From Sales Enablement to Buyer Enablement

2025-07-06

Moving Toward the Win-Win

Sales enablement is now a discipline, and for good reason. Sales teams at technology vendor organizations are often stymied from doing what they’re good at. The disconnect between marketing and sales has been well-documented, debated, and addressed, with approaches like account-based marketing emerging in response.

We see it often as industry analysts. While so much discussion focuses on buying decisions, analyst relations activity often sits within the marketing function and stumbles when it comes to helping sales. No wonder analyst relations professionals struggle to demonstrate ROI.

It’s a familiar and important topic—we offer services to support sales leaders. But here’s my personal twist: I care more about how technology is defined, bought, and deployed than how it’s marketed and sold.

At heart, I remain the person I was when I was procuring and deploying technology. And that, too, could be like running through mud. My question, then, is why don’t we talk more about buyer enablement? Why not flip the script and look at technology purchasing from the buyer’s perspective?

Spoiler alert: it’s a world that looks nothing like sales, marketing, or even the strange microcosm that is the analyst space. If you work in analyst relations and you wonder why I ignore or push back on generic definitions of “influencing buying decisions,” then read on.

When I first became a buyer, I struggled. I was given a budget, which grew considerably during my time in the role. There was no guidance on what “good” looked like—how to plan capacity, work with procurement, understand amortization, or “sell” my recommendations to my bosses and those further up the chain.

So, how can sales teams set themselves up to succeed? The first step is to understand the buyer.

What Does Enterprise Buying Look Like?

The enterprise buyer’s world isn’t a generic place where generic people are hanging around waiting to buy things and just need a bit more of a push. It tends to be divided by role (or, in marketing terms, “persona”).

Also, it’s not all about big-ticket new purchases. In reality, much (let’s say, three-quarters) of the technology budget is already earmarked for maintaining or improving existing infrastructure, software, and services, leaving a small portion for new deals.

People making those big-ticket decisions tend to operate on one-, two-, or three-year cycles. They’re looking at what their budget is going to be, where they can put their money, where they can cut costs, what they no longer need, and what they need now.

For many vendors, therefore, it’s about getting a foot in the door. Relatively recent concepts like the Challenger Sale methodology pit hunters against farmers, aiming to occupy places the incumbents can’t go. It’s a reason “land and expand” models are so prevalent.

Things get even more fragmented in the world of software development and delivery. Developers want to create, update, and maintain code, testers want to test, and platform engineers are looking to deploy into the cloud. Meanwhile, managers with a bit of the budget would really like visibility into what’s going on.

On the operations side, you’ll see people trying to get ahead of problems, even as they fight the fires and get shouted at (did you ever call a help desk just to say, “Great job”?). They want tools to collate logs and events, build a picture, make planning decisions, allocate work, and so on.

Across the board, we see small, medium, and large acquisitions. So there isn’t really such a thing as an enterprise buyer per se, unless you’re looking at the person who oversees all of it. The CIO’s job is to set strategy and give the IT organization what it needs.

Everything rolls up to the ultimate sign-off, but the CIO can’t be involved in every decision. It’s typically delegated. The CTO sets the scene, and then the VPs of engineering, infrastructure, and operations each have a budget. If there’s a need, it better be clearly articulated in order to cut through the legion of other demands on the budget.

Removing the Blockers to Buying: Less Push, More Aligned

A lot of what stops sales is that buyers can’t buy. As a buyer, I wanted new or better tools, but I might not have had the budget or a clear way of telling my boss that I needed it. Most of all, I lacked time to think through the options and decide which made the most sense.

I often say that being an analyst is a privilege. The biggest reason for this is that I have time to think, unlike when I was managing IT systems. Sure, no work is without stress, but I have never experienced the “robbing Peter to pay Paul” scenario as I did when I was coping with the complexity of an ever-expanding IT environment.

I needed help and was likely to put my money with the vendors that helped me the most. I remember working with Sun Microsystems as the incumbent server supplier, as well as with Hewlett-Packard. If the latter had been more supportive, who knows how that balance might have shifted.

The other challenge is that every technology decision—unless it’s just a relicensing or renewal—involves change. People need to be on board. I can buy a tech package to help my user base, but if they don’t want to use it, it becomes shelfware. Meanwhile, a salesperson may hit quota for a quarter, but the bigger deal will stay forever out of reach.

So when I think about sales enablement, I’m thinking about how to help sales help buyers—not just to make decisions, but to manage the complexity, change, and internal politics that come with those decisions against a backdrop of highly restricted time to think.

Giving buyers tools to help them think through the options is valuable. Maybe they won’t choose your product. In that case, you haven’t lost a sale—you’ve removed the opportunity cost and can now focus on deals that may succeed.

Buyer enablement isn’t a clever phrase—it’s the missing piece of the puzzle. People buy from people, so if you understand me and my buying needs, I will still be there, quarter over quarter, whichever vendor you work for. Enable me to succeed, and you will be enabling yourself.