What is Sales Enablement?

If you want to see what selling on steroids looks like, check out companies with robust sales enablement programs.

You’ll discover fantastic marketing nuggets, with metrics like revenue, productivity and escalating win rates on the rise — and figures like bounce rate and customer churn on a healthy decline.

Across a competitive market, a robust sales enablement program can be the biggest differentiator when it comes to edging out the competition and winning business. In fact, the Aberdeen Group found that when compared to traditional organizations, companies with excellent sales enablement programs have:

• 23% higher conversion rates;
• 32% higher team sales attainment quota;
• 24% faster growth.

These trends beg one question: What exactly is sales enablement, and how do you implement a sales enablement program for your company?

What does sales enablement look like?

Sales enablement is the process of equipping sales teams with the resources (content, guidance and training) they need to engage customers.

Even the best golfers in the world can improve their scores with the help of better clubs, superb training and more intel on the courses they play. Similarly, your sales reps can close more deals if trained and provided with the tools they need to better engage buyers.

At its best, sales enablement is a part of a strategic sales approach that includes coaching, technology and ongoing learning and support. Technology tools like CRM solutions can seamlessly integrate sales enablement into your reps’ and managers’ daily workflow.

Placing a focus on sales enablement makes your sales reps more effective by:

• Connecting sales teams to relevant content;
• Equipping them with training and guidance;
• Applying valuable analytics to optimize pitches;
• Delivering real-time visibility into the buyer’s journey;
• Providing flexible ways to deliver content.

Sales enablement drives results, as long as your organization remains committed to sales education and ensures that sales reps implement the strategies they learn.

Sales enablement vs. sales operations: what’s the difference?

To answer this question, you’ll need to ask yourself one more: is your organization sales-focused or buyer-focused?

Sales enablement is all about equipping sales teams with the resources they need to help buyers. This means providing your reps’ with the tools they need to present products that provide real solutions.

Sales operations, on the other hand, encompasses all the pieces that go into making sales happen: the product, quotas, the market, how many people you need to hire, etc.

Here’s another way to look at it:

Sales enablement revolves around people who facilitate sales. It encompasses onboarding, training, coaching, certification, sales communication and optimization of results.

By contrast, sales operations entail planning and organizing sales teams and everything that goes into the sales and marketing docket. From territory optimization to hiring, compensation and quotas — all are essential parts of sales operations.

What happens to sales teams without enablement?

Sales enablement is a modern approach to sales. It seeks to fill the gaps left by the informal selling processes, resulting in increased customer engagement and revenue. Here’s how sales teams with enablement compare with reps without it.

	Teams with Sales Enablement	Teams without Enablement
1	Reps have fast access to the resources they need when they need them throughout the buyer’s journey, resulting in higher sales.	Reps lack the necessary resources to engage buyers, resulting in low sales.
2	Marketers can act on performance data and insights to produce content sales reps need to close more deals.	Marketers lack performance data and insights and struggle to provide what sales reps need to close more deals.
3	Reps leverage a single platform for all their sales enablement needs — from content to training. This helps reps save time, and effort, during all stages of the sales cycle.	Reps rely on multiple platforms to access, customize and share customer content, which is not only time-consuming but also results in inconsistencies across the board.
4	Marketing, sales and sales enablement are aligned on strategies and goals that drive results.	Marketing, sales and sales enablement are misaligned and lack accurate performance metrics.
5	Sales content is accessible via a single repository, resulting in higher accuracy, improved consistency and execution at scale.	Sales content is scattered across different repositories, resulting in substandard execution.

 

Teams with sales enablement drive better results since they have the required tools and data to drive conversions. 

Does my team need sales enablement?

Wondering whether your organization needs a sales enabling program?

These questions should give you insight into whether your company is ripe for a sales enablement program.

• Are you meeting your sales goals?
• Are you confident your sales reps are always on-message?
• Is there room to improve seller quota attainment?
• Are your sales reps using sales tools to their fullest extent?
• Does your sales team get the most out of the technology you have in place?

If you answered “No” to any of the above questions, your organization could see vast improvement by implementing a sales enablement program.

And even if you answered “Yes” across the board, it’s important to remember that businesses are constantly evolving and technology is rapidly advancing. Sales enablement can help organizations on top stay there.

Your sales teams will, at some point, need training to acquaint new hires with your processes. You may also need sales enablement if your sales reps sell rapidly-changing products.

How can I implement a sales enablement program?

Today, most companies have some form of sales enablement in place.

According to the 2018 CSO Insights Sales Enablement Report, over 60% of organizations globally have a dedicated enablement person, program, or function.

Forward-thinking companies even have a sales enablement department that oversees every facet of the sales enablement programs.

But how do you implement a sales enablement program for your organization?

Here’s our step-by-step guide to implementing a sales enablement program for your company.

Step 1: Foster a culture of team collaboration

Yes, resources for sales enablement are critical. However, these tools won’t matter much if your team isn’t in order.

The first thing you’ll want to do is maximize cross-functional collaboration. Once your team is in order and ready to learn, acquire the necessary resources to train and acclimate them to the new sales solutions you have in mind.

Step 2: Choose your sales enablement tools

This is one of the biggest decisions you’ll make during the sales enablement implementation process. Today, the market is flooded with sales enablement software, and it can be difficult to choose the right solution for your business.

When choosing the right enablement tools, consider your specific business type, industry, sales strategy and operational structure. Generally, the available enablement tools will fall into one of these categories:

• Sales CRMs;
• Marketing automation software;
• Content management/sharing platforms;
• Sales intelligence software;
• Sales enablement AI & predictive analytics.

Some sales enablement tools, such as sales CRM, can be expensive to acquire. However, the right CRMs can pay off for your business. According to Salesforce, the right CRM can increase sales by 29%, productivity by 34% and forecast accuracy by 40%.

Step 3: Create sales enablement content

Next, you’ll want to create sales enablement content your team can use.

This may include:

• Customer-facing guides;
• Demo videos;
• Reports;
• Success stories;
• Objection handling documents.

Your sales enablement content should showcase your products in action while highlighting key benefits. With the right resources and content, your reps will be able to reach more people and sell like never before.

Step 4: Put a team in charge of the enablement program

As mentioned, sales enablement solutions can only drive results if sales teams use them and understand how to get the most out of them.

To this end, it’s critical that you put a team in place to keep things on track and ensure smooth operations. Besides the sales reps, here are the other roles you may need to fill to ensure a smooth running of the program.

Sales Enablement Manager

This individual takes charge of sales enablement initiatives, helping to successfully implement the program and manage its rollout.

Marketing Manager

This professional should be adept in all aspects of sales, including alignment and enablement. They will bring their marketing expertise to the team and ensure proper program implementation in line with organizational goals.

C-Suite Executive

It’s important to have one C-Suite executive on the sales enablement team.

This professional will participate in meetings and report on the progress to the top executives. Ideally, this will be an individual experienced in both sales and marketing, so they can understand and bridge both fields.

Data Analyst

Marketers and business executives will not always have the expertise to extract and analyze data, and may not even understand the true meaning behind the information they source. That’s why many organizations assign at least one data analyst, or data scientist, to a sales enablement team.

Step 5: Educate your team 

Spend quality time educating and training your sales team as they are onboarded, and continue training them regularly as situations allow.

This training should include workshops with experts from outside the company, and different department heads, to foster collaboration and communication between team members. Additionally, enlighten your team on where they can access sales enablement assets. 

Creating customer-enriched case studies and promotional videos isn’t enough. 

You’ll need to ensure your team knows where to access these materials and how to use them effectively to foster sales growth. Make it a part of your sales enablement training to inform your team where they can access these materials and what they can do with them.

Why is sales enablement important?

76% of companies experience an estimated 6-20% sales growth due to sales enablement. Also, organizations adopting sales enablement see a 49% win rate on the forecasted deals, compared to 45.2% of businesses without it.

Besides the increase in sales figures, implementing a sales enablement program can benefit your organization in many diverse ways.

1. Better sales and marketing alignment

When you implement a sales enablement program, you’ll find that marketing and sales work better together and communication improves, leading to an increase in sales productivity.

The sales team no longer blames the marketing team for inefficient content, and marketing no longer asks why sales reps neglect their resources. Instead, sales enablement  unifies and strengthens team effort, resulting in better communication and a more productive workforce.

2. Better collaboration across the board

Collaboration is critical for team members to grow and become more effective.

Many sales enablement tools, particularly sales CRMs, foster team collaboration. These tools make employee interaction and collaboration easy, intuitive and impactful.

3. Improved sales engagement and retention

Sales enablement exists to help sales reps succeed.

When reps produce better results, they’re more likely to love and engage with their jobs and stick around at the company long term.

Sales enablement fosters employee learning and development, which motivates longer retention. In a study by Quantum Workplace, 81% of the employees cited professional growth as one of their highest drivers of engagement. The same study listed a lack of learning and growth opportunities as the second-highest reason for leaving. 

4. Stronger sales data

With analytics playing a critical role in online sales, sales enablement technology continues to grow in popularity, and many of these tools specialize in analytics management.

Most enablement tools you’ll find on the market today can collect, organize and analyze the data for sales teams. Insights about buyer personas, preferences, behaviors and pain points help sellers reach prospects with a more tailored approach, resulting in higher conversions and sales.

What can sales enablement do for me?

Sales enablement provides sales teams with the information and resources to close deals more effectively.

Sales enablement differs from sales operations in that it’s more buyer-focused and aims to equip reps with the training, content and guidance they need to engage buyers. By implementing a sales enablement program, you can see an increase in sales resulting from better communication, improved engagement and stronger sales data.

Want to implement a sales enablement strategy that drives results? Get in touch with us today for a free consultation. Our professional sales enablement curriculums can quickly lift your sales team toward world-class performance.