What is Sales EnABLEMENT? The 2024 Guide

blog
April 2024
7 Min

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Summary
Sales Enabling is a new job found in Tech and which aims to train sales teams internally to make them more operational and harmonize their performance. This strategy has a key word: marketing and sales alignment!

Sales EnABLEMENT, what?

History of Sales Enablment

Let's go back a few years: at the end of the 1990s, with the democratization of computing and the rise of the Internet, B2B sales experienced a revolution. Thanks to computers, salespeople sold more easily by sending prospecting emails in particular. But salespeople also had to adapt to a public that is now better informed!

It is the birth of Sales Enablment, a theme for which many companies contact Akimbo for sales coaching And of guidance.

During the 2000s, many consulting companies highlighted the existence of a new problem common to various business sectors: sales execution and information sharing internally.

In order to solve this problem, John Aiello and Drew Larsen invented a new sales technique, the Sales Enablment. The primary objective of these two researchers was to solve three fundamental problems:

1. The gap between marketing and commercial efforts;

2. The lack of clear information about products and customers;

3. Sales processes that cannot be reproduced identically.

Sales EnABLEMENT - Definition

Nowadays, Sales Enabling defines all the processes that make it possible to make sales teams more efficient by information sharing And their training. With Sales EnABLEMENT, three axes are studied:

1. Analysis of sales data;

2. The continuous improvement of the sales process (often shared with Sales Operations);

3. Automation techniques (idem).

Sales Enablement - Définition

The principles of Sales EnABLEMENT

Sales EnABLEMENT is based on at least 3 essential principles:

Involve sales and marketing teams

The first axis of Sales Enancement is to align your sales and marketing teams with common goals in order to improve the sales cycle and the customer experience. This alignment, which involves a lot of teamwork, is known as Smarketing. It allows you to obtain better conversion rates. In concrete terms, the aim is to prevent marketing from wasting time sending bad leads to salespeople.

Analyzing the data

One of the principles of Sales Enabling is reporting and analyzing your data. The objective is to implement, within the company, reports and dashboards to facilitate the monitoring of objectives and processes. This mission is often shared with Sales Operations.

Identify automation techniques that are synonymous with sales opportunities

Sales Enabling increases the performance of salespeople by helping them identify customer needs throughout the buying journey and build customer loyalty in the long term. To succeed in selling effectively, the Sales Enabling strategy used must be precise, clear and adapted to its target. Technology can be seen as an asset and a sales accelerator in this strategy. However, without a clear objective and process, the benefits of Sales Enabling technology are limited.

The Lead Nurturing is a technique for developing a relationship with a prospect throughout the buying process. Its main objective is to support the customer in a personalized way throughout the purchasing cycle. In B2B, buying cycles are very long. Shortening these cycles by automating part of the prospecting process is therefore beneficial for the company.

Applying the right principles of Sales Enabling allows you to achieve remarkable results and improve sales efficiency.

Good to know: Sales Enrollment is not a fixed strategy. For your strategy to work in the long term, it needs to be flexible enough to evolve as needed. It is through flexibility that you will stand out from the market and that you will follow the changing needs of your customers in real time.

Between Sales & Marketing teams

Traditionally, sales and marketing teams are teams that work separately. However, it is a model that is increasingly perceived as inadequate.

In reality, marketing and sales teams are both at the forefront of Sales Enabling. Indeed, the goals are set for both teams. Teamwork is essential to allow a good marketing and sales alignment. And the latter makes it possible to improve the company's performance, both in terms of generating business opportunities and in customer relationships.

Entre équipes Sales & Marketing

What is it for?

The benefits of Sales Enrollment

Over the past few years, the buying process for B2B consumers has evolved significantly. In order to be best prepared for this constant evolution, it is important to adapt sales methods and to listen more closely to customer needs. Sales Enforcement will then be the solution to adapt your teams to changes.

In addition to improving the commercial development of the company, Sales Enabling allows the majority of teams to achieve the goals set on a permanent basis. In this way, you can count on all of your employees to add real value to the company.

The areas it affects

Sales Enabling covers many areas. In particular, it will benefit upsell, cross-sell, customer success, marketing and sales alignment and the service sector.

The risks if we do without them

Many companies are still unaware of the ongoing digital “revolution”. This transformation is accelerating rapidly and much more than some people think. Nowadays, it is necessary for a company to be aware of this digital evolution and to adapt to it at the risk of no longer existing. In a market where competitiveness is increasingly tough, businesses are developing strategies to attract and retain customers.

To remain competitive, you need to have a large sales force. That's why the Sales Enancement Manager must be at the center of your strategy if you want to increase your performance.

Les avantages du Sales Enablement

Sales Enforcement

Sales teams in autonomy

Advantages:

- Given that Sales are at the forefront of the topics that Sales Enabling must deal with, entrusting this role to the Sales team makes it possible to solve short-term problems,

- In addition, entrusting Sales Enabler to Sales teams would make it possible to centralize strategies for more sales and profits and avoid the recruitment of a Sales Enabler to companies that do not necessarily have cash flow.

Disadvantages:

- Diversifying Sales tasks makes them dispersed operational staff who have less time to focus on their main mission: business generation,

- In addition, many Sales Enabler simply do not have the skills or even the experience necessary to cover all Sales Enabler tasks.

A dedicated expert

Advantages:

- Sales EnABLEMENT requires a lot of skills. Whoever is in charge of this must know how to use numerous tools, manage and align sales and marketing teams while boosting business performance. An expert dedicated to this field can therefore only be profitable for the company.

- Having a dedicated expert will make it possible to invest in the development of continuity between the marketing team and the Sales team: an intermediary who would therefore consolidate the processes and streamline the exchanges between them.

Disadvantages:

Of course, recruiting a Sales Enabler comes at a cost since you will need a professional with some field experience.

Application du Sales Enablement

Who is an expert for Sales EnABLEMENT?

What experience?

Since the Sales Enabler makes it possible to improve the performance of your sales teams, a significant Sales experience will be required so that he can project himself and offer relevant solutions and adapt to your business. The ideal would then be to implement Sales Enabling by experienced sales leaders with additional managerial experience.

What training?

Currently, no specific Sales Enabling training exists. In this field, skills development is therefore only possible through experience.

Akimbo However, offers you short but intensive training courses allowing you to acquire the Sales skills you need to move towards Sales Enabling a posteriori. These formations, called the Bootcamps, allow you to become Business Developer in Tech.

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