Why You Need a Buyer Enablement Strategy (and How to Build One That Works) 

Kevin Atkinson on September 23, 2024

The B2B purchase journey isn’t linear. Instead, it’s complicated – and often filled with unexpected twists and turns.

This often results in frustration among B2B buyers. A staggering 77% of B2B buyers indicate their last purchase was very complex or difficult.

of B2B buyers say their last purchase was very difficult
0 %

B2B teams must do all they can to help buyers make confident purchase decisions. A solid buyer enablement strategy is a must.

But what is buyer enablement?

In this post, we’ll explore everything you need to know about this important (but often overlooked) practice. We’ll explore:

  • What buyer enablement is
  • Why it’s important
  • How buyer enablement differs from sales enablement
  • How to build a winning buyer enablement strategy
  • Best practices for more effectively engaging with B2B buyers

What is buyer enablement?

First things first, what is buyer enablement?

Buyer enablement provides B2B buyers with the tools, information, and support they need to successfully navigate the buying journey and make confident purchase decisions.

B2B buyers must complete a variety of tasks throughout the purchase journey, including (but not limited to):

  • Pinpointing the problem
  • Identifying potential solutions
  • Gathering requirements
  • Engaging with potential vendors
  • Gaining consensus across the entire buying team

A strong buyer enablement strategy helps ensure buyers can more easily complete these tasks. By removing friction from the purchase journey, you increase the likelihood that buyers will choose your business.

Of course, not everyone navigates the purchase journey the same way. Generally speaking, there are four main types of B2B buyers:

  • Amiable buyers
  • Analytical buyers
  • Expressive buyers
  • Driver buyers

Effective buyer enablement takes a personalized approach that resonates with each type of B2B buyer.

Why is buyer enablement important for B2B businesses?

Making a B2B purchase might seem simple enough. But more often than not, that’s not the case. As mentioned earlier, over three-quarters of B2B buyers feel their most recent purchase was extremely complex or difficult (or both!).

There are a lot of factors that contribute to the complexity of B2B sales.

The first is the size of buying committees. According to Gartner, a typical buying group involves six to 10 stakeholders. Each of these stakeholders has different wants and needs, and they each look at a B2B purchase from a different perspective.

A typical buying group involves up to

stakeholders
6

Another key factor is the sheer volume of information buyers have.

The easy availability of information is a good thing in some ways. Modern buyers are in the driver’s seat and can learn much about vendors before contacting a salesperson. They can even get feedback from their peers by reading reviews.

However, according to Gartner, every buying committee member consults four to five sources of information. When you multiply that across a large buying team, things get complicated fast.

Businesses that stand out will make it easy for buyers to navigate the purchase journey – and the firehose of information. That’s what buyer enablement is all about.

With buyer enablement, your buyers are equipped to make informed purchase decisions. This will help you grow sales and increase customer retention.

Cross-functional collaboration is key to buyer enablement

Various teams contribute to a buyer’s experience with a business. For example, marketing teams are responsible for developing content buyers will consume before contacting a sales rep. On the other hand, sales reps are responsible for providing personalized experiences and solutions.

As such, buyer enablement must be a cross-functional effort.

B2B buyers demand seamless experiences throughout the purchase journey. Per Salesforce, 79% of respondents expect consistent interactions across departments.

of buyers expect consistency between teams
0 %

A business’s ability to deliver connected experiences throughout the purchase journey greatly impacts sales outcomes. According to Gartner, Buyers are 2.8 times more likely to complete a high-quality deal when they perceive high information consistency between a supplier’s website and that supplier’s representatives. On the flip side, 72% of B2B buyers will actively look for another vendor if a business doesn’t deliver consistent experiences across channels.

of buyers will look for another vendor if there isn't consistency
0 %

Seamless, connected experiences throughout the purchase journey can only happen with strong cross-functional collaboration.

How to create a buyer enablement strategy

With proper buyer enablement, your prospects can make confident purchase decisions – faster and easier. That means you’ll close more deals with good-fit buyers that’ll stick around long-term.

How can you develop an effective buyer enablement strategy? There are a few steps you must take.

Align teams

Buyers must be properly supported throughout the entire purchase journey, whether they’re doing their own research or engaging with a sales rep. As we explored earlier, this requires close collaboration among teams, including sales, marketing, and customer success.

Be sure your teams are aware of your buyer enablement goals and the role they plan in achieving them. Close collaboration will improve outcomes.

Define your target audience

Buyer enablement is all about making it easier for your prospects to make confident purchases. Your buyer enablement strategy must be centered around your buyers’ needs. As such, it’s important to define who those buyers are.

If you haven’t already, be sure to develop ideal buyer profiles, which lay out the characteristics of a business that fits your products and services well. You should also create buyer personas, which define the characteristics of the folks you’re aiming to engage with at those companies.

In addition, be sure to factor in the different types of buyers you’re likely to encounter, including amiable, analytical, expressive, and driver buyers.

Map the buyer journey

Lay out the journey your prospects take on their way to becoming buyers. This shouldn’t be based on guesses or gut feelings. Instead, leverage data and talk to your sales reps and existing customers.

Understanding buyers’ different tasks when navigating the purchase journey is important. You’ll also want to identify the common hurdles they face.

Develop buyer enablement tools

Once you’ve identified your buyers’ challenges, you can develop tools to help them overcome them.

What types of buyer enablement tools should you create? It depends on the needs of your buyers. Here are a few buyer enablement examples you may want to explore:

These can help buyers pinpoint their biggest challenges.

Interactive calculators can help buyers understand the cost of their challenges – and the ROI of investing in the right solution.

Different types of sales content will resonate with buyers at different stages of the purchase journey.

These can help buyers understand firsthand how your solution will help them solve their problems.

These portals provide buyers with a one-stop shop for accessing all buyer enablement content and communication related to a deal.

 A growing portion of B2B buyers prefer to navigate the purchase journey on their own. A self-service portal makes this possible.

Reviews enable buyers to get authentic feedback from their peers.

Measure and optimize your buyer enablement strategy

Once you’ve developed and launched your buyer enablement strategy, it’s important to consistently measure impact. With regular measurement, you can understand how (and whether) your efforts positively impact buyers’ experiences – and where opportunities exist to provide more support.

Sales enablement vs buyer enablement: What’s the difference?

Today, 84% of C-suite executives invest in a sales enablement team. So chances are, you’re quite familiar with the concept of sales enablement.

Buyer enablement and sales enablement share a common word. But while buyer enablement and sales enablement are related, they’re not the same thing.

Sales enablement and buyer enablement both aim to grow revenue, but the two practices approach this from different angles.

Sales enablement is focused on equipping sellers with the training, information, and tools they need to engage buyers and close deals. In other words, it’s all about supporting sellers. When sellers have the right support, they can more effectively and efficiently engage buyers and move deals across the finish line.

Buyer enablement, on the other hand, is all about supporting buyers. Buyer enablement aims to provide prospects with tools and information so they can make confident purchase decisions.

When it comes to the question of sales enablement vs buyer enablement, which is the better option? The reality is that you need both. By equipping sellers and buyers with the right tools and information, you’ll close more deals, and your revenue will grow.

Sales enablement Buyer enablement
Definition The practice of equipping sellers with the training, tools, and resources they need to engage buyers and close deals. The practice of providing customers with the tools and information they need to more easily navigate the purchase journey and make informed purchase decisions.
Examples of tools and support
  • Sales onboarding
  • Ongoing training
  • Sales enablement content
  • Coaching
  • Role-plays
  • Conversation intelligence
  • Digital sales rooms
  • Diagnostic tools
  • Sales content
  • Self-service portals
  • Digital sales rooms
  • ROI calculators
  • Demos or simulations
  • Peer reviews
Audience B2B sellers B2B buyers
Responsible parties Sales enablement team, in close collaboration with other teams including sales and marketing. Cross-functional effort involving parties including sales, marketing, customer success, and sales enablement, among others.
KPIs
  • Sales productivity metrics
  • Win rates
  • Quota attainment
  • Conversion rates at different parts of the sales cycle
  • Sales cycle length
  • Win rates
  • Conversion rates at different stages of the sales cycle
  • Cost per acquisition
  • Sales cycle length
  • Customer satisfaction and retention rates

Best practices for engaging B2B buyers

The B2B purchase journey is complex. Buying committees are large, and each member has a different agenda.

Organizations must be strategic when aiming to attract and engage B2B buyers. Here are a few best practices to keep in mind.

Center the customer’s needs

Your customers should be your north star. Everything you do should be centered around their needs.

While this seems obvious, the data tells a different story. A recent survey found that 78% of B2B buyers expect companies to adapt to their changing needs and preferences. But about half feel that most companies treat them like numbers.

Provide your sellers with the right training and coaching to hone their discovery skills. For example, be sure they know what questions to ask to quickly uncover customers’ needs. Then, they can adapt their approach accordingly.

In addition, consider leveraging conversation intelligence tools. These tools record and analyze sales calls, using AI to help sellers quickly uncover insights. For example, a seller can ask, “What pain points did my buyer mention in the call?” Then, sales reps can use these insights to personalize their follow-up.

Deliver integrated experiences

Today, many B2B buyers navigate at least a portion of the purchase journey independently. In fact, 75% of B2B buyers prefer a rep-free sales experience. A self-service portal is a buyer enablement example that can drive engagement among those who prefer to do so.

of B2B buyers prefer a rep-free sales experience
0 %

But it’s important to remember that buyers make better decisions when a sales rep is involved. Gartner research tells us B2B buyers are “1.8 times more likely to complete a high-quality deal when they engage with supplier-provided digital tools in partnership with a sales rep rather than independently.”

Be sure you support buyers, no matter how they engage with you. In addition, be sure the experiences you offer are consistent across channels.

Deliver the right content at the right time

Content is a powerful buyer enablement example that prospects depend on to make informed purchase decisions. In fact, over half of B2B buyers rely on content more now than they did a year ago.

But sharing generic buyer enablement content will not work. Instead, organizations must get the right content in front of the right buyers at the right time.

The right sales content management system enables sellers to surface the right content at the right time. For example, SaaScend, a revenue operations consultancy, centralizes all its sales content in Mindtickle. The company leverages filters based on factors like persona, industry, and firmographics, which help sellers quickly find and share content tailored to each prospect’s needs.

Also, some sales content management systems incorporate artificial intelligence, which suggests content based on buyer signals and data on what has (and hasn’t) worked in the past.

Provide a single source of truth

Throughout the B2B purchase journey, content and information are often shared via email. That means prospects have to dig through long email threads anytime they’re looking for a specific piece of content or information. This can get overwhelming and lead to disengagement.

Providing a single source of truth for buyers can be a powerful way to boost engagement and accelerate deals. Digital sales rooms are one buyer enablement example. With digital sales rooms, buyers can easily find everything related to the purchase journey – all in one spot.

SaaScend is one company that leverages digital sales rooms to engage buyers. With digital sales rooms, buyers can educate themselves on their own time – without waiting on responses via email and Slack.

As an added bonus, digital sales rooms enable sellers to see how buyers are engaging. Sellers can use these insights to adapt their strategy and increase buyer engagement.

Start engaging more buyers with Mindtickle

The B2B purchase journey is often complicated – and frustrating for buyers. Businesses must make it easier for buyers to make confident purchase decisions. A solid buyer enablement strategy is a must.

Your sellers play a critical role in the customer journey.

Buyer Engagement with Mindtickle

With Mindtickle, your go-to-market teams always have the information, tools, and resources to effectively engage buyers and guide them through the purchase journey.

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The Ultimate Guide to Sales Enablement Frameworks

Kevin Atkinson on September 17, 2024

By now, the vast majority of organizations are investing in sales enablement. In fact, recent research found that sales enablement and training is the #1 growth tactic among today’s sales leaders.

It’s easy to see why. Sales enablement – when it’s done well – prepares sellers to overcome challenges, engage buyers, and close more deals. A survey found that 92% of respondents feel that having a dedicated sales enablement team has improved sales performance.

A recent study found that

of respondents said dedicated sales enablement improved performance
0 %

But sales enablement success just doesn’t happen by chance. Instead, it requires plenty of planning and a strong foundation. It all starts with building a sales enablement framework.

Developing a winning sales enablement framework doesn’t have to be overwhelming. In this blog, we’ll define a sales enablement framework and share a four-step approach to building one that will serve as the foundation for sales enablement success.

What is a sales enablement framework?

Later on, we’ll explore the steps involved in building a sales enablement framework. But first, let’s take a step back to define the term.

A sales enablement framework is the foundation of your sales enablement function. The sales enablement framework outlines how you’ll support your sellers with the right tools, sales training, and resources so you can grow an entire team of top performers who consistently crush quota.

You can also think of it as a sales enablement roadmap. You’ll use this map to effectively enable your sellers so they can reach their full potential and you can achieve maximum revenue growth.

Why is a sales enablement framework important?

When sales enablement was in its infancy, many organizations took an ad hoc approach. For example, a manager might step in to do deal reviews. Or, the marketing team might create a new asset when a sales rep asks for it.

Even today, some organizations continue to take a reactive approach to sales enablement. But it’s not effective or sustainable.

Organizations that take a more formal approach to sales enablement achieve greater impact than those that adopt an ad hoc approach. Building a sales enablement framework is foundational to formalizing your approach to sales enablement.

How to build a sales enablement framework

Sales enablement can have a large, measurable impact on the metrics that matter most, including win rates, quota attainment, and sales cycle lengths. Building a sales enablement framework is the first step towards improving your sellers’ effectiveness and efficiency.

Building a sales enablement framework (or roadmap) from scratch can seem overwhelming. But if you take it step by step, it doesn’t have to be.

Step 1: Research and plan

Alexander Graham Bell is often quoted as saying, “…preparation is key to success.” This certainly rings true for sales enablement.

Research, planning and preparation are the first steps of developing a winning sales enablement framework. This involves several moving pieces, including:

Choose your sales methodology: A sales methodology is a framework that guides how your sellers engage with buyers and articulate the value of your solutions. If you haven’t already, it’s critical to determine which sales methodology is the best fit for your business.

Align key teams: Sales enablement strategies and programs can’t be created in silos. Instead, sales enablement requires close collaboration among teams including sales, marketing, and customer success. When these teams are aligned, everyone understands the larger strategy and the role they play in it. This leads to better outcomes.

One way to ensure alignment is to hold standing meetings with key teams. You might designate a point person to represent each team.

Understand your target audience: Your customers should be at the heart of everything you do. Ensure you thoroughly understand who your target audience is, what challenges they face, and the value your solution delivers.

If you haven’t already, be sure to develop ideal customer profiles, which outline the characteristics of a company that is a good fit for your products or services. You also need to create buyer personas, which are snapshots of the people your go-to-market teams will aim to attract and convert.

Determine your goals: Go-to-market teams should come together to establish sales enablement goals. Remember: your sales enablement goals must align to the greater business objectives.

Stay away from vague goals like “improve team performance.” Instead, set sales enablement KPIs that are specific and measurable. Also, determine which metrics you’ll track to gauge your progress toward your goals.

Take stock of your current state: Take an honest look at the state of your go-to-market team today. Assess their strengths and weaknesses. Also, assess the tools and resources they currently have – and which they may need to drive better performance.

Step 2: Develop and execute your sales enablement framework

You can create your sales enablement framework once you’ve completed the initial step. This framework will outline out the training, tools, and resources your go-to-market teams need to be successful in their roles.

Some examples of tools and resources include:

Sales onboarding: This is the first experience new sellers will have with your organization. It’s a great opportunity to get your reps off to a great start.

Ongoing training and enablement: Onboarding is a great start. But on its own, onboarding isn’t enough to prepare sellers to effectively and efficiently engage buyers.

Things are always changing – including product offerings, marketplace conditions, customer expectations, and competitive landscape. Even the best reps need ongoing sales training and enablement to ensure they’re ready to conquer any deal that comes their way.

One-size-fits-all training won’t cut it. Effective sales enablement and training is that which is tailored to the unique needs of each seller.

Sales coaching: Sales coaching can have a big impact on sales performance. Like training, it must be personalized to each seller’s needs.

Sales content: Sales enablement content helps sellers move prospects through the funnel. With the right sales content management solution, sales reps can easily find the right content for each selling scenario.

Consider incorporating AI into your sales content strategy. That way, sellers can get content suggestions based on past performance and a prospect’s behaviors.

Role-plays: Role-plays allow sales to practice their skills before money is on the line. With artificial intelligence, sales reps can get feedback on role-plays in real time without having to wait on their manager. In addition, innovative revenue organizations are leveraging AI to develop interactive role-plays in which sellers interact with an AI bot in realistic sales scenarios.

interactive role-play

Conversation intelligence: A conversation intelligence solution records sales calls and delivers real-time feedback to sellers. Sales reps can use this feedback to improve behaviors and increase their chances of closing a deal.

mt-platform-conversation-intelligence-screen

With AI, sellers can also quickly pull insights from sales calls and determine what action to take next.

Once your sales enablement framework and supporting resources are created, you can deliver them to your customer-facing teams.

The right sales enablement technology is critical

Technology is key to building and executing your sales enablement framework and programs.

The right sales enablement (or revenue enablement) software should make it easy for enablement teams to create resources that empower sellers to hone the skills that matter. Sales enablement software should also allow revenue leaders to understand reps’ strengths and weaknesses – and deliver learning paths that address the needs of all sellers.

Choosing the right sales enablement software is also important for your sellers. The easier you make it for sellers to engage with your enablement resources, the more likely they are to do so.

Step 3: Deploy your go-to-market teams

This stage of the sales enablement framework is where the rubber meets the road. It’s where sellers apply the skills and information they’ve learned while interacting with customers.

There are several components of this stage.

Putting learning into practice: Your sellers have used various sales enablement resources to build their skills. Now, it’s time to use those skills with prospective buyers.

Of course, just because sales reps engage with sales enablement programs doesn’t mean their behaviors will improve. Conversation intelligence software enables revenue leaders to understand how each sales rep is performing in the field. Sales managers can use these insights to provide targeted coaching to boost weaker skills.

Using data to drive action: With the right sales enablement framework, strategy, and tools, your sellers can access the data they need to make better decisions.

Consider sales enablement content as one example. Often, sales reps guess which content to use based on gut feeling. With the right sales enablement framework and technology, sellers can tap into data to determine which content will resonate with which prospects.

Sellers can also receive AI-powered recommendations on what to do next with a buyer based on historical data and the prospect’s behaviors.

Step 4: Measure and optimize your sales enablement framework

Remember those sales enablement goals you set back in step one? It’s important to continuously measure your progress towards those goals.

Track KPIs: Be sure to track key metrics to determine how (and whether) your sales enablement framework and program impact results. The metrics you track will vary based on your sales enablement goals.

In addition to tracking metrics across the revenue organization, be sure to determine how different programs are helping teams and even individual reps improve behaviors and sales performance.

Solicit feedback: Don’t shy away from feedback from your sellers. They interact with customers every day and can offer unique insight into what’s working and what’s not.

Optimize accordingly: A sales enablement framework isn’t something to create. Rather, it’s important to continuously leverage data and feedback to optimize your sales enablement framework.

Build a winning sales enablement framework and program with Mindtickle

Technology is a key component of any sales enablement strategy. Some organizations use point solutions, each addressing a specific sales enablement component. But increasingly, teams are streamlining their tech stacks by investing in an integrated revenue enablement platform like Mindtickle.

With Mindtickle, revenue enablement teams can deliver and deliver training and enablement programs that are tailored to the needs of each seller. Mindtickle also features robust sales enablement content management capabilities, which make it easy to equip sellers with the right content for any selling scenario.

With Mindtickle Copilot, the platform’s AI productivity assistant, revenue enablement teams can quickly and easily develop enablement, assessments, and role-plays by inputting key details.

Copilot - Assessment

Revenue enablement teams can launch programs quickly, which means they can have a more immediate impact on sales productivity and performance.

Mindtickle provides sales reps with a one-stop shop for everything related to enablement, including sales content, training, coaching, role-plays, conversation intelligence, and more. That means they can spend less time hunting down what they need and more time delivering great experiences that convert prospects to customers.

Mindtickle Copilot streamlines and simplifies the tedious tasks that take up so much of sales reps’ time. For example, sellers can quickly surface insights from call recordings so they can follow up accordingly. Mindtickle Copilot can also suggest next steps to take. For example, the AI sales assistant can suggest sharing a piece of relevant content and even draft a contextual email to accompany the asset.

Today, some of the world’s best revenue organizations depend on Mindtickle to ensure sellers always have what it takes to reach their sales targets. And with Mindtickle Copilot, teams can work even faster and smarter.

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What is Revenue Optimization? (+ How to Get Started with This Powerful Strategy) 

Kevin Atkinson on September 11, 2024

Revenue growth is a top priority of any organization. Just ask any room full of chief revenue officers.

But you can’t just wish for revenue growth and expect it to happen. Furthermore, the burden of growing revenue can’t rest solely on the shoulders of your sales reps.

Instead sustainable, predictable revenue growth requires plenty of planning, strong cross-functional collaboration, and ongoing revenue optimization.

But what is revenue optimization? We’re glad you asked.

In this post, we’ll explore revenue optimization and why it matters. We’ll also share some revenue optimization strategies and tips that’ll get you well on your way to a healthy sales pipeline – and a bigger bottom line.

What is revenue optimization?

Every organization wants to grow. Revenue optimization is key to achieving that goal.

So, what is revenue optimization?

Revenue optimization is the practice of optimizing acquisition, retention, expansion, and pricing strategies to maximize revenue growth.

When it comes to revenue optimization, many companies focus on just one or two of the following strategies:

  • Customer acquisition: Generating leads and converting them to customers
  • Customer retention: Delighting and supporting customers so they stick around long-term
  • Expansion: Cross-selling or upselling existing customers
  • Pricing: Identifying the right pricing for your products and services

But to accelerate sales and maximize your growth, you must take a holistic approach to revenue optimization that incorporates and balances all four.

So, who is responsible for revenue optimization?

It’s not the responsibility of one team or individual. Instead, effective revenue optimization requires close collaboration across different customer-facing teams, including:

  • Marketing
  • Sales
  • Customer success

Why does revenue optimization matter?

Now we’re clear on what revenue optimization is. But why is it so important?

Organizations that embrace revenue optimization see several key benefits. Let’s look at some of the benefits that top the list.

Diverse revenue streams drive sustainable growth

All too often, organizations focus on a single source of revenue. For example, they focus solely on growth via customer acquisition.

Relying on a single source of income isn’t an effective strategy. For example, focusing solely on customer acquisition – but doing nothing to retain your existing customers – isn’t sustainable.

A revenue optimization strategy ensures you rely on different channels to grow your revenue – including acquisition, retention, expansion, and pricing. This approach makes your company more resilient. If one of your sources of revenue takes a hit, you’ll still be able to thrive.

Better cross-functional collaboration

When we think of revenue generation, we often think of the sales team. But in reality, multiple teams, including marketing, sales, and customer success, play a role in revenue growth.

While marketing develops campaigns that capture the right people’s attention in the right places, sales is responsible for fostering relationships and closing deals. On the other hand, customer success is responsible for supporting existing customers so they stick around long-term.

But often, these teams work in silos. Teams are focused on their work – without much visibility into the bigger picture.

A revenue optimization strategy drives cross-functional collaboration. Teams understand the revenue organization’s strategy and goals—as well as their role. When teams are aligned, outcomes improve. In fact, according to Gartner, sales organizations that prioritize alignment with marketing are nearly three times more likely to exceed their customer acquisition targets.

Sales orgs that prioritize alignment with marketing are

more likely to exceed customer acquisition targets
0 x

It’s important to note that a revenue operations strategy is also key to improving cross-functional collaboration.

Better customer experiences

According to a recent report, 79% of buyers expect consistent interactions across departments. However, reality often doesn’t align with these expectations.

of buyers expect consistent experiences across departments
0 %

For example, a buyer might have an outstanding experience with their sales rep. But things go south once the ink has dried on the contract and the customer has been handed off to customer success.

Revenue optimization focuses on optimizing all aspects of revenue generation. This leads to better, more consistent customer experiences. When customers consistently have great experiences, you’ll close more deals and boost retention rates. Furthermore, your happy customers will be more open to cross-sales and up-sells.

How to get started with revenue optimization

You can drive sustainable, predictable revenue growth with the right revenue optimization strategy. Here are a few revenue optimization strategies and tips to get you started.

Define your target audience

You must determine your target audience before developing a revenue optimization strategy. If you haven’t already, now’s the time to develop your ideal customer profiles (ICPs) and buyer personas.

An ICP is a tool for describing the characteristics of a company that would be a good fit for your products or services. On the other hand, a buyer persona describes the characteristics of an individual who works for a good-fit company.

Why is it important to develop your ICP and buyer personas?

These tools help ensure the entire revenue team is focused on prospects who are a good fit for your offerings. Marketing can use the ICP and buyer personas to develop campaigns to attract good-fit prospects. Furthermore, sellers can focus on prospects who are more likely to convert and stick around long-term.

Diversify your revenue streams

Focusing on a single revenue stream isn’t a sustainable strategy. For example, you’ll never get ahead if you’re focused solely on acquisition but your churn is high.

Be sure to incorporate multiple sources of income into your revenue optimization strategy, including acquisition, retention, cross-sells, and pricing.

Make a plan to support existing customers

All too often, customers have a great purchasing experience, but they’re left high and dry after the deal goes through. Be sure to have a solid plan to support, delight, and retain existing customers.

When you properly support your existing customers, they can be a significant source of revenue growth. Happy customers are more likely to renew their contracts. In addition, they’re typically more open to cross-sells and upsells, and they may even refer your business to others in their network.

Optimize your pricing

If your products are priced too high, you won’t attract customers, and you won’t make any money if your products are priced too low. Striking the right balance between pricing and revenue optimization is important.

When determining your pricing, you’ll need to consider many factors including demand, competitive landscape, and the value your product delivers to customers. Pricing your products higher than your competitors isn’t necessarily a bad thing – as long as your customers derive significantly more value from your solution.

Tap into technology to streamline tedious tasks

Members of the revenue team are bogged down with tedious, time-consuming tasks. This means they have less time to engage with customers and prospects.

Look for opportunities to leverage revenue optimization solutions to streamline or automate routine tasks that take up a lot of your sellers’ time.

For example, consider sales content. Marketing teams create a ton of content for sales and customer success to use throughout the customer lifecycle. But often, sellers spend a lot of time searching for the right content – or even creating their own.

An integrated revenue enablement platform like Mindtickle makes it easy for sellers to find the right content for their needs. They can also get insight into how buyers are engaging with their content so they can optimize their strategies accordingly.

Salesforce - Asset Hub

Consider the work involved with conducting a sales call. A solution like Mindtickle’s conversation intelligence records and analyzes customer calls. Sellers can quickly uncover insights that can help them determine what step to take next in the sales process.

Mindtickle Call AI with conversation intelligence insights

Leverage data

Data is foundational to your revenue optimization strategy. Data should drive everything you do. Be sure you have access to the right data and a means to analyze it to uncover insights.

For example, content analytics can help you understand what content types improve deal outcomes. Also, revenue intelligence can help you understand the health of each deal and where there are risks. That way, your teams can take the appropriate action to improve outcomes. These insights can also inform better revenue forecasting.

mt-platform-forecasting-screen

Solicit customer feedback

Understanding how your customers feel is key to effective revenue management. So don’t shy away from customer feedback.

Ask for feedback from your customers to understand what they like about partnering with your business and where there are opportunities for improvement. Look for trends in feedback to determine where there are revenue optimization cycle opportunities. You may also discover opportunities for cross-sales or future product enhancements.

Feedback can also help customer success teams understand when a customer is at risk of churning. The team can use this insight to more effectively support the customer – and increase their chances of renewal.

How can a revenue enablement platform help with revenue optimization?

Revenue optimization sets up your organization for sustainable growth. With a solid revenue optimization strategy, you’ll have a healthy sales pipeline and predictable revenue growth.

Technology is key to any revenue optimization strategy. An especially important tool is a revenue enablement platform.

How does a revenue enablement platform help with revenue optimization?

All your customer-facing teams need to master certain skills and behaviors to successfully engage customers and grow revenue. A revenue enablement platform ensures your entire revenue team – including sales, marketing, and customer success – can access the tools, training, resources, and coaching they need to build the right skills.

A conversation intelligence tool within the revenue enablement platform helps ensure sellers are applying the skills they’ve learned while interacting with customers. Conversation intelligence delivers feedback to sales reps after each call, which they can use to sharpen their skills. In addition, conversation intelligence makes it easy for sellers to identify insights from calls so they can follow up appropriately.

A revenue enablement platform also incorporates revenue intelligence, which helps teams gauge deal health and identify at-risk deals. These insights can fuel better sales forecasting and enable sales reps and managers to work together to turn winnable deals around.

A revenue enablement platform like Mindtickle also features robust data and analytics to understand what’s working and what’s not. Some revenue intelligence platforms leverage AI to help you identify what action to take based on data.

Revenue Enablement in Mindtickle

Leading organizations turn to Mindtickle to help power their revenue optimization strategies. Ready to see how Mindtickle can help you maximize revenue growth?

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10 Sales Training Topics to Help Your Team Get (and Stay) Sales Ready

Kevin Atkinson on September 4, 2024

Sales training and coaching are often reserved for new hires and low performers. For the rest of the team, training may be limited to a brief refresher during the annual sales kickoff.

But this approach to sales training isn’t as effective as we’d like to think. In many cases, this is because revenue organizations only cover a few training topics with their sales professionals.

To improve the effectiveness of training (and your entire sales enablement program), you must continually cover a full range of sales training topics. This will help all your reps build the skills and knowledge required for any selling scenario.

Sales training topics

  1. Pipeline management
  2. Prospecting and outreach
  3. Qualifying leads
  4. Call planning
  5. Building relationships with customers
  6. Identifying customer needs
  7. Presenting the value of your products
  8. Competitor knowledge
  9. Managing objections
  10. Closing deals

1. Pipeline management

Your sales reps need to be able to build their pipeline, prioritize leads and prospects based on lead quality and sales urgency, and measure their results.

In fact, research suggests that effective pipeline management is closely linked to rep performance.

However, a recent survey found that generating and converting a healthy pipeline is a top challenge among revenue professionals.

Training in pipeline management can set junior team members up for success. They’ll be able to keep track of all their deals in your CRM, know what pipeline stage their deals are at, and determine whether they have enough conversations in progress to hit quota.

2. Prospecting and outreach

Sales prospecting and outreach are two competencies that go hand in hand. Business development reps (BDRs) need to find and identify good-fit potential customers and then craft compelling messages to engage them. According to a Salesforce report, sellers spend about 17% of their time each week prospecting and researching potential customers to ensure they fit your ideal customer profile (ICP).

Sellers spend about

of their time prospecting and researching
0 %

Top performers spend even more time researching their prospects. According to a LinkedIn report, 82% of top performers say they always perform research prior to reaching out to prospects, compared to 49% of other sellers.

Cold calling and outreach emails are essential skills for BDRs to master if they want to bring new prospects into their pipeline. You can provide training and coaching via verbal and written role-plays to help reps practice these core skills. In fact, we found that learning to prepare cold email intros is the top use case for written role-plays by BDRs in the Mindtickle platform.

3. Qualifying leads

Nurturing or repeatedly contacting bad-fit leads is a waste of your reps’ time and energy. Furthermore, following up with a prospect they know isn’t interested is one of the top frustrations reps have with their jobs. And if a lead is a bad fit, they’re more likely to book time with your reps but never show up.

One way to cover this in sales training and revenue enablement is to share bite-size quizzes to test reps’ ability to qualify leads and their familiarity with your ICP. Then, if you identify knowledge gaps that may be affecting their lead qualification capabilities, you can follow up with AI-driven coaching.

4. Call planning

Your sellers need to know how best to prepare and plan for a call with a prospect at every stage of the sales cycle. For initial calls, sellers need to make a good first impression. They must build rapport with prospects and become trusted advisors for later calls.

Oracle found that 11% of prospects ignore sellers because the seller wasn’t properly prepared for their conversation. Call planning is essential for all sellers.

of callers ignore sellers because the seller wasn't prepared
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You can create training materials such as pre-call checklists or run practice calls for product demos, discovery calls, or closing calls. These will allow your sellers to appear professional, knowledgeable, and trustworthy to prospects.

5. Building relationships with customers

Relationship building is another essential skill because, even in B2B sales, you’re still dealing with another person. According to research from Forrester, trust is the most important factor contributing to whether or not a company will do business with you. So it’s essential that your reps get training and coaching to help them foster relationships and earn prospects’ trust.

Trust is the most important factor contributing to whether or not a company will do business with you.
Forrester Research

Use tools like Mindtickle’s Call AI to record and analyze calls with prospects. It looks at reps’ confidence, talk time, clarity, and sentiment to understand their behavior on calls. It then identifies areas to improve. You can use these insights as a starting point for your coaching sessions or share dedicated training exercises to help them further develop the necessary skills.

6. Identifying customer needs

Research tells us nearly nine in ten B2B buyers are more likely to purchase if the seller understands their goals. Yet, nearly 60% of these buyers say most sales reps don’t take the time to understand their needs and goals.
of buyers say reps don't understand their needs or goals
0 %

This is an immediate deal killer.

Sellers need to be able to identify customers’ pain points so they can show how your product will solve them. If they can identify customer challenges and needs, they can tailor the conversation to address those challenges and focus on the features and use cases that are most relevant to the customer.

You can listen back to call recordings or view call analyses, then score reps based on their ability to identify customer needs. If reps struggle with this, you can run training exercises such as practice calls or role-plays to give them more opportunities to develop their abilities in a low-pressure setting. Manager-led coaching helps provide personalized coaching to all your sellers, targeted to their individual needs. 

7. Presenting the value of your products

Sellers not understanding their product or service is another deal killer for many buyers. Your reps need to be able to provide effective demos that illustrate how your products will save buyers time, money, or effort. They need to be able to show the value of your product and not just run through a list of features.

You can provide different training formats for this:

  • Short quizzes to test product knowledge
  • Practice demos and virtual role-plays
  • Dedicated training sessions from your product team when you roll out new features

Product training will help your reps learn how to use your product and ensure they can accurately present its value to potential customers.

8. Competitor knowledge

Prospects will not just speak to your sales team but also compare different product options. A recent survey found that 57% of sales leaders feel competition has increased since last year.

of sales leaders feel competition has increased in the last year
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You need to be able to show how you measure up against your competitors. Familiarity with other products in your space is essential knowledge for sales reps, as not understanding competitors’ products and services may make buyers less likely to continue with a specific seller.

Train your reps on your competitors’ products by creating battle cards or in-depth instructor-led training sessions to review the key differences and where your product excels against the competition. Then, test reps’ knowledge with quizzes that review the training session’s material. Spaced reinforcement helps improve information retention, so your reps can speak confidently about your competitors months after their training session.

9. Managing objections

Our research found that 54% of sales calls contain “more negative sentiment than positive,” with negative sentiment “including anger, uncertainty, hesitancy, competitive mentions, objections, disappointment, and tentativeness.”

of sales calls contain more negative sentiment than positive
0 %

Managing objections is an important skill to master because no buyer will say “yes” right away. Your reps need to be able to confidently address concerns to reassure prospects that they’re making the right choice with your product.

Dedicated training will help reps improve their ability to handle the most common objections in the sales process. To practice this essential skill, you can have reps complete practice calls or virtual role-plays.

10. Closing deals

If an account executive can’t close a deal, they won’t last long in sales. Fortunately, research has identified some of the most important factors that consistently influence buyer behavior – and a rep’s ability to close deals:

  • Trust in the brand
  • Price
  • Return on investment
  • Trust in the salesperson
  • Salesperson’s industry knowledge

If you’ve already worked the nine previous topics into your sales training, you’ll be well on your way to addressing all of these, but you can also provide specific coaching to help your reps master conversations around pricing.

Improve rep performance by covering a wide range of sales training topics

Sellers face constant change, so the more frequent and varied training and coaching you can provide, the better equipped they are to adapt to different selling conditions, buyer needs, and market changes. Don’t limit sales training to just onboarding or a couple of topics during sales kickoffs. Instead, create a culture of continual learning and improvement to help your sellers excel.

Technology is a key component of any sales training strategy. With the right sales training software, you can deliver relevant sales training that empowers each seller to master the knowledge and skills they need for success.

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This post was originally published in May 2022 and was updated in September 2024. 

4 Steps to an Effective Sales Enablement Session

Kevin Atkinson on July 30, 2024

By now, organizations of all sizes and industries are embracing sales enablement. That’s not surprising; a solid sales enablement strategy coupled with the right technology can significantly impact sales performance.

But all too often, an organization launches a sales enablement initiative—and it falls flat. Perhaps sellers aren’t engaging with the sales enablement program. Or maybe they are, but they’re not applying what they’ve learned in the field.

What can sales enablement professionals do to ensure their strategies and programs are engaging and effective?

In this post, we’ll explore some key steps revenue enablement leaders must take to ensure their programs are set up for success.

#1. Lay the groundwork for success

Before you pull your reps off the floor for the next sales training exercise or activity, ensure alignment and support from sales leadership. It is important to proactively address natural skepticism about enablement initiatives and ensure sales leadership understands how you will help improve their team’s effectiveness.

Provide visibility and seek feedback early and often. Sales leaders can help identify potential objections that you may have missed. They can also help you articulate the WIIFM—what’s in it for me—to help you “sell the seller” and land the desired training outcomes.

Ask sales leadership to partner with you on holding their teams accountable for leveraging and practicing the new training in the field while measuring impact. Soon, your teams will look forward to your training, knowing how much value it brings.

#2. Ask and address key questions

Great outcomes start with a great understanding of what you’re looking to accomplish. Before you build your plays and training content, you must have a clear vision of the business goal and the outcomes you strive to impact.

This will also help you prove the ROI of your sales enablement efforts. To ensure your training and sales plays resonate, ask six foundational questions:

Examples: Increase win rate, grow pipeline, shorten deal cycle, customer retention, etc.

Examples: Sales, account management, customer success, etc.

Examples: Industry, company size, region, buyer persona, etc.

Examples: Product marketing, sales enablement, front-line sales manager

Examples: In the discovery phase, during customer implementation, etc.

Examples: Hit quota faster, increase ASP to close fewer deals, recognition from leadership, etc.

Strong answers to these questions will be essential in getting buy-in and feedback from your sales managers. To further win over managers, determine whether you can plug into an existing sales event rather than create a new one.

To motivate sellers and increase engagement during the training, assign pre-work and reading before the training begins. A blended framework that includes pre-work, self-paced content, virtual role-plays, and webinars creates an engaging training experience. 

interactive role-play

For example, having a sales leader record a video demonstrating a best-in-class pitch or demo is a great way to keep learners engaged.

Self-paced voice-over slideshows and pre-recorded videos that teach information and show what great looks like can help with pre-training engagement. Save the live training session for discussions and Q&A.

With clear goals, managers on your side, and an established training format, you’ll have laid the foundation for effective sales enablement.

#3. Plan for in-training engagement (and disengagement)

We’ve all been met with blank stares during our training sessions before. A primary reason for lack of engagement is your sellers not understanding what’s in it for them.

In their eyes, you may be taking an hour away that could have been spent generating more leads or making prospecting calls. It’s your job to “sell the sellers” and convince them that your training will help them drum up higher–quality leads faster.

Capture attention immediately by previewing your next-generation sales play. Gone are the days of traditional, one-size-fits-all sales playbooks. A dynamic sales environment demands a dynamic playbook. With advanced sales enablement technology, you can provide your sellers with plays that contain both content and guidance designed to prepare your team with what they need to know, say, show, and do in every unique selling scenario.

 

Make your session interactive and engaging. Ask questions, have sellers share their stories, or break into groups for activities to help connect the dots between the training and action. With the right play and training delivered in an interactive, audience-first way, your salespeople will begin to look forward to your sessions, knowing the knowledge provided will ultimately make them and the company more successful.

#4. Build a post-training plan

As impactful and inspiring as your training might have been, salespeople juggle dozens of daily tasks. Your training will quickly be forgotten unless it is reinforced and muscle memory is built in the field.

Promote the play or training materials via multiple channels such as email, your CRM, and your sales enablement platform, so it’s easily accessible where reps spend their time. To overcome the forgetting curve that naturally happens after training, it’s important to include spaced reinforcement of knowledge and training after the event to ensure reps have adopted product messages and have time to internalize that information.

Ongoing training will also play a critical role. You might provide courses, quizzes, sales coaching sessions, and more directly within your sales enablement platform to help your reps improve their skills.

To gauge your enablement effectiveness, you can measure sales enablement KPIs that indicate whether or not your training landed internally and helped reps take off externally with their customer conversations. Metrics, like sales play adoption, curriculum completion, and pitched content performance, can all indicate enablement success.

In addition, use technology to request feedback on what worked, what didn’t, and what could be improved moving forward. Showing that you heard and acted on feedback will make sellers more likely to show up, engage, and share.

Bring your sales enablement strategy to life with Mindtickle

Developing a sales enablement strategy doesn’t guarantee success. Instead, you need to take certain steps to ensure you can bring your strategy to life – and make a real impact on sales performance.

The right sales enablement technology is foundational to success. More and more revenue organizations are trading their learning management systems (LMS) and other point solutions for an integrated revenue enablement platform like Mindtickle.

With Mindtickle, you can build and deliver tailored sales enablement programs that ensure each seller has what it takes to be successful in the field. In addition, Mindtickle makes it easy to holistically measure the impact of sales enablement so you can prove ROI and course correct as needed.

Sales Enablement in Mindtickle

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This post was originally published in July 2020 and was updated in July 2024. 

How Top Revenue Enablement Leaders Prove ROI

Kevin Atkinson on July 26, 2024

Ongoing measurement is an important step in any revenue enablement program. When you track the right revenue enablement KPIs, you gain insight into how (and whether) your revenue enablement program is impacting sales performance and business outcomes.

When you can prove revenue enablement impact, you’re better positioned to retain your existing revenue enablement resources and potentially secure additional investments.

While proving the value of revenue enablement investments is important, it’s not always easy. Recently, we asked revenue enablement leaders from some of the most successful organizations how they prove ROI.

In this post, we’ll explore why companies invest in revenue enablement and how top organizations, including PayPal, Paytronix, and Webflow, prove enablement’s value.

Why businesses are investing in revenue enablement programs

It was once rare for an organization to have a dedicated revenue or sales enablement team. Today, it’s become the norm. Recent research found 84% of organizations invest in a revenue enablement team.

of orgs invest in a revenue enablement team
0 %

Revenue enablement ensures all revenue team members – including sales, marketing, and customer success – have the tools, resources, and information they need to deliver great experiences throughout the customer’s journey. When it’s done well, revenue enablement can have a big impact on factors including:

  • Sales productivity
  • Win rates
  • Quota attainment
  • Sales cycle length
  • Customer retention
  • Customer lifetime value

However, revenue enablement leaders must prove that their efforts are actually making a difference in order to maintain (or even increase) investments.

How top organizations prove revenue enablement ROI
Revenue enablement can have a big impact on business outcomes. But it can take time to prove revenue enablement impact.

Recently, Mindtickle asked enablement leaders from some of the world’s top organizations to share advice on proving revenue enablement ROI based on their real-life experiences.

One piece of advice we heard repeatedly is that it’s important to become data-obsessed.

“Begin by aligning your efforts with the metrics that truly matter to your stakeholders,” said Crystal Nikosey, VP, of Sales Transformormation at The Sales Collective. “Take a strategic approach, tracing back from these metrics through competencies and behaviors until you align them to your enablement programs. By being prescriptive in what you deliver, you establish a consistent guiding beacon to shape and assess your initiatives.

"Take a strategic approach, tracing back from these metrics through competencies and behaviors until you align them to your enablement programs."
Crystal Nikosey
VP, of Sales Transformormation at The Sales Collective

Mercy Bell, Revenue Enablement at Webflow, advised enablement professionals to ensure their activities are tightly aligned with revenue-driving activities. “Pinpoint critical metrics like sales conversion rates and deal velocity, directly impacted by enablement,” she said. “Craft initiatives that visibly influence these metrics. Implement robust tracking systems to gauge effectiveness — leverage data analytics to furnish concrete evidence of enablement’s revenue impact. Regularly communicate progress with clear benchmarks. By showcasing how enablement directly fuels revenue growth, you’ll clarify the value to leadership and get the headcount you need.”

"Pinpoint critical metrics like sales conversion rates and deal velocity, directly impacted by enablement."
Mercy Bell
Revenue Enablement, Webflow

Adam Whiddon, Sales Enablement Trainer at Paytronix, emphasized the importance of ongoing collaboration and communication with organizational leaders. “Double down on aligning with the leaders and teams you support and ask for honest, balanced feedback,” he said. “While in that process, dig deeper into the various metrics that your initiatives and programs are trying to support or improve, including your SVP’s/CROs top three metrics they’re tracking for the year, and correlate how you’re initiatives and training programs are impacting it, or if there is a need to adjust course.”

"Dig deeper into the various metrics that your initiatives and programs are trying to support or improve, including your SVP's/CROs top three metrics they're tracking for the year, and correlate how your initiatives and training programs are impacting it, or if there is a need to adjust course.”
Adam Whiddon
Sales Enablement Trainer, Paytronix

Aneet Narang, Head of Global Revenue Enablement at Paypal, reminded enablement professionals that a customer-focused mindset is essential. “One piece of advice for those struggling to prove ROI is to prioritize fostering a customer-centric mindset, particularly by focusing on sales managers and implementing data-driven decision-making processes,” she said. “By emphasizing the importance of delivering value to customers and leveraging data to drive strategic decisions, organizations can better demonstrate the impact of their initiatives on the bottom line.”

"Prioritize fostering a customer-centric mindset, particularly by focusing on sales managers and implementing data-driven decision-making processes."
Aneet Nurang
Head of Global Revenue Enablement, Paypal

The challenges of proving the revenue enablement ROI

Proving the impact of your sales enablement program is extremely important. But for many organizations, it can be a major challenge.

Some common challenges include:

Not knowing what metrics to track

There are so many different revenue enablement metrics you can track. It can take time to identify the right ones to prove impact.

Focusing on the wrong metrics

All too often, revenue enablement organizations focus on vanity metrics. For example, they can quickly find out how many times a piece of content has been viewed by sales reps or how many sellers completed a recent training module.

While these metrics are important, they don’t convey these initiatives’ impact on business outcomes.

Not having the right revenue enablement tools in place

You may be using multiple disparate tools for different areas of business enablement, and each provides its own sales enablement analytics. But when using multiple point solutions, it’s difficult – if not impossible – to holistically measure the impact of revenue enablement.

Today, many revenue operations teams are streamlining the tech stack by investing in an integrated revenue enablement platform. That way, you can access all the revenue enablement data you need – all from a single platform.

Ready to get more insights from the revenue enablement experts?

Proving revenue enablement impact is key to maintaining your current resources – and securing additional resources. But it isn’t always easy.

Showing Sales Enablement Impact

Ready to access more tactical advice on how to prove revenue enablement ROI? Download the entire eBook. 

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10 Common Sales Enablement Challenges (and How You Can Overcome Them)

Kevin Atkinson on July 24, 2024

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

of B2B buyers think reps are helpful during the buying journey
0 %

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.

of sellers are overwhelmed by sales tools they're expected to use
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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.

enablement-certification-white

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

of learning within a week
0 %

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

more coaching than average
0 x

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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7 Reasons Why Your Quota Attainment and Sales Productivity is Slipping

Kevin Atkinson on July 22, 2024

In an ideal world, each of your sales reps would be as productive as possible and crush quota every quarter. But more often than not, that’s not the case.

A survey fielded last year found that the majority – 72% – of sellers didn’t expect to hit their quotas for the year. What gives?

of sellers don't expect to hit their quotas
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While quota attainment and sales productivity might slip for any number of reasons, there are some that are more common than others. Read on to explore seven of the top reasons your quota attainment and sales productivity are slipping – and what you can do to turn things around.

  1. Reason #1: You’re only focused on onboarding
  2. Reason #2: Your reps can’t find the content they need — or they don’t even know it exists
  3. Reason #4: You’re taking an ad hoc approach to sales coaching
  4. Reason #5: You’re using the wrong metrics to measure revenue enablement success (or not measuring at all)
  5. Reason #6: Your training program is all over the place
  6. Reason #7: You’re using point solutions that focus on a single piece of the enablement puzzle

What is a sales quota and why is it important?

A sales quota is the sales performance target sellers must achieve during a certain time period, usually a quarter.

When a seller achieves their quota, they’ll also receive their incentive target pay. Sales quotas are set by sales leaders and are an incentive for sellers to perform. Sales enablement teams work closely with sales leadership to monitor quota attainment to ensure enablement efforts are focused on helping every seller meet and beat their quota each quarter.

Reason #1: You’re only focused on onboarding

Often, sales organizations invest a lot of time and resources into developing a great onboarding program. And that’s certainly not a bad thing. A solid onboarding program can serve as a great foundation for sellers’ success, familiarizing them with the company, its products, goals, and how sellers will play a role in achieving those goals. What’s more, great onboarding is proven to get you closer to your revenue goals.

According to the 2024 State of Revenue Productivity Report, sellers at winning organizations take an onboarding program on average 21-23 days to complete, a significant decrease from the prior year.

Sellers take an average of

days to complete onboarding
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But the thing is, new reps are bombarded with information during onboarding — and unlikely to retain it all. In fact, research from Ardent Learning shows that the most significant loss of knowledge happens within the first day and within three months, most people have forgotten between 84% and 90% of the information they learned during training.

Instead, organizations must also incorporate continuous learning (what we refer to as sales everboarding) if they expect reps to absorb and retain information — and then apply that information in the field. Our research with Heinz Marketing found that 78.6% of companies that have an effective training program meet 100% of their selling quota. And 90% who hit 75% or more of their quota participate in sales training on a monthly basis. If you’re not there already, now’s the time to transition from onboarding to sales everboarding.

of companies with effective training meet 100% of quota
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Reason #2: Your reps can’t find the content they need — or they don’t even know it exists

We’ve all heard the adage that content is king. For revenue organizations, this sentiment is certainly true. Sales content—both internal and external—plays a key role in selling success.

Most organizations understand the importance of content and devote time to creating plenty of it. This normally includes internal content (such as a just-in-time training piece or a recording of a top seller delivering their sales pitch) and external content (such as pitch decks and sell sheets).

The goal of content is to ensure sellers are always ready and have what they need to move deals forward. But even the greatest content is completely useless if a rep doesn’t know where to find it or that it even exists. And this happens… a lot. Our 2024 State of Sales Readiness Report found that just 10% of content generates 50% of all engagement.

The most successful revenue organizations house all internal and external content in a single, easily searchable platform. That way, reps have easy access to the content they need, when they need it, so that they can spend less time hunting for content (or — gasp! — creating their own) and more time moving deals forward and hitting revenue targets.

Reason #3: Your reps don’t know why deals go south

A rep shares the news that they’ve lost a deal they thought was in the bag. You try to dig for more information, but the rep can’t explain why the deal was lost. And that makes it pretty difficult (if not impossible) to coach that rep toward better outcomes in the future.

Of course, frontline managers are busy. They don’t have the time to attend every rep call to understand what’s going right or wrong.

But the good news is that conversation intelligence solutions, such as Mindtickle’s Call AI, allow managers to understand what’s really happening in the field. With conversation intelligence, sales managers can identify competency and knowledge gaps that might be standing in the way of a seller closing more deals — and then work to deliver coaching that’ll diminish those gaps and empower the rep to close more deals.

Reason #4: You’re taking an ad hoc approach to sales coaching

Sales coaching — when it’s done well — can have a tremendous impact on rep productivity and quota attainment. Research tells us eight out of 10 teams with effective coaching practices hit over 75% of sales quotas.

But sales coaching is often not done well. There’s often no top-down agreement on coaching goals and methods. Instead, frontline managers are left to their own devices to coach as they see fit. This means many of them take an ad hoc approach that involves purely tactical efforts like deal reviews, and they don’t have the time, sales coaching tools, or training needed for effective coaching.

Ad hoc coaching isn’t effective. In fact, it’s downright counterproductive. Research from CSO Insights shows that 75% of sales organizations waste resources due to random and informal coaching approaches.

Instead, an organization must build a culture of coaching if it expects to see improvements in quota attainment and productivity. This has to start from the top, with the chief revenue officer.

But how?

Start by defining what you hope to achieve by building a coaching culture. Then, there must be alignment on a standard coaching approach that will help you achieve those goals.

In addition, for coaching to be effective, it must be individualized for each rep. Organizations should first define their ideal rep profile (IRP).

Ideal rep profile competencies

This is the set of skills and competencies a given rep must have to succeed at the organization. With the IRP in place, it’s easier for managers to identify skill gaps — and then provide personalized sales coaching to address those gaps.

Reason #5: You’re using the wrong metrics to measure enablement (or not measuring at all)

The same CSO Insights report mentioned earlier found that a mere 24% of enablement teams are able to measure the ROI of their programs. That’s a big problem. Without consistent measurement, you can’t understand how your sales enablement efforts impact sales performance — and how to optimize programs for better results.

A lot of organizations say they measure impact. But often this involves tracking metrics like adoption and engagement. Sure, usage data matters — but it only tells a small part of the story. A rep might consume all the training assigned to them, yet continue to miss quota every quarter.

Instead, organizations must regularly track a wide range of data on sales performance to understand how their programs are impacting productivity and quota attainment. Of course, these metrics vary from organization to organization, but all should track some core metrics. For example, organizations can (and should) track each individual’s performance against the company’s ideal rep profile. They should also leverage data from sales conversations to measure how training is (or isn’t) applied in the field.

The right technology equips sales leaders with the right data at the right time — presented in a way that’s easy to consume and take action on.

Reason #6: Your training program is all over the place

With everything else on your plate, focusing on building out ongoing sales training programs sometimes falls to the wayside. However, there’s a case to be made for making sales training programs a priority project in the year ahead. Our research with Heinz Marketing found that 78.6% of companies with an effective program meet 100% of their selling quota. Outside of that, organizations have seen improved seller engagement and retention. To build a sales training program that works, make sure you’re:

  • Going beyond onboarding
  • Defining what good looks like
  • Making it personal
  • Reinforcing it
  • Mixing up the format
  • Measuring the impact

Reason #7: You’re using point solutions that focus on a single piece of the revenue enablement puzzle

The revenue technology landscape is complicated. Hundreds of vendors promise their solutions will improve sales productivity and quota attainment.

Some of these vendors may even bill their wares as revenue productivity or revenue enablement solutions. But in reality, these offerings only address a single component of true revenue enablement, such as training or content. On their own, they’re not enough to improve quota attainment and productivity. And investing in multiple solutions is expensive and complicated.

They often don’t play well together and require your reps to learn and use several technologies.

To truly increase quota attainment and sales productivity (and achieve revenue enablement success), sales leaders must be able to:

  • Define excellence
  • Build the knowledge their reps need to close deals
  • Equip sellers with content aligned to the sales process
  • Analyze what’s happening in the field
  • Optimize reps’ behaviors to improve outcomes

While you may have invested in products that address one of these, the most successful sales teams are those that use a solution that addresses them all — within a single revenue enablement platform.

Crush quota every quarter with Mindtickle

For many organizations, missed sales quotas have become the norm. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

Now’s the time to streamline your tech stack by trading point solutions for an integrated revenue enablement platform like Mindtickle.

With Mindtickle, sellers can access the training, coaching, tools, and content they need to learn, practice, and perfect their skills – all within a single, integrated revenue enablement platform. Plus, sales and enablement leaders can measure the impact of their efforts and optimize accordingly.

Crush quota every quarter

See how Mindtickle gets your reps more productive faster and measures the success of your enablement efforts. 

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This post was originally published in January 2022, and was updated in January 2023, October 2023, and July 2024. 

What is Sales Enablement?

Kevin Atkinson on July 9, 2024

Sales enablement is the process of providing the sales organization with the information, content, and tools that help sellers sell more effectively. The foundation of sales enablement is to provide sellers with what they need to successfully engage the buyer throughout the buying process.

The concept of sales enablement originated in 2013 and caught on quickly when companies realized the impact it can have on business outcomes. Consider the following from research from Heinz Marketing and Mindtickle:

78%

of companies with effective sales training programs meet 100% of their quotas

Sales enablement is no longer a nice-to-have; it’s a must-have. This guide will explore everything you need to know about sales enablement, including:

  1. The benefits of sales enablement
  2. How to measure sales enablement
  3. How sales enablement drives revenue
  4. Who owns sales enablement
  5. How are sales enablement and revenue enablement related?
  6. What’s the difference between sales enablement and sales productivity?

The benefits of sales enablement

Sales and marketing have traditionally been siloed, with little interaction or collaboration between the two departments. Considering that companies are better at closing deals when their sales and marketing departments are aligned, any chasm between them poses a significant problem.

Although organizations have known about this siloing for many years, bridging the gap has always been easier said than done. Until now.

Sales enablement is the solution for marketing-sales alignment. It paves the way to wider communication channels and frequent collaboration. Adopting an advanced data-driven sales enablement platform and following some best practices makes alignment possible at your organization.

Here are some of the most prominent benefits of sales enablement.

Improved communication and teamwork

Many organizations face challenges communicating between sales and marketing teams. Sales enablement helps address this challenge by providing a better system for managing sales content. This content management system (CMS) is a centralized database that houses sales resources for all departments and promotes marketing and sales collaboration while creating sales content.

Further, when both departments share the same sales enablement tools, CRM data, and business processes, marketing and sales teams can operate with combined insights into the target market and the sales funnel. The two teams collaborate to better define buyer personas and improve lead-scoring processes.

Optimized content

With open collaboration, content can be fine-tuned using the sales team’s knowledge of buyers and marketing’s knowledge of leads. This highly optimized content moves prospects through the buyer journey faster.

Marketing and sales can also work together to create customizable content that reps can tailor to match the needs of any prospect. The result is highly relevant content created for any circumstance “on the fly.”

Also, with both departments sharing the same content management system, marketing can purge outdated versions of a piece of content to make sure a sales rep doesn’t accidentally present it to a buyer. Reps and marketers can also make small adjustments to keep the content up to date for continued use.

Marketing and sales transparency

Sales enablement provides visibility into the effectiveness of sales and marketing processes. Transparency ensures that both marketing and sales can see which tactics and content are working and which ones aren’t. Both departments can, therefore, pinpoint inefficiencies and correct them quickly.

For example, with the right sales enablement technology, marketing and sales can access a dashboard that reveals how buyers engage with sales materials. Both departments can see which materials are being ignored and which content brings prospects closer to buying decisions.

Increased revenue

Bottom-line performance is obviously the most important benefit of sales enablement. With optimized and customizable content, better customer insight, and full visibility into sales processes, reps close more deals and generate more revenue.

How sales enablement technology transforms the selling process

Sales enablement technology does more than create marketing-sales alignment and boost content effectiveness. It enhances the entire sales process by improving efficiency, providing detailed analytics on sales activities, and improving training and development processes.

Enhanced onboarding

Efficient, simplified onboarding leads to faster quota attainment. The most advanced sales enablement technology helps sales trainers identify their reps’ knowledge gaps and adjust training accordingly. Trainers can automatically assign learning paths based on their sales reps’ roles and monitor their progress with milestones and certifications.

Continuous growth and skill development

Training is only effective when ongoing—in fact, 80% of what is learned in sales training is forgotten within 3 months. You can develop a more structured and interactive approach to ongoing training with the right sales enablement tool. Sales enablement tools provide virtual role-playing exercises, simulated selling scenarios, and personalized feedback for growth and improvement to help sales reps continually sharpen their skills.

  • Micro-learning capabilities: Micro-learning presents sales training information in short, engaging training modules to promote knowledge retention. Highly specific learning objectives, interactive gamification elements, and spaced reinforcements help reps fill their knowledge gaps right from their computers or smartphones.
  • Coaching: With sales enablement technology, coaching can be designed around the unique needs of each sales rep. Sales coaches can create personalized learning paths based on competency maps. Coaches can also assign the exact micro-learning modules a rep needs to reinforce specific concepts.
  • Analytics: Sales enablement gives you visibility into your reps’ understanding of their training. Analytics dashboards help sales coaches track, measure, and improve their teams’ capabilities.

Getting started with sales enablement

Wondering where to begin your sales enablement journey?

Many companies worldwide turn to Mindtickle for marketing-sales alignment and a more competitive salesforce. With innovative training capabilities, advanced micro-learning, analytics, and the ability to integrate a wide range of sales tools, Mindtickle offers a 360-degree solution for sales organizations.

Who is responsible for sales enablement

Ownership of sales enablement varies by organization. According to CSO Insights, just under half (49.2%) of sales enablement teams report to sales leadership, and just over one in five (22.6%) report to another C-level function, such as the Chief Executive Officer, Chief Operating Officer, or Chief Growth Officer, among others.

According to CSO Insights,

of enablement reports to sales
0 %
of enablement reports to the C-Suite
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The remaining sales enablement teams report to sales operations, marketing, customer, experience, or another team.

Sometimes, sales enablement teams work in silos without additional engagement or external guidance. However, the most successful programs are those that include cross-functional collaboration across key teams including:

  • Sales leadership
  • Sales or revenue operations
  • Marketing
  • Dedicated sales enablement team
  • Customer success

Cross-functional collaboration ensures each area of the organization is in agreement and working toward the same goals.

How to measure sales enablement

Continuous measurement is essential to determining the success of sales enablement – and pinpointing opportunities for improvement. Yet, per CSO Insights, less than a quarter of organizations consistently measure the impact of their sales enablement efforts with productivity metrics, milestones, or leading and lagging indicators.

Of course, measuring revenue and number of units sold is important. However, measuring sales enablement also involves correlating sales activities with tangible business outcomes to determine what works and what doesn’t.

There are many many metrics to track to gauge the impact of sales enablement initiatives. Here are 13 of the most common.

 

Ways to measure What to measure
Lead-to-opportunity conversion rate % of leads that are converted to opportunities
Win rate % of opportunities that end up as signed deals
Competitive win rate measures the rate of closed deals where prospects are also considering a competitor
Average deal size average amount a customer spends on your product or service
Quota attainment measure of how your reps are meeting their quotas
Adherence to sales process tracks how well your reps follow established sales processes
Ramp-up time measure of how quickly it takes a new rep to hit full productivity
Time-to-quota amount of time it takes new reps to meet their quota for the first time
Seller turnover rate measures how often reps voluntarily leave the company
Rep NPS measures rep satisfaction with your company
Knowledge retention measures post-training assessments, role-plays, and listening to conversations between reps and customers
Content use and adoption tracks how both sellers and buyers use content
Calls to action tracks how often a prospect or customer takes action on content

1. Lead-to-opportunity conversion rate

As the name suggests, this metric tracks the percentage of leads that are converted to opportunities. This metric is calculated by dividing the number of opportunities by the total number of leads.

A high lead-to-opportunity conversion rate indicates sellers have the skills and knowledge to convince buyers to learn more and consider purchasing.

2. Win rate

The win rate is the percentage of opportunities that end up as signed deals. Win rate is calculated by dividing the number of closed won deals by the total number of opportunities.

A high win rate indicates sellers have what it takes to carry opportunities across the finish line.

3. Competitive win rate

Competitive win rate specifically measures the rate of closed deals where prospects are also considering one of your competitors. The competitive win rate is calculated by dividing the total number of wins over a competitor by the total number of opportunities who considered a competitor.

Competitive win rate can be more challenging to track than win rate. That’s because accurate calculation depends on whether or not prospects inform you that they’re considering a competitor.

4. Average deal size

This metric is the average amount a customer spends on your product or service. It’s calculated by dividing the total amount of money from all customer orders in a specific time frame by the number of deals in that same time frame.

5. Quota attainment

Quota attainment is a measure of how your sales reps are (or aren’t) achieving their goals during each sales cycle. To calculate the quota for a seller, divide their sales during a set time period by their quota for the same period.

If a seller consistently misses quota, additional training and coaching may be available.

6. Adherence to sales process

This metric tracks how well your sales reps follow your established sales process. Establishing a standard way for sellers to follow and document the sales process is important for tracking this metric.

If a seller isn’t adhering to the sales process and isn’t meeting quota, additional training or coaching may be needed.

7. Ramp-up time

Ramp-up time, also called time to productivity, measures how quickly it takes a new sales rep to reach full productivity. To calculate ramp-up time, divide the total amount of time to productivity for all reps who ramped up in a given quarter by the number of reps.

It’s important to determine how your organization defines productivity. For example, an organization might define it as reaching a certain percentage of quota or making a certain number of daily calls.

8. Time to quota

This is how long it takes new reps to meet their quota for the first time. It’s measured by adding the number of sales cycles it takes each new rep to meet their quota and dividing that sum by the number of reps being measured.

9. Seller turnover rate

Turnover rate measures how often sales reps voluntarily leave the company. It’s calculated by dividing the number of reps voluntarily leaving the company within a certain period by the total number of reps.

A high rep turnover rate suggests a problem. One way to determine the cause is to ask reps for feedback about the effectiveness of the sales enablement program.

10. Rep net promoter score

This measures your reps’ satisfaction with your company. Employees are typically asked to complete a survey with questions about their experience. A high net promoter score indicates an employee is satisfied and likely to stay with the company. A low net promoter score indicates the employee is dissatisfied and unlikely to recommend the company to others. 

You can calculate NPS by subtracting the number of detractors from the number of promoters, dividing it by the total number of respondents, and multiplying it by 100. 

11. Knowledge retention

Reps must learn certain things to be successful. But more importantly, they must retain this knowledge to apply it in the field. Organizations can measure knowledge retention in a number of ways, including post-training assessments, role-plays, and listening to conversations between sales reps and customers.

12. Content use and adoption

Most sales enablements invest time and resources to create internal and external content. Yet, 65% of B2B content is never used.

It’s important to track how both sellers and buyers are using this content – if they’re using it at all. Key content-related metrics include number of views, time spent on a piece, and how often a piece of content is opened, used, or shared. These insights can help you refine your content strategy.

13. Calls-to-action

This metric tracks how often a prospective customer takes action on content, which might include ads, blogs, or emails. The most effective content generates the highest number of clicks.

How sales enablement drives revenue

Today, a mere 43% of sellers meet their quotas. Sales enablement, when done right, can have a dramatic impact on a seller’s ability to close deals – and an organization’s ability to drive revenue. Here are some of the key reasons why.

1. Sales enablement provides sellers with a single source of truth

Sellers need on-demand access to information to move deals forward. For example, sellers often leverage:

  • Talk tracks
  • Training modules
  • Customer content

The information a seller needs is often housed in different locations, such as the CRM, multiple drives, and a company wiki. In those circumstances, it’s challenging for sellers to find what they need when they need it.

However, a solid sales enablement program provides sellers with one single knowledge base. That way, they can always access the knowledge they need whenever needed. That means they can more easily move deals through the funnel – and across the finish line.

2. Sales enablement provides ongoing training

Sales training is a key component of sales enablement. Of course, it all starts with sales onboarding. But that’s not enough.

In the world of sales, change is inevitable. New products are released, and existing products are updated. New tools are introduced. New competitors enter the market. Sales enablement teams provide sellers with the ongoing training to build their skills and knowledge to overcome challenges and close more deals.

3. Sales enablement can help create a culture of coaching

Continuous coaching is essential to sales success. Research tells us that 8 out of 10 teams with effective coaching practices hit greater than 75% of their sales quotas.

A successful sales enablement strategy includes a strong coaching component. Deal coaching is the most common type of coaching. However, sales managers must also incorporate skill coaching to drive behavior change.

4. Sales enablement can improve sales and marketing collaboration

Oftentimes, marketing and sales teams work in silos, with each focused on different goals. This negatively affects overall productivity. However, sales enablement can remove these silos and encourage better collaboration between the two teams. When sales and marketing are working toward the same goals, companies can attract and close leads better.

5. Sales enablement can speed up onboarding

Onboarding is an important way to orient new sellers and help them understand the company, its goals, and their role. Sales enablement can help accelerate onboarding – without sacrificing quality.

Per our 2023 State of Revenue Enablement Report, sellers at winning organizations take just 21-22 days to complete the onboarding program. That’s significantly less than the industry average. With streamlined onboarding time, reps can achieve their revenue targets more quickly.

6. Sales enablement can improve rep retention

Sales enablement can increase seller engagement – which can in turn increase satisfaction. Engaged, satisfied reps are more likely to stick around and be productive.

7. Sales enablement leads to informed, engaged buyers

Sales enablement helps ensure reps are always prepared for any interaction with a potential buyer. When reps have the knowledge and content they need to keep buyers informed and engaged, those buyers are more likely to end up as customers.

Who ownssales enablement?
Ownership of sales enablement varies by organization. But typically, sales enablement is owned by a dedicated sales enablement team. As mentioned earlier, most organizations now invest in a sales enablement team.

The size of the sales enablement team varies and may include functions like:

  • Sales enablement director
  • Sales enablement manager
  • Sales enablement specialist

Most commonly, the sales enablement team reports to the chief revenue officer or another revenue leader.

Sometimes, sales enablement teams work in silos without additional engagement or external guidance. However, the most successful sales enablement programs are those that include cross-functional collaboration across key teams, including:

  • Sales leadership
  • Sales or revenue operations
  • Marketing
  • Dedicated sales enablement team
  • Customer success

Cross-functional collaboration ensures each area of the organization is aligned on goals and the role they play in achieving those goals.

How are sales enablement and revenue enablement related?

Sales enablement and revenue enablement are closely intertwined and interdependent concepts, with several key connections:

  • Sales enablement equips the sales team with tools, resources, and support to enhance their selling effectiveness.
  • Revenue enablement takes a broader perspective, aligning departments such as marketing, customer success, and operations to optimize revenue generation.
  • Sales enablement is a critical component of revenue enablement, directly impacting sales productivity and contributing to revenue outcomes.
  • Both enablement strategies foster collaboration, alignment, and data-driven decision-making.
  • Sales enablement focuses on equipping sales reps with the right content, training, and technology to engage buyers and close deals successfully.
  • Revenue enablement encompasses various functions and aims to maximize revenue growth, enhance customer experiences, and drive overall business performance.

Together, sales enablement and revenue enablement create a cohesive and efficient revenue generation ecosystem.

What is the difference between sales enablement and sales productivity?

Sales productivity and sales enablement are two distinct concepts that play crucial roles in a sales team’s success. Sales productivity focuses on maximizing the efficiency and effectiveness of individual sales representatives. It involves providing them with the tools, resources, and training necessary to close deals and achieve their targets.

On the other hand, sales enablement takes a broader approach, aiming to empower the entire sales organization. It focuses on aligning processes, strategies, and technologies to optimize the sales ecosystem. Sales enablement ensures that the sales team has the right knowledge, content, and support to engage buyers effectively throughout their journey.

Ultimately, sales productivity enhances individual performance, while sales enablement drives overall sales effectiveness and revenue growth.

Drive sales enablement success with Mindtickle

A growing number of organizations are investing in sales enablement teams and programs. That’s not surprising, as sales enablement is proven to impact outcomes. But only when it’s done well.

The right sales enablement technology is crucial to any sales enablement program.

Today, some organizations continue to use point solutions that address a specific sales enablement component. However, the most successful organizations are choosing to streamline their sales enablement tech stacks by investing in an integrated revenue productivity platform like Mindtickle.

Mindtickle incorporates all the key components of a holistic sales enablement program – including sales training, content, coaching, digital sales rooms, and AI role plays – all in one platform. That means sellers have a single source of truth for everything they need to master key skills and behaviors and close more deals faster.

Sales enablement teams depend on Mindtickle to quickly build and deploy personalized, effective enablement programs that drive business results. Mindtickle also includes robust analytics to help revenue leaders understand how sales enablement impacts the metrics that matter most. Teams can use these insights to optimize their programs and drive greater impact.

Sales Enablement in Mindtickle

Let's talk about your sales enablement strategy and how Mindtickle's platform preps reps to hit quota every quarter. 

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This post was originally published in January 2020 and updated in September 2022 and again in July 2024. 

The Metrics for Measuring Your Sales Enablement Program

Kevin Atkinson on June 27, 2024

Ongoing measurement is a key component of a winning revenue enablement program. Without consistent measurement, it’s impossible to know what’s working and where there are opportunities to optimize your revenue enablement initiatives.

These days, many organizations claim to measure the impact of their revenue enablement efforts. But all too often, revenue enablement measurement is limited to views and attendance. For example, a revenue enablement team can likely tell you exactly how many times a case study has been viewed internally and how many sellers attended a recent training.

While these sales enablement metrics are important to measure, they don’t actually provide any insight into performance. In other words, they’re not telling you how (or whether) your sales enablement initiatives are actually impacting sales productivity and sales performance.

In this post, we’ll explore why tracking views and attendees isn’t enough – and what sales enablement metrics you need to start tracking to measure the true impact of your sales enablement program.

Views or attendees are vanity metrics for sales enablement programs

Just because reps are looking at your content doesn’t mean they’re successfully using it in their sales conversations or to improve their knowledge, skills, or performance. But many sales enablement teams still use the number of content views or attendees to their training sessions as a primary measure of success. According to the Association for Talent Development, “Most enablement programs have focused on leading indicators such as butts in seats or content consumed.”

This approach isn’t surprising, as content views and downloads are easy to track and communicate.

For example, if you’ve already had 200 views on the new case study you published this morning, that feels positive. You can interpret those 200 views as an indicator that the piece provides value to your sales team. However, all those views mean is that someone opened that case study. They might’ve closed it right away or skimmed through it without taking in the details.

Gartner says, “The best sales enablement programs track and enforce whether resources are being used across the sales organization.”

"The best sales enablement programs track and enforce whether resources are being used across the sales organization."
- Gartner

If you’re using content views as the primary measure of success for your sales enablement program, you’re missing out on valuable insights. You’re correlating content views with engagement — assuming that reps are using that content or learning from it and that the content has a meaningful impact on your reps’ skills and knowledge.

6 metrics that measure the real impact of sales enablement

Forward-thinking sales enablement teams understand that the true measure of sales enablement is how it affects your sales reps’ performance and drives revenue. Instead of looking at asset views, sales enablement leaders can track key sales metrics to see how asset usage impacts rep performance. Here are some vital sales metrics that will help you understand your sales enablement program’s impact on your team:

1. Content adoption

Content adoption looks at how often your salespeople use your sales enablement content in interactions with prospects to help move deals forward. You can measure content adoption in three different ways:

  • The number of times each content asset has been used in the sales process (such as shared in an automated nurture campaign or sent in a personalized follow-up to a prospect.
  • The percentage of your sellers who have used each content asset. 
  • The number of times each content asset has been shared in closed/won deals. 

Whichever of these methods you choose, you’ll be tracking how different pieces of content your sales team uses rather than assuming that views mean engagement.

Content adoption is a useful metric because you can see how often sellers use different types of sales enablement content. Content that makes it easier to engage with prospects (and, in the long run, close more deals) will be used frequently by your sellers. But content that doesn’t engage or resonate with prospects will quickly be ignored by your sales team in favor of higher-impact content.

Tracking content adoption helps you understand:

  • Whether your sales enablement content is a helpful resource for your sellers.
  • Which content formats (such as sales scripts, product sheets, battlecards, or email templates) are used most. 
  • Which product features or common pain points resonate most with potential customers and lead to closed deals. 

You can use these insights to inform your sales enablement content strategy. Your team can focus on creating more assets that positively impact the customer journey and get used frequently by your sales team.

2. Sales cycle length

Your sales cycle length measures how long (on average) your team takes to close a deal. Your sales team does a lot of work to nurture a lead into a customer, from product demos to high-value calls with C-level decision-makers. The more steps in your sales process, the longer your sales cycle will likely be.

On a more granular level, you can look at interactions at every step of the sales cycle to understand how sales enablement activities might impact a deal’s progress (or lack thereof.)

Overall, you should see your sales cycle get shorter as reps are better equipped with content and coaching to nurture leads and are enabled with the skills and knowledge they need to move deals forward.

But, as well as looking at the length of your sales cycle as a whole, you could measure:

  • The average length of time for prospects to move from lead to opportunity. 
  • The average length of time for prospects to move from opportunity to close. 

Then, look at the content used to engage and nurture prospects. Do some deals progress quicker than others? If so, it’s a good indicator that you’re producing content aligned to each stage of the sales process. As a result, your sellers have the knowledge and resources they need to sell prospects on the value of your products — and the content for prospects to convince the decision-makers in their organization.

3. Lead-to-opportunity conversion rate

The lead-to-opportunity conversion rate tracks the percentage of qualified leads that your sales reps judge as a good fit and have a high likelihood of closing. While the definition of an opportunity varies between companies, it generally refers to a prospect demonstrating a genuine interest in your product. Often, they have committed to initial discovery calls with your reps — possibly even an initial product demo or free trial.

This conversion rate is a good way to measure the impact of your sales enablement program. Your lead-to-opportunity conversion rate may improve when:

  • You produce new sales enablement content because you provide new tools for reps to use in the sales nurture process. 
  • Your sellers complete sales enablement training because they’re building skills and knowledge to sell more effectively. 
  • You reorganize your sales enablement content library to make it easier for reps to find the right content and materials they need at every stage of thes sales process. 

You should track which pieces of content your reps use in deals that convert from lead to opportunity. Doing so will help you understand what resonates with prospects, enabling you to create more impactful content to enable your sellers even better.

4. Quota attainment

Quota attainment is the percentage of sales reps who achieve their sales goals. This metric provides insight into whether sales reps are properly enabled to engage customers and close deals.

In addition to looking at quota attainment as a whole, you can also zero in further to look for trends based on factors such as:

  • Geography
  • Industry
  • Sales rep tenure

For example, you may find that quota attainment for reps who work with prospects in a specific industry is much lower than average. Here, there may be opportunities to deliver targeted content that sellers can use to engage buyers in this industry.

5. Call scores

A sales rep might attend every training and complete every assigned enablement activity with flying colors. But that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re putting their learning into practice when interacting with customers.

The thing is, sales managers don’t have time to sit in on every sales call with every one of their reps to see how (or whether) sellers are actually applying what they’ve learned. There simply isn’t enough time in the day.

Today, winning revenue organizations are tapping into conversation intelligence to better understand what’s happening in the field. Conversation intelligence provides a score after each sales call – along with feedback about how to do better next time. Sales managers and enablement teams can use call scores to understand:

  • Whether certain enablement initiatives are improving in-field performance
  • Where there are opportunities to deliver additional enablement and coaching to strengthen specific skills or behaviors

6. Customer satisfaction, retention rates, and customer lifetime value

Revenue enablement ensures every seller has the tools, training, and information to deliver outstanding experiences throughout the customer lifecycle. When customers’ expectations are consistently met, their satisfaction grows and they’re more likely to stick with your business long-term. Satisfied customers are also more open to purchasing new product options from your business in the future.

Measuring customer satisfaction, retention, and lifetime value is an important way to determine whether your revenue enablement efforts are properly equipping customer-facing teams with what they need to effectively engage with buyers throughout the customer lifecycle.

Some ways to boost customer satisfaction, retention, and customer lifetime value include:

  • Providing revenue teams with the right content to engage with buyers throughout the purchase journey – even after they’ve signed on the dotted line
  • Delivering training and enablement that helps revenue teams stay up-to-date on B2B customer expectation trends
    Ensuring sales reps are properly trained on how to hand off new customers to the implementation or customer success team
  • Providing training and coaching on upselling and cross-selling current customers

Go beyond asset views to understand when reps are ready to sell

Tracking asset views and attendance is one way of measuring sales enablement. But on their own, these sales enablement metrics don’t provide insight into how (or whether) your sales enablement program impacts sales performance.

Revenue organizations must also track sales enablement metrics that prove impact. With continuous measurement, you can understand where your sales enablement program is making an impact and where there are opportunities to make data-based optimizations. Then, you can fine-tune your sales enablement strategy and program to drive an even larger impact on sales performance.

Sales Enablement in Mindtickle

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This blog post was originally published in April 2022 and was updated in June 2024. 

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