4 Steps to Create a Digital Enablement Strategy

What is digital enablement? Over the past few years, you’ve likely heard a lot about digital transformation and how technology can enhance and improve your business processes. Digital enablement takes that one step further as an important element — you might even say benefit — of digital transformation. Below are four steps to create a digital enablement and training strategy that helps make the most of your digital transformation efforts.

1. Create a culture of digital adoption

A great digital enablement strategy marries a digital adoption platform with ongoing training, learning and enablement that follows the employee throughout their journey. This enablement strategy should focus not only on how to train team members to use new digital enablement solutions, but teach them why and how each solution can empower them to do their best work.

Software as a Service (SaaS) applications can be a powerful change agent within a company, provided everyone uses them to their fullest extent. But software alone is merely a pile of code. It takes a lot more than distributing devices and handing out user credentials to inspire sales reps to adopt new platforms and services. Employees need digital enablement solutions to know how a new tool will help them process data, identify trends and automate repetitive tasks to give them the time, focus and resources to do the job they were hired for.

With this in mind, technology should be designed, selected and provisioned so that it aligns with the values and goals of the sales reps who will use it. Specifically, it needs to:

• Be easy to use, and accessible to remote and hybrid worker schedules
• Maximize customer conversations and optimize administrative activities
• Provide tools and sales enablement content to identify leads, qualify opportunities, and close deals
• Enable salespeople to clearly understand their “book of business,” be it a regional territory, industry alignment or product specialty so they can prospect, build relationships, and close deals with confidence

Quite simply, new technology shouldn’t be purchased because it’s the shiniest object in the drawer, but because it will help sellers remove roadblocks and overcome obstacles to success.

2. Gather insights and opinions

Before you can digitally enable your workforce, it’s wise to get a sense of the technology-related attitudes and abilities of your staff. Some employees in sales, marketing or customer service may perceive technology as a threat to their job security, which could lead to lower adoption rates. A “fit-gap” analysis of your current systems or processes will help define your digital enablement priorities.

When rolling out plans to launch new technology, business executives need to communicate their motivations, goals and benefits of adopting digital platforms like a CRM. It’s common to resist changes with unknown consequences; so adoption rates are higher when there are internal champions or digital evangelists who can demonstrate how chosen technology augments their employees’ skills, as opposed to replacing them.

(Pro Tip: Here’s some great insight into the habits of effective Salesforce trainers and how they drive digital adoption. )

By involving your employees, you’ll build the credibility that your automation and augmentation plans were designed to make them more effective, not replace them. These insights can also help you identify the leaders and primary stakeholders who should be part of the digital journey.

3. An integrated sales stack is critical

To foster adoption of any sales enablement tool, it should fit seamlessly within the “ecosystem” of other applications. It’s important to provide your salespeople with timely access to sales enablement training content that reflects updates to the sales tools and digital enablement platforms that are integral to their role.

For Salesforce users specifically, the Salesforce AppExchange marketplace offers a diverse listing of complementary services that extend their core platform. Digital enablement platforms that integrate with Salesforce and other CRMs deliver contextual content through the collaboration and productivity applications they use most often (think Slack). Onboarding with the apps in your existing sales tech stack shortens ramp time and simplifies day-to-day tasks, empowering sales teams to be more self-sufficient, high-performance sellers.

4. Enable users with a variety of learning preferences

It’s no secret we all learn differently and develop learning styles or preferences from an early age that dictate how we perceive and gain new information. A strong digital enablement strategy will offer flexible training options that take the multiple learning styles listed below into account and help users absorb instructional content.

• Visual learners learn best by watching walkthroughs, videos, images, or simulated workflows.
• Interactive learners thrive with role plays, simulations or with quizzes where they can apply what they read or watched.
• Verbal learners take notes during training or talk about what they are learning.
• Auditory learners best gather knowledge through listening.
• Social learners learn best as part of a community or group, like Slack.
• Solitary learners thrive with self-directed, solo learning.  
• Kinesthetic learners learn by using their body or hands. Mobile learning while walking or moving is best for these users.

Whether they work remotely or on-site, and learn best through visual, auditory or interactive methods, Spekit’s digital enablement platform provides self-guided training content that satisfies a broad spectrum of learning styles regardless of physical location.

Digital transformation begins with digital enablement

Digital transformation can impact all businesses functions, from finance and human resources, to customer service, manufacturing and logistics. In the sales organization, the chances for success are most high when you marry digital adoption with sales enablement to create digital enablement, the most powerful form of digital transformation.

To learn more about how digital enablement can provide desirable ROI for your digital transformation strategy, let’s chat today!