Nordic Sales Enablement - highlighting the changes in your buyer.

My thanks to the Helsinki Sales Acadamy for putting on this wonderful event, hosted by the very engaging Gavin Ingham.

Presented as a TV talk show, with guests joining live a studio, as well as remotely, the format worked well and the agenda was packed with great speakers on many topics.

There was too much to note and report on, so here are some highlights from me:

• Henrik Larsson-Broman: The future state of sales - the trends for hybrid selling are being driven by the buyer.
• Petteri Poutiainen: How to establish positive Sales Enablement culture - how observed that happy employees make happy customers. Who knew that break-dancing would be the way to lead from the top?
• Karen Dunne-Squire: Sales and Marketing alignment - an impossible task? She outlined the tangible value by describing how 68% of organizations struggle to demonstrate alignment between sales and marketing, but of the 32% that do align, nearly 8 out of 10 are more likely to meet growth goals!

"Organisations that align sales and marketing make more money"

• My favorite panel session features Showpad's own Tamara Schenk who described the priority for leaders is to "find the number 1 challenge that is causing a problem today; then work back to determine how to solve the problem with tools, skills, and processes."
• I found Rasmus Nyberg's comment about ICP (Ideal Customer Profile) insightful - "the perfect customer is not always a perfect customer - it's about timing" which talks to the importance of making sure that you are on the radar, and listening for signals that now is the right 
• Jonas Hammarberg talked about the reality of buying team becoming ever larger: "there another stakeholder, there's another stakeholder, and there's another stakeholder."

In summary, what I took away from this event is that there is a consensus that the buyer team (it's no longer just one person) now sets the pace of the deal. With expectations from buyers about...

• how they wish to work
• when they want vendors to get involved
• and the value they want vendors to bring

...it is clear that we need to change how we prepare teams to meet those expectations.