Sales enablement is all about empowering your sales team. Using technology, content, competitive intelligence, training, and coaching, sales enablement helps salespeople close more deals and increase business revenue.
Let’s take a closer look at what sales enablement is, why it's important, and how you can implement it in your own organization.
We like the way Will Yang, Head of Growth at Instrumentl explains sales enablement.
“Sales enablement is a combination of two things. It's a process by which you can help your salespeople to be more effective. This includes teaching them about your products and services in the context of their client's needs and helping them understand how to use that information to build relationships with their customers.
It's also a set of tools and systems that help salespeople perform their job better, such as CRM systems, email marketing solutions, or anything else that helps them sell more effectively. “
Or as Estelle Barthes of Napta put it, sales enablement is “Every resource or material that can help you and your team sell faster and better!”
This includes training to help them understand customer needs and challenges and why they choose you over the competition, as well as up-to-date materials like Battlecards and in-the-moment updates delivered to the entire sales team.
Whether sales enablement lives in the operations team, with sales leadership, or with product marketing, a strong sales enablement program is essential to hitting sales goals and continuing to increase revenue.
Have you ever started a home improvement project only to realize you don’t have the right tools for the job? Maybe you tried to push through, using “alternate” tools for a while (been there). But nothing goes smoothly, you might injure yourself, and the chances of getting the job done well are slim to none. Frustration is probably the only guaranteed result!
It’s similar to when a sales team doesn’t have the tools they need. Try as they might, chances are none of you will be satisfied with the results. Over time this leads to, not only missed quotas, but frustration and burnout as well.
With sales enablement in place, your sales team feels empowered and confident to overcome objections and present your brand as the right choice, which often translates to more sales. In fact, we’ve seen our users’ win rates increase up to 30% when they started using Battlecards, a common sales enablement tool.
“Sales enablement is important because it allows salespeople to spend more time selling and less time learning the product.” - Will Yang
The elements of a sales enablement program will vary, but some common components include:
As with any kind of strategy, the first step is defining your goals. Will it be a specific revenue goal? A productivity goal? Whatever you choose, make sure you know how you will measure it, that it’s attainable, and that you have a date for evaluating your success.
Next, take an inventory of what you already have from the list of elements above. What are the current sales processes? What content is available? Who is handling competitive intelligence and how?
Now identify where you need support. Is it in content? Training? Technology?
Develop a plan to address the needs you’ve identified. Make sure to assign “owners” to projects and ensure they have the resources they need to complete the work in the expected timeframe.
As you start to implement your strategy, track those metrics that are key to your goals. If the sales deck is updated in May, do you see an increased win rate in June? Make sure to share your results with the team.
Continuously improve the sales enablement strategy by regularly reviewing and adjusting it based on the results of your efforts and the feedback from your sales team.
It's important to involve sales team members, sales leaders and other relevant stakeholders in creating a sales enablement strategy in order to create a buy-in and make sure that the strategy addresses their needs and concerns.
You may not need them all, but sales enablement tools can help you get it all done more efficiently and with better results.
Your CRM (Customer Relationship Management) System helps sales teams manage their interactions with customers and track the progress of deals. Examples of CRMs include Salesforce and HubSpot. CRMs often include analytics which can help you monitor the success of your efforts.
Sales automation tools automate tasks like emailing and scheduling and may be included in your CRM.
Content Management systems enable easy access and sharing of sales content such as case studies and product demos. You can use something like Dropbox, Google Drive, or Dropmark for this. Or, it may be part of your CRM.
Competitive intelligence tools can turn the more-than-full-time job of manually monitoring competitors’ key pages, social media activity, and ad launches into a one hour per week endeavor. Competitive intelligence automation not only finds insights that can win deals, but also makes them available to everyone on the team. Naturally, we recommend Kompyte.
Sales recording and coaching tools allow you to review individual calls, but also to scan for win/loss conversations, competitor mentions, and more. Examples include Gong and Salesken.
It's important to note that the specific tools you choose will depend on the specific needs of your organization and sales team. It's important to evaluate different options and select the tools that best support your sales enablement strategy.
The first step in creating your sales enablement strategy was to decide what to measure, how, and when. While you likely have one main key performance indicator, you might also want to consider the change from before the sales enablement program went into effect and after in these areas:
Sales enablement helps companies close more deals and increase revenue by empowering sales teams with everything they need to effectively engage with customers.
It encompasses a wide range of activities, including training, coaching, content creation, competitive intelligence, and technology implementation. By providing sales reps with the right resources at the right time, they’re more efficient and effective in their roles, resulting in improved sales productivity, increased revenue, and better customer engagement.
Implementing a sales enablement program isn’t easy, but when done well, it can transform any organization’s sales team, driving growth and improving win rates.