To see what selling on steroids looks like, check out companies with the best sales enablement programs. You’ll discover a lively place, with a lot of things — like revenue, productivity, and win rates — going up, and a lot of things — like speed to revenue, sale cycle period, customer churn, and staff attrition rate — going down. It’s an up-and-down ride that moves the needle where it matters, driving sales teams to peak performance and customers to brand loyalty.
Aberdeen reported that companies with successful sales enablement programs are —
- 2.2 times more effective at linking sales actions to revenue,
- 83% more effective at improving productivity using technology, and,
- 58% more effective at finding, training, and retaining talent.
These companies also deliver —
- 32% higher team sales quota attainment,
24% better individual quota achievement, and
23% higher lead conversion rate.
Given its broad and powerful impact, sales enablement is no longer an optional but a crucial element for survival, growth, and success in the new economy.
Does your team have a sales enablement mindset?
What is sales enablement?
Organizations and thought leaders may define sales enablement differently but they generally agree on its core elements and primary aims.
As Sales Enablement professionals, we often complain that senior leaders don’t understand the importance of our craft and don’t appreciate the value we add. In many cases, though, the fault for this lack of understanding and appreciation lies with us. We often don’t speak the language of business, and we don’t do a good job of strategically aligning our programs to their goals. We don’t always communicate effectively with them upfront to define the planned impact, agree on roles and responsibilities. Finally, we don’t consistently tie our value to metrics around influencing increased incremental revenue. One of my primary goals should be to provide a roadmap around how to move from being viewed as “training’ to being valued as a true business partner with sales and the multiple lines of business within a company.
The biggest problem with “Sales Enablement” is there is no (1) globally accepted definition… If you ask the question, “What is Sales Enablement” to (10) people, you’ll get (10) different answers. Some will say the it’s training. Some will say that it’s on boarding new employees & building a solid foundational experience that will lead to long-term success. Some will say that it’s all about making sure that sales professionals have access to tools, templates, & processes. Finally, some will say that it’s about doing whatever it takes to ensure that a company’s messaging & positioning is deployed consistently to prospects and customers. I would venture to say that it’s a combination of all of these components. What is my definition of Sales Enablement, you ask?
After (20) + years of success in multiple roles in the Sales Training/Sales Productivity/Sales Enablement space, I’ve narrowed my definition down this, Sales Enablement centered around “Getting the right people in the right conversations with the right decisions makers right way. We break the complexity of sales enablement into practical ideas through scalable and repeatable practices that will lead to increased revenue “. It really comes down to increasing productivity through a systematic approach to support content that will drive incremental revenue. You then focus on metrics, tracking, and reporting to substantiate the ROI that you and/or your team brings to the company. Seems simple enough to do, right? Well if you believe it’s simple, I’ve got a “famous” bridge near San Francisco that I’d like to sell you!
Key functions of sales enablement
Depending on the specific organization or implementation framework, sales enablement may encapsulate different sets of functions. Sales enablement is the orchestration point that aligns the intersecting elements of sales, marketing, customer care, product/brand management, legal, and human resources to improve seller productivity and enhance buyer experience.
These generally include —
- Optimization of technology resources such as CRMs (sales orchestration)
- Content development (sales communication)
- Talent management (onboarding, performance analysis, enablement, and coaching)
- Customer happiness (buyer journey optimization)
Ongoing process efficiencies (sales collaboration)
In a sense, sales enablement focuses on the seller-buyer dynamic and the tools, different systems, methodologies and processes that enhance engagement and optimize value (expressed in ROI) for both buyer and seller over time. Hence, One of the most constant functions of sales enablement is to help fine-tune an organization’s sales process so that it aligns perfectly with the journey of its prospects and customers. Once perfect alignment has been reached, prospects and customers become more emotionally invested in a brand (company, sales team, product) so much so that win rates, repeat business, referrals, sales cycles, and customer success improve significantly.
A SiriusDecisions survey showed companies believe sales enablement should not only provide sales assets but also ensure sellers are highly effective at deploying those assets.
Sales enablement team structure
Even after its core functions have been clarified, sales enablement — especially the way it is set up in a company — is still evolving. Unlike well-established departments such as Finance and Human Resources, the team structure of sales enablement dramatically varies across organizations.
In its early years, sales enablement either emerged as a subset of the broader field of Sales Operations or as a function performed singularly or collectively by other business units (sales, marketing, customer service, etc.) in support of revenue-oriented goals.
Based on SiriusDecision’s database, nearly half (46%) of companies have their sales enablement unit under the Sales umbrella, around 32% within Marketing, and 18% reporting to other corporate departments.
As sales enablement matures, some companies which originally structured Sales Enablement within their Sales Operations unit have run the two units as co-equal branches within the sales organization. On the other hand, research and advisory firm TOPO recommends a company’s sales and marketing units to assume joint ownership of and collaborate on sales enablement, with marketing spearheading content development and sales leading efforts at “operationalizing” the content/communications assets to help sellers drive better engagement and conversations with customers. The sales enablement function is rapidly moving from being seen as a “nice to have “ to a mission critical function, focused on influencing revenue and deploying scalable, repeatable processes.
The sales enablement process
Similar to its structure, the processes central to sales enablement are still evolving.
On the buyer side, sales enablement should 1) help align the sales process with the buyer journey and 2) customize engagement tools, sales communication, and marketing content with the different buyer personas the organization is targeting. 3) serve as the feedback loop between prospects, customers and multiple internal lines of business.
On the seller side, sales enablement can focus on the following:
- Recruiting and onboarding: Sales enablement should be a consistent component of the interview process. A sales organization needs the right number of top talent to consistently meet targets, grow revenues, and remain competitive. Too many sellers on the floor can impact profit margins while an insufficient number can retard growth. The talent acquisition team should work closely with Human Resources in finding and retaining qualified professionals with above-par experience and skills, bearing in mind that hiring sub-par candidates will dampen overall team performance.
- Enablement and coaching: It takes more than qualified sellers to achieve business goals. Top talent needs ongoing enablement and coaching to build knowledge, hone skills, and harness resources to drive customer conversions, sales velocity, and win rates. In addition to a dynamic, robust, and easily accessible knowledge base, organizations should have seminars, workshops, mentorships, and other training programs to keep their salesforce in top shape.
- Tools and technology enhancement: Deploying talented and highly-skilled salespeople out in the field will not necessarily translate to success without access to the right tools. In a highly competitive arena, powerful tools that improve conversations, quicken sales cycles, or generate valuable business insights provide game-changing advantage. The right mix of CRM, content library (videos, articles, infographics, social media assets, presentations, podcasts, mobile apps, etc.), and engagement workflow will help optimize every sales opportunity.
- Performance/effectiveness assessments: Successful sales enablement is a team sport! How do you know your salespeople are in top shape and your investments are not going to waste? Through assessment tools such as feedback mechanisms and key performance indicators. Working with the sales First Line Managers (FLMs) to adopt the right performance metrics will give you a 360°-insight on a) the level of efficiency sellers and and how they are achieving their targets, and b) the sweet spots where you can still tweak the numbers to drive further improvements or hack overall growth.
Sales enablement examples
There are many specific ways sales enablement can impact process and profits. Here are some common methods:
- Build a long-term, strategy that includes roles specific tools, processes and scalable, repeatable best practices by partnering with the sales organization to agree upon specific goals, deliverables, milestones and responsibilities.
- Drive better conversations and achieve higher conversion rates by facilitating seller and buyer access to on-demand, in-context, and high-quality engagement materials.
- Eliminate silos and bubbles that tend to convey conflicting messaging/processing among prospective buyers by using organization-wide communications tools that automatically syncs everyone on new available resources or workflow updates.
- Improve bottom lines and scale growth by systematizing enablement activities and coaching to deliver best-in-class outcomes.
- Gain full visibility to customer behavior using cloud-based technology tools that track engagement with branded content.
- Optimize sales pitches using sophisticated data analytics software.
- Communicate early and often to ensure engagement, commitment, and adoption between sales, sales enablement and the multiple lines of business.
Sales Enablement vs Sales Operations
Professionals in non-sales roles sometimes use the terms Sales Operations and Sales Enablement interchangeably. When used in reference to corporate functions, the two terms do coincide but they are not identical. Certainly, both aim to improve the performance of a sales organization, but each technically do so by focusing on distinct areas.
Sales Operations focus on the entire sales organization and its daily grind, overseeing even processes and people that may not have direct sales roles but are considered part of the sales organization. On the other hand, Sales Enablement spearheads all programs that directly impact the efficiency and performance of sellers and the experience of customers.
In general, Sales Ops handle the daily operational side of the sales organization including territory planning, transactions management, compensation, and systems management. Meanwhile, Sales Enablement leads training, coaching, content development, sales communications, technology optimizations, performance analytics, engagement tools, and process efficiencies.
Common sales enablement metrics & KPIs
Different organizations adopt varying metrics to evaluate their sales enablement efforts, depending on how they structure the unit and which areas it is tasked to focus on.
Here are some common metrics Sales Enablement typically tracks:
- Time to Revenue – this metric refers to the time required to close a sale
- Quota Attainment – this metric refers to the percentage of sellers in the team that consistently meet or exceed targets.
- Sales Cycle – this metric refers to the average time duration it takes to close deals from one end of the funnel to the other.
- Time Spent Actively Selling – this metric refers to the average length of time sellers actively spend engaging prospects.
- Content Usage – this metric evaluates the efficiency of each communication material based on unique visits, amount of time customers spend on the content, and other quantifiable factors.
- Sales Funnel Transition Rates – this metric refers to specific transition rates from one stage of the funnel to the next (e.g., from prospect to marketing qualified lead, from sales qualified lead to won opportunity and to a closed deal).
- Average Win Rate – this metric refers to the ratio of closed won deals to the total number of won and lost deals.
- Attach Rate – this metric refers to the percentage of deals that includes a go-to-market strategy with a Partner
- Number of Closed Deals: this metric refers to the number of engaged/closed deals in a specific timeframe
- Product Mix – this metric refers to the percentage of products/solutions included in a closed deal
Sales enablement best practices
The decision to adopt sales enablement to support sellers, keep customers happy, and drive revenue carries the additional responsibility of implementing the field’s best practices:
- Set clear objectives for your sales enablement program. The goals should not be just to support the salesforce in general but to drive specific, transformative, and measurable changes in the organization and its performance. It could be to update the technology stack, quicken the sales cycle, improve margins, or other strategic goals.
- Make sales enablement accessible to all stakeholders. A program won’t deliver its promise if there are hurdles to its actual implementation by sellers. Ensure that all salespeople know about and are skilled in utilizing your sales enablement assets. Playbooks and engagement material should be uniform and updated across the organization. Use effective communication and training to optimize the benefits of sales enablement.
- Sales enablement empowers sellers by being buyer-centric. Customer centricity has become a success factor in the digital economy where power has already shifted to consumers. Align the program with the customer journey and tailor each engagement to deliver the best buyer experiences.
- Adopt sales enablement as a corporate mindset. Encourage a culture where every non-sales employee believes they are part of the sales support team. Meanwhile, establish sales training as an ongoing process for members of the salesforce.
- Make sales enablement transparent, integrated, and measurable. The sales organization should be able to make accurate and quantifiable assessments about the impact of each sales enablement effort. Sales enablement assets should also be synced with the rest of the company’s technology stack.
- Reject complacency. Sales enablement is a continually evolving field and stakeholders should remain open to technological breakthroughs and new methodologies that can improve current capabilities. As the mindset, behaviors and needs of your prospects and customers are shifting, you must be prepared to change the way that you support them. In other words, “learn their language, don’t expect them to learn yours”
Key takeaways: Understanding sales enablement
As customer behavior shifts (especially in the B2B space), sales enablement also transitions from being just “valuable” to “indispensable.’ As competition gets fiercer, the need to make sales enablement part of the corporate culture has also become more urgent.
Sales enablement hinges on customer success, equips sellers with tools and processes to enhance performance, and benefits the organization by improving topline revenue, efficiencies, and margins.
At the end of the day, if your company thinks of sales enablement as the “fixer of broken things,” you are setting yourself up for failure. Sales is not broken, but it can always be better! Positioning sales enablement as a revenue generator and not a cost center starts with shifting the mindset away from training and onboarding, etc. and succeeds by working closely with first line managers, internal lines of business, and Executive Sales Leaders to associate sales enablement metrics with sales success.
Do you have a sales enablement strategy to help you make a difference this year?
