How do you define sales enablement within your industry?

http://blogs.forrester.com/scott_santucci/10-08-14-what_%E2%80%9Csales_enablement%E2%80%9D_and_how_did_forrester_go_about_defining_it sales enablement as "a strategic, ongoing process that equips all client-facing employees with the ability to consistently and systematically have a valuable conversation with the right set of customer stakeholders at each stage of the customer's problem-solving life cycle to optimize the return of investment of the selling system." By that definition, it's possible for companies with very different product capabilities and focuses to be in the field of "sales enablement." Putting sales enablement into practice won't look the same for companies of varying sizes, industries or selling styles. For http://www.mediafly.com, our focus is the in-person customer interaction, and empowering field sales reps before, during and after a crucial sales meeting. In light of the broad definition of "sales enablement", we recently published a post about why we call ourselves "https://www.mediafly.com/news/introducing-the-customer-interaction-platform" and not a "sales enablement platform."

At http://hubs.ly/y0Z2TY0 we use the following definition for Sales enablement: "Sales enablement helps sales teams with getting access to relevant sales content and with generating relevant sales analytics in order to be able to sell in a more efficient way." If you want to learn more about Sales enablement, have a look at this page: http://hubs.ly/y0Z2Tf0

You’re right. The definition of Sales Enablement is broadening, and is being stretched by vendors and pundits in the industry to include all sorts of sales-focused technology and practices.  And as Jesse (below) points out, there are tangential market segments popping up around sales acceleration, sales insight, online presentation, and so on.  Over time, many of these will like converge and merge. Here is a listing is a listing of https://www.highspot.com/sales-enablement/. The one I find the most succinct and specific is CSO Insight’s:  “A strategic, cross-functional discipline designed to increase sales results and productivity by providing integrated content, training, and coaching services for salespeople an frontline sales managers along the entire customer’s journey powered by technology” What all the vendors’ definitions have in common is a focus on knowledge, training and content. The organization (Sales Enablement teams, Marketing, and everyone) needs to empower Sales teams with the knowledge, content and training to have the most valuable exchange of information with the customer.  Content (in all its forms) is always at the core of both training and the transfer of knowledge with the customer. For this reason, most Sales Enablement solutions center around a content management system for sales, and then enable training and knowledge transfer. To answer your specific questions, it absolutely includes channel partners, if channel partners are part of your go-to-market. ...and that's regardless of industry. And whether your customer or client facing organization is comprised of agents, consultants, field sales, inside sales, they all need training, sharing of best practices, up to date content (tuned to each team, of course), playbooks and ability to share that information with prospects, either online, email, on tablets or face to face, as appropriate.

I've been noticing a trend that some prominent companies in the space have started using the term sales acceleration instead of sales enablement. Here is a thorough definition of sales acceleration: http://www.ringdna.com/blog/what-is-sales-acceleration-technology

Sales enablement is about enabling reps to be both efficient and effective. Most sales enablement initiatives tend to focus on efficiency; helping reps make more calls, send more emails or generate more leads. But sales enablement also needs to fix effectiveness, which is about helping the rep do the right thing. This means being able to have the right conversation with the customer at the right time. Sales enablement is about more than giving reps tools to help them do their job, it's also about giving them access to tools and information to hone their craft.

Sales enablement encompasses anything that can make your sales team more effective  (ex. improve win rates) and more efficient (ex. improve sales productivity). It is indeed broad and can span across marketing and sales function. Typically it would include Sales Intelligence, Sales Technology (CRM platforms, Content management system,etc.), Sales Readiness (Sales process integration, Regional enablement, Sales training, etc.), Sales Performance Management process and Intelligent Sales Operations (Reporting, Analytics, etc..)