative approach adds to the value proposition of the Sales Rep (and hence the Organization) and the Sales Rep becomes viewed as a valuable partner /part of the client’s “team”. A similar approach should be used by those developing (Sales) Enablement material.

It is easy to think you know what Sales needs, especially if you have a Sales background (speaking from experience). However, if you take the time to understand the Sales Process: the hardships, the gaps AND if you understand how that process changes product-to-product OR depending on the channel (blue-suit Sales Rep, Inside Sales, Channel Partners, etc.), then your value proposition as a deliverer of effective material has just increased.

I agree if the material is useful, it will be used. However, all your Sales folks need to know it exists. If they can’t find it, they won’t use it. Sometimes the Sales Enablement material needs to identify resources that the Sales Rep (or Channel Partner) may not know about.

As for Sales thanking the deliverer of Enablement material, I’m not sure that is reasonable to expect. I’ve held many Sales and Sales Support roles. Even those in integral roles to closing a deal seldom get thanked. In fact sometimes they don’t even know if the deal has been closed. This behaviour is understandable when you examine the pressure on the Sales Organization to look forward (not back). Ask a Sales Rep what their boss says when they land a big deal. I bet, many would tell you their boss says something like, “Congrats on the Sale. Where’s the next one?”

Thanks for the post, it was thought provoking.
Anne Cauley

http://goo.gl/cXKjD

Sometimes there may be an aspect of the organization’s buying process that impeding a decision and the salesperson needs to know what that is.

There is more on the buyer’s internal obstacles that cause stalled deals here: http://davesteinsblog.esresearch.com/2012/08/27/why-are-deals-getting-stalled-and-what-can-you-do-about-it/

PS for you stats are the result of your own positioning and targeting, minus everything falling off your market share. For “unfiltered” stats I would suggest http://www.w3counter.com/globalstats.php

WebGL in Safari on iOS would be fantastic for us (right now, our iOS 3D solution requires a native app; we’d love to be able to provide in-the-browser 3D for iOS, like we do on Desktops using Java applets). I read an interesting blog post by someone who figured out how to turn WebGL on in the WebUIView, using one (private) API call, so it’s clearly an issue of Apple just being conservative. Given that there are innumerable web pages that kill Safari iOS by using too much memory, I’d guess that the conservatism is about exploits, not stability. (They have WebGL turned on in iAD’s, but of course, they vet those, so exploits are not a concern there.)

On the desktop, it’s possible (unlikely, but possible), that enterprises buy into the idea of Metro’s IE which has a completely crippled experience in exchange for very high security. (No ActiveX, no silverlight, no flash, no java, no fun.) In that case, there will be no way to deliver 3D using any technology, which would be a bummer, but it would re-level the playing field for WebGL.

Or, perhaps, Microsoft will come out with a completely non-standard way to do 3D (vis. VML vs SVG) and we’ll all just have to do WebGL on everything else, and Microsoft’s proprietary thing on IE. That would be unfortunate, but very consistent with Microsoft’s past business practices.