6 Priorities of Sales Enablement Evolved

The era of rep-centric sales enablement has arrived—and it couldn’t have come at a better time. With the uncertain economy, the rise in remote teams due to the pandemic, and tightening budgets, it’s more important than ever for companies to equip their sales teams to produce at the highest level.

Are you ready to evolve your sales enablement strategy and initiatives? Ask yourself these questions:

• Are you meeting all of your sales goals?
• Are you confident reps are always on-message?’
• Are you 100% sure reps are using sales content properly?
• Are marketing and sales teams on the same page?

If you answered ‘no’ to any of these questions, it’s time to take a second look at your sales enablement.

The Downside of One-Size-Fits-All

As the demands on sales organizations change, your sales enablement efforts must evolve to keep pace. For example, many sales enablement initiatives take a top-down, one-size-fits-all approach that doesn’t put the rep at the center of the process.

These status-quo programs won’t equip sellers to compete in our next normal. Dispersed teams require a new level of coordination, collaboration, and empowerment in order to unlock sales success in an overcrowded digital world.

6 Priorities of Sales Enablement Initiatives Evolved

Today’s sales enablement demands a holistic strategy to accelerate the sales cycle, drive higher average contract values, and boost profitability. Functions that were siloed—training, learning, and coaching—are merging with content creation and management.

Now that most B2B sales are virtual, a unified approach to sales enablement is more critical than ever for keeping teams on track. An evolved approach includes these six essential sales enablement capabilities.

#1 Onboarding & Training

Sales training includes onboarding new hires and supporting them with continuous learning and reinforcement on product information, messaging, competitive positioning, and the skills needed to have valuable interactions throughout the virtual sales process.

The most effective sales enablement programs use both instructor-led and self-directed modules to deliver formal company programs and share rep-centric, collaborative content. They foster engagement with company culture and reduce new hire attrition by exposing sellers early and often to peer learning and best practices, maintaining the human-to-human connection even in virtual environments.

#2 Content Activation

Sales enablement drives the creation, distribution, and management of customer-facing sales assets and internal sales training content. All content needs to be readily discoverable, easy to consume, trackable, and reusable across the sales organization. Teams who know what’s working—and what’s not—can improve sales content to be even more effective.

But it’s not enough to simply make assets available, sellers must know how and when to use these resources to deliver maximum impact to their prospects. This means powering up content with relevant talk tracks, best practices, win stories, and SME knowledge that sellers need to handle objections, nurture prospects, and close deals.

#3 Communication and Collaboration

Another core sales enablement function is facilitating communication within the team and across other functions. It fosters collaboration between reps—learnings from calls, new ideas for addressing common prospect pain points, win / loss stories and more. If sellers aren’t sharing information with each other, the organization is missing out on essential intel that could lead to more deals.

Alignment and continuous collaboration with the marketing team is also critical. Without it, reps lack the insights marketing is gathering from its top-of-funnel campaigns, and marketing loses the chance to shape campaigns based on first-hand sales conversations. Technology that helps your team empower reps with information from all departments is crucial.

#4 Coaching

Sales enablement strategy extends not only to sales reps, but also to sales managers. Equipping front-line managers to inspire, motivate, and support reps with good coaching and communication improves seller productivity and leads to better results.

You need a tech solution that supports both formal and ad hoc coaching to hone skills and prepare for every selling situation. Call coaching with actionable, AI-powered insight enables managers to review all of their reps’ calls, provide the most effective point-in-time feedback, and personalize coaching at scale.

#5 Sales Methodology

Sales enablement—in conjunction with sales leadership—owns and implements the sales strategy, processes, and methods that the organization has developed to qualify leads, nurture prospects, engage buyers, and close deals.

When teams don’t have an agreed-upon methodology in place, they’re not working from the same playbook. That makes it difficult to communicate with sellers in a uniform manner, and even harder to enforce best practices within the team.

#6 Analytics

The final component of sales enablement is measurement. Success depends on a 360-degree view into seller activity and results. Business impact must be measured at both a macro and micro level to justify enablement investment. Meaningful metrics include: average sales cycle length; number of reps achieving quota; and average deal size.

Measurement and reporting must extend to the overall success of the sales enablement program. Teams who know which content and actions are advancing deals can continuously iterate and optimize the process.

Sales Enablement Initiatives Evolved

If you support a sales force—as a sales enablement pro, product marketer, trainer, sales leader, or content marketer—this is your moment. You’re essential to the process of maximizing revenue per rep, by ensuring sellers convey the right messaging using the right content throughout each stage of the buying process. Are you ready for the next era of sales enablement?

Learn More

Get your copy of the Sales Enablement Evolved eBook to learn how to evolve your sales enablement initiatives and strategy for a new era of success.