Sales Enablement

Sales enablement is a strategic approach designed to equip sales teams with the necessary tools, information, and resources to enhance sales performance and meet customer needs effectively. As sales have transitioned from traditional physical setups to digital platforms, organizations are increasingly recognizing the need for an organized structure that supports training and consistent implementation of sales strategies. This program integrates the efforts of management, marketing, and sales, fostering collaboration across the organization to improve sales processes and outcomes.

An effective sales enablement program offers a range of resources, including customer-facing content and best practices, to empower sales professionals. It focuses on ensuring that sales teams are knowledgeable and equipped to handle the evolving challenges of the marketplace, which are influenced by technological advancements and demographic shifts. Key components of a successful program include providing access to quality tools, training on their use, tracking performance metrics, and regular analysis of sales effectiveness.

With the rapid changes in consumer behavior and increased competition, companies are adopting sales enablement strategies not only to enhance their sales forces but also to drive revenue growth. By providing ongoing support and fostering a culture of continuous learning, organizations can improve their sales outcomes and customer satisfaction.

Published in: 2021

By: McBroom, Mandy M., MPH

Subject Terms

Sales Enablement

Abstract

Sales moving from physical to digital platforms has resulted in a need to overhaul how sales are performed. These changes require a dedicated, organized, and sustainable structure to give sales professionals the tools they need to increase their quotas and improve win rates. Sales enablement is a program that combines the roles of management, marketing, and sales to construct a relevant structure for training and implementing sales in a sustained manner. It invites all employees in an organization to participate and be a part of the process.

Overview

Sales enablement is the creation of a sustainable program that provides a sales organization with the information and implements to ensure that the sales team are adequately able to meet the needs and challenges of making sales. This information can include customer-facing content and best sales practices. When a sales team has the right tools and information, it benefits the customer by enabling them to make informed and appropriate purchases. When a customer makes a sound purchase, confidence in the company that made the sale is cultivated. An effective sales enablement program helps ensure that the majority of the salesforce achieves quota in a predictable and repeatable manner. It aims to provide the salesforce with dependable tools that utilizes best practices.

Changes in the global marketplace driven by technological improvements and demographic shifts have created the need for an overhaul in sales strategies. Because globalization has increased access to technology that in turn increases knowledge about products, competition has become fierce. Demographic changes in age, geographical locations, and income categories are changing the demands of sales workforces. In addition, sales professionals have access to more sales, competitor, and consumer data than they are able to assimilate. This results in struggles for sales professionals to keep up with demand and still make a profit. To combat these issues, more and more companies are beginning to rely on sales enablement.

The challenges that are the strongest drivers for the need for change in sales organization are Internet sales on a global scale, the increasing middle class, increased urbanization, and the productivity of the aging workforce. It is estimated that the “Internet of things” will impact the global economy by $11 trillion by 2025. This is likely to be caused by changes in how the data is collected and utilized by businesses as well as how buyers will use technology to make purchases. As sales continue to utilize technology, it will become more important for sales professionals to learn new skills such as data analysis. This will enable them to be better informed in the moment, as well as contribute to meetings.

Geographic changes have also changed the sales landscape. In the developed world, the middle class is shrinking, but in emerging economies, the middle class is growing and expected to increase by 153 percent worldwide (primarily in the Asia-Pacific region). Many countries are experiencing population migration from rural to urban areas due to job opportunities and resources. More population in concentrated areas means better access to goods. This will increase the demand for sales both digitally and physically. Finally, retirement age workers are leaving the workforce quicker than they can be replaced. This will impact sales in various ways. More workers retiring could mean less customers, but it also impacts demand for employees. If employees are not being hired fast enough, demand for goods and services cannot be met. This will lead to decreased customer satisfaction and impact quota.

Further Insights

In the 1990s, when sales changed from physical to digital platforms, the need for sales enablement was realized. Companies began placing their products online and sales teams were placing the same content online separately, with no organization overall. This lack of organization of content created issues with sales performance analysis, and it took longer to figure out how effective a specific strategy was. Additionally, sales professionals do not have a lot of time to look around for informational content to make a sale; as a stopgap, a salesperson might gather information on a thumb drive and utilize the information even when some of the data was out of date. This approach created the need to re-create presentations that were not available in an official format. If the consumer became privy to this, it would leave a negative impression that could affect future sales. This demonstrated a lack of centralization of key sales information.

There are seven components of an effective sales enablement program. First, it should provide sales professionals with the proper resources to sell the product(s). Second, it should ensure that sales professionals have adequate sales information to target customers. Third, all aspects of the program should reflect best sales practices, quality tools, and adequate research for a sale to be made. Fourth, the program should ensure that sales professionals know how to use the resources available. Fifth, aids should be made available for use during sales. Sixth, there should be a method or system for tracking how well sales teams utilize the resources offered by the program. Seventh, there should be routine analysis using key metrics for sales performance, including average sales cycle length, win rates, profitability, quota attainment, and average deal size.

Building a sales enablement program involves defining the main objectives for each line of sales for an organization. Important to all programs is that it is designed to infiltrate all aspects of the employee experience. It should be part of the company culture. This means that exposure to sales information should be taught during onboarding through on-floor sales. The underlying structure of the program should be aimed at enhancing the buyer’s experience. The content should be offered and reiterated constantly in blogs, white papers, and webinars. One of the most common issues with the average sales enablement program is that it is only offered on a yearly basis. Sales professionals that are only exposed yearly will forget significant amounts of information, which could be costly for the organization in terms of meeting quota. In addition to the sales content, a well-designed sales enablement program will build in high-quality analytics and metrics that help drive the best sales effort.

A lack of collaboration between marketing and sales is one of the drivers for the invention of sales enablement. A high-quality sales enablement program will involve both management and sales. It is important when devising a sales enablement program that it is a concerted effort of both sales and marketing for content, teaching/presentation guides, and sales training. The marketing team is responsible for creating presentation content. Moreover, marketing should bear the responsibility for training sales professionals in an organization. Also, sales operations should be involved with processing and incorporating the feedback sales provides to make the program better. Sales management should make certain that the program is being implemented and tracked.

Metrics and analytics are very important to understand, correct, and predict future outcomes for a program and organization. The most common metrics for measuring sales enablement performance are win rate, quota attainment, sales cycle, attrition, and time to productivity. The metric of most interest in sales is the win rate. When the win rate is strong it serves as predictor variable for the strength of other metrics. Quota attainment demonstrates how adequately the sales team meets a sales goal. It is important to measure quota regularly to help shift sales behaviors so that poor performance can be addressed early. Time to productivity indicates how long it takes to move an employee from onboarding to sales. Attrition evaluates employee retention.

Discourse

The adoption of sales enablement programs has been slowly increasing. Due to the challenges of evolving corporate sales models and a rapidly changing business environment, more companies are incorporating sales enablement programs; it is costlier not to. In 2013, 19 percent of sales organizations surveyed had employed a sales enablement representative or program, according to a survey by the Miller Heinman Group. By 2017, it had increased to 59 percent. A 2014 McKinsey Global Survey showed that 26 percent of change initiatives were successful, and almost 60 percent of change initiatives are successful according to a 2008 IBM survey. However, companies that implement a well-constructed and rigorous approach to change (including consistent follow-up) reported success rates up to 79 percent.

Harvard Business Review (Manyika, Remes & Dobbs, 2015) reported that between 60–70 percent of change initiatives are unsuccessful. It was identified that it is not sufficient to dedicate a sales enablement representative. It is important to scrap old ways of management, sales, and training. Some companies have invested in artificial intelligence (AI) to help facilitate this. For example, SalesForce’s Einstein and IBM’s Watson are increasingly being used to help scout the newest information to be incorporated and synthesized into a usable construct. Another example in sales is Manhattan-based Collective, which employs AI to create a network of companies that can share knowledge and employ best practices to help sales professionals increase their performance.

A 2017 study by the Aberdeen Group showed that strong sales enablement programs demonstrate a 62 percent increase in quota attainment, 205 percent increase in revenue growth, 725 percent increase in sales velocity, and 23 percent increase in lead conversion rates. According to Matthews and Schenk (2018), 35 percent of organizations indicated that their sales enablement programs achieved or exceeded target sales; however, 67 percent of individuals in the same programs achieved quota, while programs that reported meeting most of their goals showed 60 percent of the salesforce making quota. Finally, those organizations that reported meeting few or none of their goals showed that only 42 percent of the salesforce met quota for a given period.

Ultimately, when objectives are clearly defined and resources are made available in an easy-to-use format, more organizations will be able to implement sales enablement efficiently. Sales enablement will drive revenue in the coming years by supporting sustainment efforts, make the onboarding process more efficient, develop talent internally, highly utilize digital tools, and prioritize measuring success and constantly sharing the results with both marketing and sales. Sustainable and sustained efforts are key for sales enablement to be a success. For those companies that are just starting, it is important explain why the change is happening or needed, as well as what the changes will mean to those who it will impact most. Facilitating understanding is paramount to eliciting successful and sustainable change.

Terms & Concepts

Attrition: In sales, refers to loss or turnover of employees. It is estimated that attrition rate in sales can reach as high as 27 percent. This is double the rate of the rest of the labor force.

Average Deal Size: Average dollar amount that is required to close a deal or contract. It is calculated by total money earned from orders divided by the number of deals closed for a specified period of time.

Average Sales Cycle: Average number of deals within a sales cycle. Time periods for the denominator of the equation can vary.

Profitability: In business, refers to the capacity of the business to earn a profit. Profit is the revenue left after all expenses have been paid.

Quota Attainment: Measure that demonstrates a sales team has reached its sales target within a specified time period. It is one of the most important metrics in a sales enablement program and the variable that all other components of a sales enablement program hinges upon.

Sales Enablement: Process of providing the sales organization with the information, content, and tools that help sales people sell more effectively.

Selling Metrics: Eight metrics that are commonly used in business to evaluate the success of a project or improvement initiative. Win rate, quota attainment, time to productivity, sales cycle, attrition, contract value, profitability, and pricing.

Time-to-Productivity: Measure of the time it takes to move a new hire from training to full working capacity. It also serves as an indicator for the quality and effectiveness of an onboarding program.

Win Rate: In sales, measure of the number of impressions (pitches) over the actual number of sales. Win rates are used to understand the competition and plan new sales strategies. Win rates are one of the most important metrics for a sales enablement program.

Bibliography

Boyette, M. (2016). Sales enablement. Sales & Service Excellence Essentials, 15(4), 14. Retrieved December 18, 2018 from EBSCO Online Database Business Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bsu&AN=114615177&site=ehost-live

Campanella, M. M. (2017). Conquering sales enablement. Talent Development, 71(12), 50–54. Retrieved December 8, 2018 from EBSCO Online Database Business Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bsu&AN=126543190&site=ehost-live

Dikie, J. (2017). Salespeople face an uphill battle, and AI is ready to help: sales enablement divisions are gaining valuable technology partners. CRM Magazine, 21(9), 6. Retrieved December 8, 2018 from EBSCO Online Database Business Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bsu&AN=124941348&site=ehost-live

Enterprise Innovation editors. (2018). Sales teams need to understand role of technology in customer experience. Enterprise Innovation, n.p. Retrieved December 18, 2018 from EBSCO Online Database Business Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bsu&AN=131607882&site=ehost-live

Grodnitzky, A. (2018). 5 ways sales enablement will drive revenue in 2019. Talent Development, 72(12), 50–54. Retrieved December 8, 2018 from EBSCO Online Database Business Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bsu&AN=133295173&site=ehost-live

Harney, P. (2016). To maximize sales enablement, optimize your processes. CRM Magazine, 20(4), 9. Retrieved December 18, 2018 from EBSCO Online Database Business Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bsu&AN=119444301&site=ehost-live

Klie, L. (2018). Sales require organization overhaul, better data: most sales teams still struggle with infrastructure and processes, study finds. CRM Magazine, 22(7), 16–17. Retrieved December 14, 2018 from EBSCO Online Business Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bsu&AN=131546184&site=ehost-live

Manyika, J., Remes, J., & Dobbs, R. (2015). The productivity challenge of an aging global workforce. Harvard Business Review Digital Articles, 2–4. Retrieved December 9, 2018 from EBSCO Online Database Business Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bsu&AN=118648199&site=ehost-live

Matthews, B., & Schenk, T. (2018). Sales enablement: A master framework to engage, equip, and empower a world-class sales force. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.

Squire, P. (2015). Re-enabling sales enablement. Training Journal, 54–57. Retrieved December 18, 2018 from EBSCO Online Business Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bsu&AN=101475182&site=ehost-live

Sales Enablement

On this Page

Subject Terms

Sales Enablement

Abstract

Overview

Further Insights

Discourse

Terms & Concepts

Bibliography

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