[En] The state of sales enablement in the UK in 2023 - Seismic LXA report
Channel: Visionary Marketing
Date: 2023-01-25

What is the current state of Sales Enablement in Europe and especially in the UK? A recent Seismic-LXA survey carried out amongst 1,000 UK, German and French professionals produced some very useful insights regarding the current transformation of the sales process. It shows how sales are becoming increasingly complex and how organisations are adapting to the new situation. Sales Enablement is more than ever at the heart of these changes. Here are my five takeaways from this very noteworthy report. #Disclosure: Visionary Marketing worked with Seismic in the past.

5 takeaways from the 2023 Seismic-LXA Sales Enablement report

The state of Sales Enablement in 2023. S.E. can turn your average salesperson into a superhero, but many businesses have to overcome a few challenges before they get there — image generated with Midjourney.
State of sales enablement: a survey of 1,000 European professionals

 This survey was carried out in Europe and focuses mostly on the UK (72% of the 1,000 respondents), with a smaller proportion of answers from France and Germany. One will have to keep this in mind as it allows some sort of comparison between countries with a little bias on the UK, though. As Continental Europe is far less advanced in terms of Sales Enablement adoption, this nuance is somewhat important.

Most respondents are working in sales, with a fair proportion of managers and top managers. This is a fine sample and the insights we can derive from that survey are extremely newsworthy.

The Sales Enablement market is evaluated at $508.9 billion by LXA in their report. This number encompasses both SalesTech and MarTech. Sales Enablement is indeed a very broad subject, and one must take this into account.

My commentary is summarised in this post. You will find an unabridged version in the enclosed Loom video. Often, we will abbreviate Sales Enablement as S.E., for convenience.

Exec summary of my 5 takeaways from the 2023 Seismic Sales Enablement report

Slide 1 Exec summary

My five takeaways from the report are the following. They are described and commented on in greater detail at the end of this post.

Selling is getting harder. It takes more steps for you to get customers to come to a decision. And it makes sense in that context that Sales Enablement finds its place within organisations. Having said that, we still found 32% who are either not convinced or not quite convinced that Sales Enablement means better performance. And I found this rather baffling.
All respondents believe that S.E. is effective, but there is room for maturity improvement. It must be pointed out that the survey has a majority of UK respondents. Sales Enablement is not as developed on the continent and especially in France. Over there it only came to the agenda — if one excludes international businesses — a year ago or so. It may have preexisted but neither with this name nor with a proper S.E. philosophy. Often, there is no such thing as a Sales Enablement Function to start with. A recent interview we carried out on behalf of Sparklane with S.E. professionals in French (including a Seismic representative) confirmed this.
Respondents declare sales and marketing are aligned, but they keep contradicting themselves. Sales and marketing are increasingly aligned, that’s the good news. But when I looked into the details, in the light of other surveys that we have analysed and my field knowledge, I had my doubts and questions.
E. deployment is suffering from a lack of “sales professionals and necessary sales data sales, content sales, operation skills and knowledge…”. I wondered whether such people exist or whether collaboration between teams and the way that sales organisations are designed and implemented isn’t the crux of the problem.
Lastly, most respondents concur that processes and tools to drive their content strategy effectively are in place (but are content strategies implemented effectively?)