Product Marketing vs Sales Enablement: The Difference

Product marketing and sales enablement, more often than not, complement each other because both play crucial roles in making a product or service successful. They help create, communicate, and deliver a product’s value proposition to target audiences.

 

While the product marketing team creates, channels, and communicates a product’s value proposition to the target audience, the sales enablement team makes sure the salespeople have everything they need to engage and convert the leads marketing brings in. 

 

So how are they different? and why is it so hard for them to play nice? what can you do to make them play nice? These are the questions that we aim to answer in this article. 

 

What is Product Marketing? 

 

Product marketing focuses on communicating the product’s story, intent and use to both internal and external audiences. They decide how the product is positioned and ensure that the messaging comes through consistently across all marketing channels. They are also responsible for identifying market opportunities and contribute to the product’s evolution. 

 

They do this by  gathering data and insights, including customer feedback, industry insights, and what the competition is upto. They then use this data to 

 

1. Work with the product team to decide the product’s direction, positioning, pricing, and target audience
2. Identify different channels to communicate with the target audience 
3. Work with the customer facing teams to understand and facilitate their requirements and knowledge gaps  

 

Key Responsibilities of a Product Marketing Team

 

Product marketing is all about positioning the product in such a way that it resonates with the audience with the aim to establish the brand and generate interest in the product. 

Product marketers do this by,

 

Understanding the Market: By conducting market research, using reports and tools, observing customer feedback and listening to customer facing teams they indentify customer needs and pain points.  

 

Product Positioning: Using their understanding of the market and product knowledge, they build a compelling value proposition that addresses the customer’s painpoints. 

 

Creating Content: the product marketing team will now create engaging content, including brochures, product videos, product pages, case studies, white papers, blog posts, ROI reports and other marketing materials that communicate the value proposition to the target audience. 

 

 

Support Sales: The product marketing team also equips the sales team with the accurate and relevant information and collaterals so the sales team is fully equipped to engage and convert the leads that come in from the marketing efforts.  

 

Events and Launches: Product marketing plays a key role in go-to-market strategies including product launches. They also conduct and participate in events to create awareness, anticipation, and interest in the product and the business. 

 

What is sales enablement? 

 

Sales enablement, on the other hand, is all about empowering your sales personnel with relevant knowledge, skills, tools, and collaterals to help them help potential customers make buying decisions. 

 

The aim is to ensure that sales teams are able to respond to prospects readily thereby increasing customer engagement and reducing sales cycles. They do this by,

 

1. Working with sales teams to understand their challenges and requirements 
2. Work with product and marketing teams to ensure sales has all the knowledge and information they need to close deals 
3. Leverage data to optimise processes and strategies to enable efficient selling

 

Key Responsibilities of Sales Enablement Teams:

 

The sales enablement team ensures that your sellers are always at the top of their game. This includes making sure the sales team has enough knowledge and resources about the prospects, industry, competition, and of course the product. 

 

They do this by,

 

Understanding their requirements: sales enablers work closely with the sales team to understand what their challenges are. they do this by asking questions, looking at call notes, and observing their interactions with prospects. This helps them understand any knowledge, content or process gaps. 

 

Facilitating knowledge transfer: They endure that the sales team is constantly updated on the latest market trends, product features, and sales best practices through periodic training sessions. 

 

Making content available: They make sure that the sales team has all the content they need to keep the customer engaged. They work with product and marketing teams to ensure all sales enablement content available is up-to-date and relevant. 

 

Ensuring Sales and Marketing Alignment: For the sales team to have all the content and information they need, the marketing team should be able understand their needs and requirements. Only 30% of sales professionals say their sales and marketing teams are closely aligned. Sales enablement helps bridge this gap by enabling better communication and collaboration. 

 

Measuring and Optimising Performance: By tracking and analyzing sales and content performance metrics, they identify areas for improvement and optimise strategies accordingly. This also helps them build benchmarks tailored to their business, team, and customers.

 

 

Identifying and implementing Tools: They also identify, evaluate and implement sales enablement tools that help sales teams prioritise and engage with leads more efficiently.  These tools help manage relationships, maximize engagement, and close deals faster, boosting sales and revenue.  

 

What are the Differences between Product Marketing and Sales Enablement?

 

Product marketing and sales enablement teams share the same goals from their own perspectives. Here’s a brief comparison that helps understand each team’s roles and responsibilities:

 

	Product Marketing	Sales Enablement
Focus and Scope	Have a thorough understanding of the product, build positioning and messaging, identify marketing channels and conduct marketing activities.	Ensure the sales team is equipped with the right knowledge, content, and tools to efficiently close deals.
Critical Activities	Conducting market research, building strategies, running campaigns, and ensuring consistent messaging across customer touchpoints.	Training the sales force, ensuring the availability of relevant content and tools, and regularly analyzing data to ensure peak sales performance.
Goal	Building product awareness, creating interest and demand and generating leads.	Improving sales efficiency
Target Audience	customers - before during and after the sales cycles	The sales teams.
Metrics	Cost of Acquisition, market share, traffic, lead generation, campaign performance, product usage and adoption	Sales cycle length, time to productivity, win rate, quota attainment, Customer Interaction Metrics, Pipeline Velocity, Lead Response Time.
Content	Marketing collaterals including blogs, brochures, case studies, ads, battle cards, etc.	Bottom-of-the-funnel content like ROI calculators, comparative guides, pricing sheets, product specs, proof of concepts, etc.
Tools	Data analytics tools, MAPs, SEO tools, ad dashboards	CRM, Sales Enablement Platforms

 

How and why should Product Marketing and Sales Enablement teams Work Together?

 

Align Goals and Strategies

 

Product marketing and sales enablement teams need to have regular alignment meetings to ensure both teams are working towards the same business objectives. This involves sharing insights, setting common goals, and developing joint strategies.

 

This alignment will ensure 

 

1. The product marketing team is creating content tailored to address the specific needs of different buyer personas and stages of the sales funnel. 
2. The sales team is equipped with the right content to effectively engage with prospects, leading to higher conversion rates and improved sales performance.

 

Streamline Content Access and Usage

 

Implement a user-friendly content management system (CMS) where product team can easily share content and the sales team can easily find and utilize the most relevant content for their prospects. This system should include search functionalities and categorization based on sales stages and buyer personas.

 

 

Easy access to the right content at the right time enables the sales team to respond quickly to prospect inquiries, personalize their approach, and maintain momentum in the sales process. In return, content performance and engagement metrics along with sales content discovery metrics will help product marketing team optimise their process.

 

Create a Feedback Loop

 

Sales enablement should provide feedback to the product marketing team about buyer interactions and preferences and in return product marketing team should share industry and competitor insights and best practices. 

 

This feedback loop helps in refining marketing content and strategies based on real-world insights. Product marketing can now create more targeted and effective marketing campaigns, which in turn supports the sales team in closing deals faster.'

 

Establish communication channels

 

Establish ongoing communication channels between product marketing and sales enablement teams. This can be achieved through regular meetings, collaborative platforms, and shared performance metrics.

 

Continuous collaboration ensures that both teams are aware of each other’s activities, challenges, and successes, leading to more cohesive strategies and a unified approach to achieving business goals.

 

Paperflite - Sales Content Management Tool Built to Enable Your Sales Teams

 

Paperflite is a sales enablement platform that accelerates sales cycles by aligning marketing, sales, and prospects in one platform. It connects content with revenue and tracks marketing contributions to the company’s revenue.

 

Additionally, Paperflite integrates with CRMs and MAPs to provide end-to-end visibility on how marketing helps close deals by automatically mapping campaigns and content shared with deals to enable sellers to focus on conversations that matter.