Developing a successful sales enablement strategy is an ever-evolving process that requires dedication and expertise. You need a sales enablement program that’s more than hypothetical; it needs to include tactical and actionable plans.
It takes commitment and ongoing effort to ensure your sales teams function like a well-oiled machine. As a leader in sales enablement, we know a thing or two about best practices, so let’s get into them.
#1. Create valuable content and manage it well
A vital piece of the enablement puzzle is content. As an enablement leader, you need to create (or orchestrate the creation of) content that not only resonates well with your audience, but also aligns with your overall business objectives.
Valuable sales enablement content does the following:
- Empowers your sellers: Sales enablement content equips your team with valuable insights, product knowledge, and resources, enabling them to engage customers more effectively by personalizing existing high-quality assets.
- Builds credibility: Quality content positions your brand as an industry leader, instilling trust and authority, which are crucial for successful interactions.
- Streamlines communication: Consistent, up-to-date messaging gives every customer-facing individual a consistent and shared narrative to use with customers. Using the same verbiage reinforces your brand identity — and your customers will notice.
- Accelerates the sales process: Well-crafted content addresses pain points efficiently, expediting the sales cycle, enhancing customer satisfaction, and boosting revenue.
- Adapts to market dynamics: An agile content strategy that can pivot with market trends keeps your sales enablement efforts fresh, seizing emerging opportunities.
Video suggestion: Watch this video that goes into more detail about how personalized content specifically helps sales reps win more deals.
#2. Align the go-to-market organization
Effective sales enablement requires the alignment of sales, marketing, and customer success (CS) teams. Where there is GTM alignment, there is consistent messaging, smoother operations, and typically, happier customers. The most successful enablement leaders bring together all aspects of the GTM organization to get everyone marching to the beat of the same drum.
Hubspot, for instance, saved $18 million in one year by increasing their sales team’s productivity and aligning their sales and CS teams through Seismic’s sales enablement software.
#3. Ensure there’s up-to-date training and onboarding
Top-notch onboarding and training are table stakes for great enablement programs. And a seller’s success hinges on having on-demand access to quality training content.
The 2023 Value of Enablement report confirms this: 76% of respondents say rapid access to coaching and training content prevents second-guessing, emphasizing the importance of swift training for confidence and success.
Enter sales enablement training software. Platforms such as Seismic Learning equip reps with knowledge to quickly get the hang of things and stay in the loop on messaging, new products, and industry tricks. This sharpens their ability to connect with buyers and nail down deals.
#4. Implement and support frameworks for sales coaching
Have you ever wondered what sets top-notch sales teams apart? Part of the equation is a solid sales enablement framework for coaching.
Sales coaching polishes individual skills and amps up the overall strength of your sales crew. Coaches — and coaching software that scales their expertise — are the secret ingredient to identifying strengths, shoring up weaknesses, and turning learning into a natural part of being a seller.
#5. Create healthy feedback loops
Sellers need to be able to translate field insights back to the broader team to shape future strategies. This feedback should influence the product roadmap, marketing priorities, sales processes, and beyond. Enablement leaders play a vital role in attentively listening and driving impactful changes.
#6. Measure your work to prove your impact
Monitoring sales enablement metrics is challenging, but measurement is crucial to improving your strategy and proving your value. Key stats like conversion rates, deals impacted, and overall customer engagement help you identify what’s working and what needs improvement. These numbers allow you to adjust your approach and stay sharp in a changing market.
Pro tip: This short blog post just scratches the surface of what you can learn in chapter 4 of our latest book, Tomorrow’s Enablement For Today’s Leaders. Head there to find resources to help you track your metrics!
#7. Evolve and optimize your tech stack
Sales enablement technology offers several benefits, including improved efficiency, streamlined workflows, and reduced operational costs. With the right tech tools, your sales team gets the goods — relevant content and resources that speed up deal closures, training to sharpen their skills, and tactical feedback to help them hit quota.
Plus, evolving and optimizing your tech stack ensures you stay ahead of your competitors and give your customers the most modern, “wow!” experience possible.
#8. Establish sales playbooks everyone’s bought into
A sales playbook that everyone agrees on standardizes the way GTM organizations work together to achieve better results.
Be sure to create (and more importantly, communicate) a few different sales playbooks for sellers to run depending on the industry, territory, or customer segment they’re focused on. But remember — a clear framework isn’t dictatorial. Instead, it should be flexible and collaborative as sellers learn new information in their deal cycles that could help future deals close.
In short, create playbooks with the help of frontline sellers and other GTM leaders, and revisit them often.
#9. Keep processes relevant to reality
In 2023, earning new customers, especially in SaaS, was no walk in the park. But smart enablement leaders didn’t just weather the storm; they stayed nimble and strategic. By keeping their processes in tune with the ever-changing reality, they tackled challenges head-on and stayed ahead of the game.
As an enablement leader, consider joining enablement-focused communities to network with others and see what’s working for them. Three great ones are the Revenue Enablement Society, the Sales Enablement Collective, and Women in Sales Enablement (WiSE). Or, if you’re a current Seismic user, join our customer community.
#10. Be present today without forgetting about tomorrow
To stay ahead of the game and be ready for tomorrow, it’s important to focus on the present while keeping an eye on the future.
Our latest book, Tomorrow’s Enablement for Today’s Leaders, talks all about this, and it’s written by two of Seismic’s brightest enablement leaders. It’s available for free as an EPUB or for purchase on Kindle.
A bonus #11: Partner with Seismic for sales enablement
Sales enablement leaders choose Seismic for its unmatched ability to streamline processes, foster collaboration, and adapt to dynamic market demands. In fact, 80% of sales leaders say enablement technology like Seismic frees up time to focus on revenue-generating experiences based on research from The 2023 Value of Enablement Report.
Think your team might need Seismic? Request a demo to see how Seismic could partner with you. Whether you opt for a team-led walkthrough or prefer to lead the demo yourself, you’ll discover why Seismic is the preferred choice for a future-ready approach to revenue success.
