By now, most revenue leaders understand the impact of sales enablement. When done well, it drives a large, measurable impact on sales productivity and performance.
It’s no wonder why 84% of organizations now invest in a sales enablement function.
But along with those benefits, you may experience some sales enablement challenges. If that’s the case, you’re not alone. Even the most successful organizations have their fair share of sales enablement problems.
But the good news is, that organizations can overcome these sales enablement challenges. In this post, we’ll explore 10 common sales enablement challenges – and how an integrated revenue enablement platform can help you overcome them.
Sales enablement has a powerful impact on sales performance
Sales enablement is a relatively new concept. But it’s one that’s grown quickly.
But why is sales enablement important for revenue organizations?
Modern sellers can’t deliver a generic pitch to every buyer and expect great outcomes. Instead, they must work to understand each buyer’s needs and deliver tailored experiences and solutions throughout the customer journey. Plus, because customers’ priorities and expectations often shift, sales reps must be ready to pivot quickly.
Sellers must meet customers’ expectations if they expect to close deals. But often, that’s not the case. Recent research found only a third of B2B buyers feel their sales reps are genuinely helpful during the purchase journey.
Research found that only
A solid sales enablement practice ensures every seller on your team has the tools, information, and training they need to deliver winning buying experiences that meet customers’ expectations. When sellers are equipped to meet customers’ expectations, they’ll close more deals faster.
Sales enablement is complex
Sales enablement is an effective practice. But it tends to get complicated.
For one, there are a lot of people involved. That’s a good thing. The most effective sales enablement programs require strong collaboration among teams, including sales, marketing, sales enablement, sales operations, and customer success. But with so many people involved, it can get complicated.
In addition, a holistic sales enablement practice has several different components, which may include:
- Sales onboarding
- Ongoing sales training
- Reinforcement and practice
- Sales coaching
- Sales content
- Conversation intelligence
Each domain has several moving pieces, and some organizations use a separate piece of technology to power each. This adds a lot of complexity to a sales enablement practice.
Change is another key reason why sales enablement is complex. Change is constant. Products, markets, and customer preferences are always in flux. Sales enablement professionals must be agile and adapt their programs to reflect these changes.
What are the common challenges of sales enablement?
Sales enablement is a must for any revenue organization. But it presents some unique challenges.
Let’s look at 10 of the top sales enablement challenges.
Challenge #1: Key teams are often misaligned
Sales enablement requires ongoing collaboration among teams including sales, marketing, sales enablement, and revenue operations. But often, that’s not the case.
Instead, teams often work in silos. Each is focused on their duties and responsibilities – and doesn’t see the bigger picture. For example, the marketing team may sink a ton of time into creating sales content – but sellers are frustrated that they don’t have the right content for the right situations.
Cross-functional collaboration is key to sales enablement success. Scheduling regular check-ins and ensuring everyone is using the same sales enablement software are just a few ways you can ensure teams are aligned on sales enablement goals and understand their role in achieving those goals.
Challenge #2: Sellers are overloaded with tools
It’s important to equip your teams with the right sales enablement tools. But often, sellers are provided with an overwhelming number of tools. For example, you might use different sales enablement tools for training, content, coaching, and conversation intelligence.
This can be overwhelming for sales reps. A Salesforce survey found that almost 70% of sellers are overwhelmed by the number of tools they’re expected to use.
Furthermore, this approach causes chaos for sales enablement professionals. They’re forced to juggle multiple solutions – which may or may not integrate.
Consider streamlining your sales enablement stack by investing in an integrated sales enablement platform with robust features and functionality. Then, your entire team can access everything they need from a single, integrated platform.
Challenge #3: Sales enablement content is poorly managed
Content is a key component of sales enablement. Internal sales enablement content helps sellers sharpen their skills, while external content enables reps to engage prospects and move them closer to the finish line.
But often, sales reps spend a ton of time searching for the right content for the right situation. And often, they’re simply guessing what content is right.
Revenue organizations must take control of their sales content management.
All content should be stored in a sales content management solution and organized so that sales reps can easily find what they need. It’s also important to take the guesswork out of sales content. Look for a sales content management solution that recommends content based on what’s worked in similar situations.
Challenge #4: It’s hard to deliver personalized learning that addresses the needs of each seller
Often, sales enablement teams develop training and assign it across the entire revenue team. This approach doesn’t work.
Sales training must be tailored to the strengths and weaknesses of each seller. But that can seem downright impossible.
For starters, organizations often lack insight into sellers’ skills. A recent report found just 40% of C-level executives can identify rep strengths and weaknesses for customized training. Furthermore, delivering customized learning across a sales team would take time and effort.
But personalized learning doesn’t have to be a pipe dream.
With the right sales enablement platform, revenue leaders can quickly and easily identify each sales rep’s strengths and weaknesses. Then, they can develop and deliver personalized sales training paths that help reps improve their lagging skills.
Challenge #5: Sales reps aren’t retaining knowledge
You put a lot of time and effort into your sales training. But sellers aren’t retaining the knowledge – much less applying it in the field.
Unfortunately, your suspicions are correct. Gartner research found that B2B sellers forget 70% of learning within a week of training.
Sellers forget
Fortunately, there is a way to increase knowledge retention and application.
Be sure to incorporate spaced reinforcement exercises into your sales enablement programs so learning sticks.
Also, provide reps with role-play opportunities so they can get feedback (either AI-powered or from a manager or peer) and perfect their skills before money is on the line. Innovative revenue enablement platforms are tapping into AI to allow reps to practice their skills with an interactive bot in realistic scenarios.
Challenge #6: Sales managers don’t have the time to deliver personalized coaching at scale
Sales coaching is key to improving sales performance. A recent Mindtickle report found that top sales reps get four times more sales coaching than average.
In addition, leading sales enablement platforms leverage artificial intelligence to score customer calls and provide feedback for improvement. That way, sellers can get instant insights on improving, and sales managers can get intel on how their sellers perform in the field.
Top sales reps get
Often, sales managers deliver generic, one-size-fits-all coaching to every team member. That approach does little to nothing to improve sales outcomes.
Sales managers know personalized coaching will have a bigger impact, but they lack the time or resources to deliver tailored coaching for each sales rep.
With the right integrated sales enablement platform, sales managers can easily identify each sales rep’s strengths and weaknesses. This intel can inform coaching conversations that improve performance.
In addition, leading sales enablement platforms leverage artificial intelligence to score customer calls and provide feedback for improvement. That way, sellers can get instant insights on improving, and sales managers can get intel on how their sellers perform in the field.
Challenge #7: Measuring sales enablement ROI is tough
Proving the ROI of sales enablement is key to maintaining the sales enablement resources you have. What’s more, if you can prove sales enablement ROI, you’ll have an easier time securing additional investments.
But often, revenue organizations struggle to measure sales enablement impact. That could be for many different reasons. For example, they may only track asset views or training consumption, which doesn’t convey true impact. Or perhaps they use multiple solutions to power different parts of their sales enablement program, and they struggle to measure the impact of their program as a whole.
Sales enablement leaders must go beyond vanity metrics to convey how their initiatives impact sales enablement KPIs like conversion rates, quota attainment, and sales cycle length. With an integrated sales enablement platform, these leaders can holistically measure the impact of their entire program on key outcomes.
Challenge #8: You don’t know what’s happening in the field
Let’s say a seller completed all their assigned training and enablement and aced all their assessments. But their deals are still going south.
Their sales manager asks what’s going wrong, but the seller can’t articulate the problem. The sales manager isn’t sure what to do to help, and they simply don’t have the time to sit in on every call the seller has.
Fortunately, this sales enablement challenge is a relatively easy one to solve.
Leading revenue enablement software incorporates conversation intelligence capabilities. With a conversation intelligence solution, sales calls are recorded and scored, and sellers receive feedback on their performance. Furthermore, sales managers can look for trends to see what’s happening in the field. Then, the sales manager can use these insights to provide coaching to improve outcomes and the rep’s long-term behaviors.
Challenge #9: You have plenty of data – but you can’t make sense of it
Data drive the most effective sales enablement strategies and programs. Chances are, you have no shortage of data available. But it can be hard to analyze this volume of data and determine what actions to take based on it. This is especially true if you’re using multiple sales enablement solutions – each providing its own data and analytics set.
Consolidating your sales enablement tech stack is a key way to overcome this challenge. When you use a single, integrated revenue enablement platform, all your data and analytics are in one spot. Some revenue enablement platforms, like Mindtickle, even leverage AI to summarize data and analytics and recommend actions based on the data.
Challenge #10: You’re experiencing seller resistance and low adoption
It’s probably obvious, but your sales enablement programs and initiatives will have no impact if ignored.
There are several reasons why sales enablement adoption may need to be higher. Sellers are busy and may feel they need more time to engage with sales enablement. Or, they may not think the effort is worth it.
You may also encounter resistance if you roll out a new sales enablement tool. Don’t be discouraged. Some level of resistance is normal.
Gaining executive buy-in is foundational for overcoming resistance and increasing adoption. It’s also important to articulate the value of sales enablement for your sellers. In other words, be sure they key what’s in it for them.
Finally, remember that some sellers may equate sales enablement to lengthy, dull training sessions. Be sure your sales enablement program includes plenty of bite-sized content that sellers can consume on their own time.
How Mindtickle can help you overcome key sales enablement challenges
While sales enablement has many benefits, it also presents many challenges. With the right sales enablement solution, you can overcome these common sales enablement problems.
Mindtickle is an integrated revenue enablement platform that incorporates all the key components of sales enablement, including sales training, content, coaching, and conversational intelligence, into one platform. With Mindtickle, you’ll increase sales rep adoption. Sellers only have one tool to use for enablement – rather than several disparate platforms. Furthermore, you’ll improve cross-functional collaboration when everyone works from one, integrated sales enablement platform.
Mindtickle’s sales content management capabilities ensure sellers can always find the most up-to-date content for any sales scenario. The platform even provides recommendations based on what’s worked for other sellers in similar scenarios.
With Mindtickle, sales managers and enablement teams can easily identify the strengths and weaknesses of each sales rep. Then, they can work to provide personalized training, enablement, and coaching to improve those lagging skills. Finally, they can leverage conversation intelligence to see if learning is being applied in the field.
Of course, ongoing measurement of your sales enablement program is key to proving ROI and identifying optimization opportunities. With Mindtickle, you can holistically measure the impact of sales enablement on business outcomes. Then, you can make data-based decisions to increase the program’s impact.
Sales enablement in Mindtickle
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By Rahul Mathew
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