My experience building a business case for sales enablement tool (and what you can learn from it).

Hi beautiful people,

Marshall McLuhan famously said, "We shape our tools, and thereafter our tools shape us." For product marketers, having the right tools is key to bringing value to the table. Luckily, we're in an era where tools don't always have to break the bank. However, some of the more advanced tools out there can come with a hefty price tag.?

Not all product marketing teams have a budget to spare. But, being an optimist, I've always believed in the mantra, "If there's no budget, I'll find one." This mindset has propelled me far in my career. My early experience in procurement, although not my passion, taught me invaluable skills, particularly in building business cases. Surprisingly, many PMM professionals struggle with this skill, hence why I'm sharing this article.

This article is a blend of my journey in purchasing a sales enablement tool and a practical guide on garnering internal support, even when starting with little to no budget (or any other PMM tool, if you prefer).

So let’s crack on.

How I came to realisation we need sales enablement tool?

For a while now, the idea of acquiring a sales enablement tool, also known as content management tools, had been simmering in my mind at my workplace. Like many companies, ours relied on platforms like Google storage or MS Sharepoint. While these platforms serve as decent starting points, they lack essential functionalities, particularly in providing detailed analytics beyond mere view counts. I wanted to understand who exactly was engaging with our collateral, track who made changes (and what they changed), pinpoint content gaps, and measure the impact on our deals.

Externally, I came across stats indicating that 80% of marketing collateral ends up in the trash (G2 report), and 30% of sales time is spent reproducing discarded material (The Challenger Sale book by Matt Dixon).

These stats reflected my own experience: I often felt like I was handling collateral requests, but never knew if it was worth the time.

It soon became evident that MS Sharepoint or Google doc wasn't cutting it for me. So, I went shopping. There's a charming Dutch expression, "kijken, kijken, niet kopen," which translates to "look around but don't buy." And that's precisely what I did.

My struggles with justifying the cost & effort of sales enablement tool at my org?

First off, those flashy tool demos had me intrigued, but the thought of migrating all our content felt like signing up for a marathon. It meant locking down the team for what seemed like ages, solely focused on ensuring a smooth transition.

Rearranging our content portal is like – it’s not urgent, nor is it a top priority, but the disorganization causes silent grief for everyone.?

Then, there's the biggie – change management. Convincing the sales team to adopt a new tool felt like asking them to climb Everest with no preparation.?

So, here's the equation: lots of effort to implement + change management +? a hefty price tag = a perfect recipe for "It's not happening."

As I deflected questions from eager sales reps about those tool vendors, my go-to line became "Let's tackle it next year, maybe Q4." Hoping they'd forget or move on. But deep down, I knew I needed a solid plan because in the meantime, we were stuck in the Stone Age of portals, tweaking here and there with no real progress

The nagging question persisted: How do I sway management, justify the effort to my team, and assure sales that this new tool will revolutionise their workflow? Eventually, I found the solution, and here's how I cracked the code.

Steps I took before crafting a business case

My “window shopping adventure” was fruitful. I saw with my own eyes what was out there, and had gathered my facts. But before I started building a case internally, there were a few other things I needed to do:

1. Fishing for best practices from industry leaders & PMM community:

I kickstarted things with a call to some sales and industry leaders, pondering if we truly needed a tool and what the best practices were. In chats with Sales Enablement (SE) leaders, the verdict was clear – success demands the tool, despite the effort and costs. So that became my new music, but I wanted to hear it from peers. I delved into how fellow PMMs roll – their thoughts, preferred suppliers, and why they picked a specific one. Boom! My music is becoming louder and clearer!?

2. Finding the right sponsor internally

As I already said, I didn’t have the budget for a tool, and the process of getting that budget was going to be a pain. To be successful, I knew I needed to find an internal sponsor. While I was searching for a fairy godmother, “perfect timing” turned out to be the thing that helped me push the initiative forward. Sales enablement became a bit of a hot topic internally and externally across the industry, which illuminated how important our work is. My manager, realizing the PMM team's struggles, got on board with the need for a sales enablement tool. Together, we started singing as a duet to other senior stakeholders in our organization.

In summary, before presenting the business case, I had:?

• Proof that effort is worth it confirmed by sales enablement leaders and PMM peers
• Confirmation that change management, although inevitable, was possible to manage
• Perfect timing, supported by my boss and senior management.?

3. Crafting business case and pitch to get others joining the band

I had everything I needed to support the business case. All that was left to do was present it.

Crafting a persuasive business case and pitch doesn't have to be formal; it can take various forms like a Word document, Notion page, PowerPoint presentation, or even a simple hand-drawn sketch on A4 paper. What truly matters is the clarity of your story, backed by evidence and numbers.

Here's the structure I follow:

• Catchy Title: Give a glimpse into the future. For example, I used this one "Sales Efficiency and Buyer Experience Reimagined."
• Problem Description: Paint a picture of the current situation, including the organizational impact using numbers (e.g., hours spent on tasks, costs, lost deals).
• Best Practices: Showcase what others are doing to address similar challenges, including quotes and statistics from relevant companies, preferably competitors.
• Gap Analysis: Optional section comparing current efforts to fix the problem with what's needed.
• Solution Options: Present various solutions, with cost/benefit scenarios for each.1. Status Quo - Do Nothing: Reinforce the ineffectiveness of maintaining the current situation.2. Partial Implementation options (I typically stick to 2): Offer different levels of implementation, like focusing on specific tool functionalities.3. Full implementation option: to show what full potential looks like
• Recommendation: Provide your expert recommendation and rationale.
• Next Steps: Outline the expected follow-up actions.

I also made sure I took the time to anticipate objections from other stakeholders, and how I would address them. (I built business cases so many times in my career that I can always smell these objections from miles away).

Why this structure works:

This structure might look long, but it has everything you need to take into account. When you craft your pitch you might want to remove certain sections, combine them together, or emphasize certain areas more than the other.?

Either way, one thing you should be confident about is that this structure works. I used it a thousands times in different companies I worked for and here is my argumentation why:

• Catchy title helps with focusing on the result rather than telling that we are buying a tool (job to be done for the win!).
• Problem and impact helps you set the context and illustrate the pain .
• Best practices help you add social proof.?
• Listing solution options allows to briefly introduce that we need to invest in tooling.
• Status quo helps to reinforce that current situation isn’t working and won’t be working
• Different implementation options show flexibility for change.?
• Your recommendation sets you as an expert and accountable party. You can’t expect your sponsors to make the decision for you. They can express their opinion, but at the end they will be looking at you to steer them in the direct direction.?
• Next steps help to set expectations.?

You might end up presenting your business case to different stakeholders in the organization, so you will have to amend it accordingly. For example, sales audiences will most likely be interested more in the way it’s going to help them secure more conversations and deals (and are worried about “yet another tool” that they will need to have in their stack).

The point is, make sure you think about who you’re presenting to when creating the pitches - the pitch is yours.?

Be careful with mentioning vendors to your internal stakeholders

What you also see is that I don’t focus on specific vendors in my listed options, even though I already have a specific vendor or 2 in mind. Because it’s important first to get buy-in from the stakeholders that we all agree we need a solution to a problem and we need it now. Sometimes mentioning vendors can harm the process. I had a few situations where I mentioned the vendor, but because previously that person had quite a negative experience, it prevented me from getting that person onboard.

In certain scenarios mentioning vendors can be helpful, especially if that vendor has a strong brand. For example, if you are shopping for conversion intelligence software, and you mention Gong, people immediately have an idea what it's all about even though they haven’t seen any demo.

Dealing with 4 common objections:

No matter how good your presentation is, you’re sure to get some objections or follow-up questions. The types of questions you’ll get will depend on your specific business, but here are four common ones that you can prepare for:

1. Can’t we just build it ourselves?

Some companies have strict policies when it comes to external tooling and therefore they prefer to build things themselves. In this case it will be a hard sell. However, for the majority of companies that is not the case. Of course we can build it ourselves, but why would we? It’s not our core business, it will cost hours of time and tens of lots of money. If you are not a construction company, but a legal firm, why would you build a house yourself if you don’t have expertise??

2. Can’t we just use our existing tools for this??

Be prepared to know the possibilities and limitations of your existing tools so that you can answer that question sorrowfully. My major counter argument to this objection was the analytics part — I could house everything in Google or Sharepoint, but I couldn’t know which content was impacting the pipeline or how. You can then add in the other pains (in my case, the lack of organization and visibility that was causing headaches for the sales team).

3. The budget is tight, we can’t afford it this year.

There are two different angles to this objection.?

Firstly, there might not actually be a budget for this tool this year. In this case, you can? prepare for next year by confirming that this is an important strategic initiative for the company, and making sure it’s a top priority. (This happened to me).?

Another option could be that there is a budget left, but that stakeholder is not convinced that it should be spent on your tool. So in this scenario you either need to find a better? stakeholder-fit or sharpen your pitch.?

4. This looks like a lot of effort, we don’t have team capacity for that.

That’s the perfect moment to use the change management process explained to you by vendors, stress the issue again of the status quo, and gauge how much we can actually commit and when.?

Take your time to build a business case, but don’t get too attached to the outcomes. It can be a rollercoaster. Enjoy the ride ;)

Overall, creating a business case is a lot of hard work. Sometimes it works out perfectly, and sometimes you might struggle to get approval. Both scenarios are okay — everything is a rollercoaster and growth opportunity!

In my scenario, I got the budget approved, but we had to delay the project a year. Even though stakeholders agreed that we need a sales enablement tool, there just wasn’t enough money left to buy it last year. Now my new challenge is to make sure the sales enablement tool remains a top priority and we have team capacity to work on it.?

So, if you’re building a business case this year, I hope that you can use this framework and experience to help you through the process.

Good luck with your case, and may the PMM force be with you,

Yours,?

Anna Borbotko

P.S.: — to any software vendor reading this, I hope you will supply us, buyers, with all the helpful information we need so that this article at some point just becomes obsolete. For any tool that a b2b buyer needs to buy. ;) But that’s a topic for another day.