Sales Enablement

What is Sales Enablement?

Sales enablement is more than just training.

  • It’s about talent acquisition, getting the right people on the team.
  • It’s about onboarding, getting them the product knowledge, skills, and company processes in order for them to succeed.
  • It’s about establishing a coaching structure to create a collaborative environment and develop salespeople in a practical and continuous fashion.
  • It’s about establishing technology that will make salespeople more efficient and effective.
  • It’s about measuring and reporting results of new initiatives in order to figure out what to tweak and what to scale.
  • The list goes on.

Sales Enablement Tools

A strong sales enablement program leverages
the incredible tools and technology that are available today.

  • AI based platforms that help to coach salespeople (Gong, Chorus, Showpad)
  • Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems to help keep track of data, measure results, and make accurate projections (SalesForce, MS Dynamics)
  • Sales Enablement platforms that salespeople can use to present material or practice roleplaying (Brainshark, Allego)
  • Prospecting tools to help build the top of the funnel/pipeline (ZoomInfo, LinkedIn Sales Navigator)
  • Communication tools from video to instant messaging (Slack, Loom)
  • Learning Management Systems (LMS) to hold a library of strong relevant content (Moodle, Skillsoft, Blackboard)

The Future of Sales

According to Gartner Research salespeople will only have 5% of the decision maker’s time during the buying journey.

Decision makers spend more time reaching online independently than they do meeting with all potential suppliers. And, the number of people involved in a b2b buying decision has grown to six to ten.

This means salespeople need to sell to committees, not just individuals, procurement organizations, not just the end user; ultimately, they are selling to multiple sophisticated and informed buyers.

What Does the Buying Process Look Like?

Our research indicates that it is as follows:

1

Identify the
Problem
Do we need something?

2

Explore
Solutions
What is out there that can help us?

3

Assess
Solutions
Narrow down solutions and investigate each in more detail

4

Select and
Implement Solutions
Choose a solution and implement it

5

Support
Solution
Maintain it, iterate improvements, and continue to leverage it
The biggest mistake that we see sales organizations make is that they implement a sales process and their salespeople are more focused on their own process than the decision making and buying process of the buyer. The buyer does not care if you are in the prospecting or value proposition stage, they want the information they feel is necessary to make an informed and confident decision.

What Results Can You Expect From Sales Enablement?

The best sales enablement organizations are relentless in their measuring and reporting of key metrics.

Their objective is to improve performance. To do so, they must first identify their desired outcomes, then target a set of related indicators, and track them before and after the implementation of new tools, training, or processes.

While there are simply too many variables to come up perfect results, the metrics should demonstrate a causal relationship in the right direction and provide a sense of the magnitude of the impact.

Metrics such as:

Sales Enablement Best Practices

The best sales enablement professionals understand that the relationship between their function, sales leaders, and the sales team is absolutely critical. They even act as liaisons with marketing at times. They must build credibility, work closely with, and be valued by sales leaders. And, salespeople must want what they offer – whether it be the sales training or sales enablement tools that are available. Ultimately, communication is a key skill within this role because you have your internal client – the sales leader, your end user – salespeople, your external client – the company’s client, and many other stakeholders – such as finance managing budgets, marketing creating collateral, training developing and hiring outside training partners, etc. Getting everyone rowing in the same direction is a challenge!

Conclusion

While sales enablement is much more than just training, many of our clients feel our negotiation training is a key aspect within their sales enablement strategy because it addresses the very metrics they are trying to improve – close rates, deal velocity, etc. in a practical an engaging way. Additional we reinforce the content with our mobile app, email campaigns, video roleplay and coaching, managers field guides, and other tools that salespeople can utilize when they need it.

Learn More

Please fill out the form below if you’re interested to learn more about our negotiation training for your sales team and how it can fit into your sales enablement program!
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