Why Sales Enablement Matters

There’s been a lot of interest in recent months in the topic of sales enablement. What is it? Why does it matter? How does it work? And how can it benefit your organization?

Sales enablement is all about looking for ways to ensure that your salespeople can be successful prior to their customer call, during their customer call, and after their customer call.  The best sales operations and enablement professionals put themselves in the situations that salespeople find themselves in every day: running from one appointment to the next, with lots to accomplish and little time to organize and get ready. And they ask themselves: What do these busy professionals need, and when do they need it?

Answer: They need mobile, easy-access applications that allow them to manage their opportunities and implement their sales process seamlessly. They need to easily leverage tools and resources that will help them to move deals forward. They need to share critical information about those opportunities with others in their organization. And they need tools that allow them to learn on the go, because they are always on the go. Fulfilling those critical priorities is what sales enablement is all about.

This topic is becoming more and more important to companies in the enterprise space, because the cost of training new salespeople, familiarizing them with your sales process, and indoctrinating them in the value and benefits of the organization’s products and services, is so high. Enterprise sales leaders are now also realizing that they need to find ways to give back to their employees by investing in their personal and professional development. Sales enablement does that with online learning tools that are customized to a given salesperson’s career path. This gives them a reason to stick around, increasing engagement and reducing turnover. The quality and efficiency of the sales enablement tools you provide can make the difference in a talented salesperson’s decision to stay with you or move on to a competitor.

In assessing your organization’s current situation relative to sales enablement, we suggest you ask yourself the following important questions:

• When a sales professional walks into your company, how quickly are they able to learn and understand your company’s 30-second commercial? 
• How quickly are they able to internalize this information, make it their own, and then share it with their prospects? 
• Does what they share with prospective buyers really address the pain that those buyers feel? 
• Have you given your sales team a quick and easy way for them to plan for their call on the go? In other words, have you made it as simple as possible for them to figure out what their plan for this unique client call looks like? Are they ready with the up-front contract they need to start the meeting? Have you made it easy for them to start with the end of the call in their mind, to ensure the client is fully engaged in the next step in the process before the meeting concludes?

As we consider the sales professionals we support, we need to continue to think about mobility, and about giving them access to the information, triggers and tools they need to be most effective in their role. We need to be thinking about how many clicks they need to make to get to what they require. And we need to look for ways to reduce the time spent on the administration of sales. We want to help them make the most of their one-on-one time with clients.

Sales enablement supports all of those goals. It helps to save salespeople critical steps, maximize personal efficiency, and execute the sales process optimally. Not only that: sales enablement helps them to stay focused on more rapid, more robust learning in support of their products, their services, and their own personal and professional growth, each and every day.

Learn more about sales enablement and what it means for your organization.