What is Sales Enablement: The Guide to Success in 2024

What is sales enablement?

Sales enablement strategically equips sellers with the right content, training, coaching, processes, and tools needed to successfully engage with prospects and buyers throughout the sales cycle. Sales enablement aims to provide reps with the resources, information, and support they need to sell effectively and efficiently. 

Sales enablement is a strategic, cross-functional initiative designed to boost sales outcomes. Let’s look at various sales enablement definitions from some of the industry’s top analysts.  

Sales enablement is a strategic, cross-functional discipline, designed to increase sales results and productivity, by providing integrated content, training, and coaching services. – CSO Insights 

Sales enablement is the activities, systems, processes, and information that support and promote knowledge-based sales interactions with clients and prospects. – Gartner

Sales enablement is a strategic, ongoing process that equips employees with the ability to consistently have a valuable conversation with the right set of customer stakeholders at each stage of the customer’s journey. – Forrester

What it isn’t…

While there may be varied sales enablement definitions depending on specific roles and organizations, it’s important to understand that sales enablement is not the same thing as sales operations or sales training.

What’s the difference between sales operations and enablement?

Sales operations is your boots-on-the-ground team that’s closely aligned with the daily activities of the sales team. They administer an organization’s CRM and help with lead routing, so sellers receive leads that fit their territory/solution.

Sales enablement strategically aligns people and technology behind a common goal: sales success. It helps organizations streamline sales cycles by improving buyer interactions with better, more relevant sales content and equipping sales teams with the tools they need to be more informed and productive sellers. When executed properly, sales enablement has a measured impact on time spent selling, win rates, and deal size. Learn more about key differences here.

Enablement vs. sales training

While sales enablement and training empower and equip sellers with the skills and resources they need to perform, it doesn’t mean that they can be used interchangeably. Sales training is the process of teaching skills, information, and strategies that will help them close deals. This takes form in both onboarding and ongoing sales training, and it’s just one small piece of the larger enablement landscape.

The rise of sales enablement

Enablement has transformed significantly over the past few years. Initially, it was a simple support function for sales teams. Now, sales enablement is a multifaceted and strategic initiative.

One of the greatest indicators of industry growth is the role of the sales enablement professional. Take a look at these numbers:

• Back in 2017, only 3,233 users on LinkedIn had sales enablement jobs. That number has grown to more than 35,000.
• ‘Sales enablement specialist’ was the 6th fastest-growing job title on LinkedIn last year
• In 2017 only 58% of companies had a dedicated sales enablement person, program, or function. Now more than 80% of organizations do. 
• The global enablement market size was just under $1 billion in 2019. It’s expected to reach more than $3 billion by 2026.

The enablement industry shows no sign of slowing down. Now, it’s no longer a simple function, but a vital strategy to drive efficiency and success. As more organizations recognize its impact, they’re shifting to a revenue enablement strategy that ensures success across the entire go-to-market (GTM) function. And with advancements in artificial intelligence and enablement tools, the industry is poised for a new era of enablement.

Who owns enablement?

As sales enablement has become more prevalent in today’s organizations, assigning responsibilities appropriately is important. Depending on available resources, headcount, goals, and priorities, ownership will be slightly tailored to your organization.

Sales

A sales-owned approach is best for organizations that want to improve sales communication, readiness, and collaboration. Letting sales own the overall initiative provides the added benefit of making the department feel more responsible for ensuring success. In a sales-owned configuration, sales will set the overall tone for strategy when it comes to the way sales and marketing can collaborate moving forward.

Sales enablement

Many organizations have built specific sales enablement teams and are hiring more sales enablement specialists than in previous years. Not every organization will have the resources to build this function, but if sales enablement is a long-term strategic play, starting with a new function can set you up for future success.

Creating a standalone sales enablement team (or manager, depending on organization size) creates a neutral third party. The sales enablement role or department sets expectations, owns projects, and ultimately makes things easier for stakeholders. This approach is best for organizations that are already running with sales enablement and want to continue to grow, organizations that are ready to invest in sales enablement and see it as a long-term investment, and organizations that want a neutral party to help foster sales and marketing alignment.

Marketing

By embarking on a sales enablement strategy, a marketing team commits to revamping their entire relationship with content. They acknowledge that their content needs to be easier to find, speak more directly to buyers’ needs, enable sales to create their own approved, personalized content, and prove its ROI. Allowing marketing to own a sales enablement initiative is best suited for organizations that are looking to unlock new efficiency with their entire content process, as well as improve sales and marketing alignment.

Why is sales enablement important?

Selling is more challenging and complex than ever before. Buyers now can gather product information, reviews, and pricing, embarking on as much as 57% of the buyer’s journey alone before ever speaking to a sales rep. Because buyers are more educated, they expect sellers to present them with information that’s tailored to the business and that will ultimately help them make a purchase decision.

Selling has also become more consultative. Sellers need to know the ins and outs of the product they are selling, and the market, and then guide prospective buyers towards the solution that will best serve their needs. This is significantly challenging in today’s virtual selling world, and reps need to make the most of every interaction.

This means that sellers need to work smarter and more efficiently to engage with buyers. However, we’ve found that sellers without effective enablement spend nearly 10 hours per week tracking down, comparing, or revisiting content to send to buyers. This is valuable time that should be spent engaging with prospects and advancing the goals of the sales team. 

What are the benefits of sales enablement?

Increases Revenue

Companies with successful enablement see 32% higher sales quota attainment.

Improves Productivity

Effective enablement helps new sellers meet quota up to seven weeks faster.

Sales enablement is about people and technology, and strategically aligning them both behind a common goal: sales success. Sales enablement helps organizations streamline and shorten sales cycles by improving buyer interactions with relevant sales content that is tailored and personalized. When executed properly, sales enablement has a measured impact on time spent selling, win rates, and deal size. Additionally, sales enablement:

• Creates a central, single source of truth content repository that provides sellers with marketing-approved content they need to have conversations that improve win rates.
• Ensures sellers have the skills and knowledge they need to engage with buyers throughout the entire sales cycle. 
• Streamlines sales communication that empowers sellers with relevant information from teams and departments.
• Provides marketing insights so teams know what content is helping accelerate deals.
• Aligns marketing, enablement, operations, and sales teams to yield lower costs, increase revenue, ensure brand integrity and compliance, and close more deals.

What are sales enablement tools?

Because enablement is so beneficial to organizations, the platform you invest in is a big deal. 

Sales enablement technology is defined as the tools that reduce the workload of sales and customer service teams, streamline their workflows, and provide go-to-market (GTM) teams with valuable insights for improved performance and revenue growth.

Sales enablement platforms include multiple capabilities and solutions:

• Sales content management: A central, single-source-of-truth repository serves sellers the marketing-approved content and sales enablement materials they need to have the conversations that improve win rates.
• Training and coaching: Customer-facing teams need learning, coaching, and skill development. 
• Buyer engagement: These tools help sellers develop and foster relationships with prospects and customers so deals move faster.
• Strategy and planning: This is designed to help enablement teams define their strategies, plan initiatives, and optimize their processes based on real revenue and efficiency insights.
• Insight and analytics: Teams have the information needed to know what’s advancing deals so the sales content creation process can improve and be even more effective.

The value of a sales enablement platform

To better understand how organizations benefit from a sales enablement platform, we surveyed more than 1,200 full-time sales, enablement, and customer service leaders across the United States and Europe.

The 2023 Value of Enablement Report found that enablement technology was extremely popular, with 82% of respondents saying they use it in their role. And, a resounding 99% of those respondents agree that enablement technology makes their jobs easier.

These responses are no surprise as they point to a variety of outcomes that businesses hope to achieve by adopting enablement tools. These include:

• Go-to-market (GTM) efficiency, particularly as it pertains to time-savings and overall productivity.
• Effective onboarding and learning, so employees can get up to speed fast and grow their confidence.
• Talent attraction and retention by nurturing job satisfaction, workforce morale, and career aspirations.

Building a business case for sales enablement

The Seismic 2023 Value of Enablement Report confirms that the value of enablement is universally high. With 71% of respondents reporting that their company plans to increase its enablement investment, it’s important to assess your current efforts. 

We’ve helped thousands of organizations roll out their sales enablement strategy and equip their sellers with innovative solutions. During this process, we’ve found that many organizations fall into three key stages of enablement maturity:

Once you determine your organization’s maturity stage, it’ll be easier to create a roadmap for the next steps. Remember that establishing a framework and implementing sales enablement software is a large investment that impacts many stakeholders across the organization. To guide your decision-making process and secure buy-in, consider the following steps:

Talk with sellers and marketers

When building a business case for sales enablement within your organization, it’s important to gain a baseline understanding of how both sales and marketing operate. By knowing the intricacies of their operations, you can build a better business case that speaks directly to the areas that need improvement.

Interview the people who feel the pain

Once you have determined the types of problems your organization faces, speak with people who encounter these challenges daily. Whether it’s someone in marketing who is swamped with content requests or someone in sales who needs more personalized content, finding a person who routinely struggles with the problems you’re hoping to solve is key. Conduct interviews to specifically learn what parts of their job can be improved with an enablement tool. This will provide a big-picture view of the gaps in content creation, content management, engagement analytics, and more.

Survey the market and choose your vendor

Ideally, you’ll begin this process with a general idea of the enablement space. It’s important to know who the sales enablement vendors are, the solutions they offer, and how they differ from one another. Once it’s time to put together your case, it’s necessary to perform a deep dive on the platforms available, and then decide which one will perfectly fit the needs of your organization.

Deliver your pitch

Depending on the size and structure of your organization, the ultimate decision may lie with department heads, a purchasing committee, or the C-suite. Regardless of who makes the decision, it’s necessary to have an air-tight case that puts their minds at ease and excited about the sales enablement platform.

Your presentation should tell an engaging story that paints the picture of why your organization needs a sales enablement solution. Those who are seeing the presentation may not even be aware of the problems that sales and marketing are facing. Humanizing the ordeal is a great way for your business to make an emotional connection with its readers, and its decision-makers.

Enable your sales team with Seismic

Seismic is the global leader in enablement—helping organizations engage buyers and customers, enable teams, and ignite revenue growth. The Seismic Enablement Cloud^TM is the most powerful, unified sales enablement platform that equips customer-facing teams with the right skills, content, tools, and insights to grow and win. Get a demo to learn more.