Sales Enablement: The Basics and Beyond

The role of digital and sales enablement is on the rise.

In fact, according to CSO Insights, in 2013 just 20% of organizations had a dedicated sales enablement role. By 2018 that number had grown to 60% and continues to rise.

This is because companies, and people like you, are recognizing that a sales enablement strategy is vital to increase win rates, fully support their sales team (and other teams in their organization), maintain customer loyalty and happiness, and ultimately increase the bottom line.

According to Chorus.AI, “teams who invest heavily in Sales Enablement see 32% higher team sales quota attainment, 24% better individual quota attainment and 23% higher lead conversion rates.”

But, how are the most successful companies actually using an enablement strategy to achieve their goals?

Here are some strategies and best practices we’ve heard and learned through the years while speaking to sales and digital enablement leaders across industries to help you get started.

Start here (even if you’ve already started your enablement strategy)

First, cover your bases with the following essentials. Even if you’ve already kicked off your enablement initiative, it’s a good idea to make sure you have addressed the following:

Run an audit on your current materials and tools. What do you already have in place? Are you updating collateral or replacing an outdated system? This audit is your foundation for your entire sales enablement strategy. If you don’t know where you stand, how can you plan where you want to go?
Decide who is owning this process and will be tasked with driving it forward. There should be a point person (or several) seeing that efforts are continual and don’t fade away after the initial hype. According to Highspot, companies that have a dedicated sales enablement role or team are 52% more likely to have a sales team and process that aligns with their customer’s expectations.
Create a single source of truth. After you have completed your audit, be sure to document everything in a “single source of truth.” This will be important as you set out to plan your enablement strategy. Make sure all invested parties know where to find this documentation and the necessary people have access to add and make edits.
Define your buyer personas. It sounds like an obvious one, but do you have it clearly defined and written out somewhere that is easy to access? This will make a huge difference for your team as they work on their outreach and sequencing.
Don’t forget to make battle cards! Again, seems obvious right? But if they’re not clearly defined, updated and easily accessible, odds are they won’t be used. Make sure your team knows exactly where to access them so when they’re on a call they can pop them up right away and handle objections with ease. *Another note* Make sure someone is tasked with keeping the cards up-to-date. You’re changing and scaling constantly so you better believe your competitors are as well. Info about their offerings from 6 months ago might already be obsolete.
Identify the reason you are undertaking this process and define the goals of your enablement program. Start with your top 5 “must-haves” and set a realistic timeline for these goals. Set benchmarks and be clear on what needs to be accomplished to hit them.

What next?

Once you’ve completed the above, here are best practices you should employ going forward to reach both your sales and organizational enablement goals:

1. Make it a habit. Make sure whoever is owning the enablement strategy is taking time every day (yes, EVERY day) to document. This process is not necessarily the most fun, but it is essential. You need to be sure that all documentation is up to date and the sales team is accessing the right info. Similarly, make sure that your team is also being thorough and accurate with their documentation to ensure transparency, easy to find information and clean data.

2. Check-in with your team regularly. This one often gets overlooked. Learning and training shouldn’t end after onboarding. It should be a process you revisit and reinforce on a regular basis. Hold quarterly training sessions (more or less depending on your team’s needs). And don’t forget this is NOT just PowerPoints with the same info every time, you will lose attention quickly. Make it interactive! Ask the team for feedback on what’s working and what they are struggling with. Work together to brainstorm new goals and creative ways to better the selling process.

3. Provide access to training and resources for the tools/applications they use every day. This needs to be a big part of the onboarding and continuous learning process. According to an IBM study, only 21% of new hires intend to stay at companies that do not offer training for their current jobs. After onboarding, you will also have to make sure they know where to find the resources they need when questions inevitably come up down the road. If employees aren’t using your tools (or using them improperly) you’re wasting time and money.

4. We said it before and we will say it again, update all collateral regularly. This one will take some time and likely some help from your marketing team/graphic designer (so ask nicely!). This is the material that is being presented to prospective buyers and is representative of your brand so it is critical that it make a good first impression. Take this one in phases. Ask which pieces need to absolutely be created or updated first and which ones are the “nice to haves.”

These steps are just the beginning but will put you well on your way to a fully digitally enabled organization.

Evaluate and monitor metrics

Full digital and sales enablement is an ongoing process so be sure to track your progress along the way. Find out what’s working and what needs work. Some will be obvious like seeing a higher volume of closed-won deals or a steady flow of quality MQLs and SQLs (marketing-qualified leads and sales-qualified leads). Others might be more difficult to see numerically like overall employee satisfaction, consistent use of branding materials, and digital adoption (but there are ways!).

Keep at it. It will likely take some time and tailoring to meet your unique goals.

An effective and well-executed sales enablement strategy and well-run enablement team will drive success across the organization and materialize in the form of: