Understanding and building a Sales & Revenue Enablement function

Let me introduce you to an interesting fact - the concept of Enablement started in 1999 - John Aiello and Drew Larsen strategized a new approach to sales operations and management. Wow - a quarter century ago!

So how to define Seller and Revenue Enablement?

Are we talking about Sales Enablement? Marketing Enablement? Even Partner or Customer Success Enablement???Each function could equally use, and benefit from a strategic enablement support. So, the scope of this function can quickly begin to evolve to something more complex.

That’s why I would like to help (re)defining the starting point and the first touch of scope of your enablement function.

There are a couple ways to think about enablement. Some business have Marketing and Sales siloed, some have Customer Success siloed or simply focus on selling only with that function.

I belief that any revenue-generating department in some way contributing to revenue need that support. Those teams - I call it the Revenue Engine – are the ones that are in touch with your customers – no matter what form or when in the sales cycle.

This is why calling it Revenue Enablement?does the function more justice.

So how do you get started with (or redesign) your Revenue Enablement function?

Firstly, getting started with any revenue enablement, requires dedication and a ruthless focus and prioritization. And buy-in form your stakeholders – I will get to this later.

1. It all starts with the product of course – yes, your compelling product or service.

From there Revenue Enablement supports your demand generation engine, such as marketing, business development (BDR/SDR), then direct sales, including partner sales and, finally, customer success as it whole.

2. You start with identifying the business units this role(s) is going to support. Is this role serving just sales, or also going to support your solution engineering/pre sales teams, do you cover for partner sellers and marketing etc.?

Side note: In fact, if your enablement umbrella encompasses every revenue-generating department, which in return can mean that you are likely have too many potential projects.?

3. Then you take inventory of all of the things that are there, identify and what business pillar it serves., and analyze the quality. Inventory means looking at tools, content, supporting teams and resources, and so on. On a long run - consider utilizing a single platform to store all of your enablement data.

Side note: It is almost like running a due diligence and is a long and sometimes painful task.

4.??? After having outlined the pillars, consider how inevitable it is to get buy-in from everyone impacted.

As mentioned earlier – that is a key step. And it is important to understand that getting buy-in for enablement should come from stakeholders on all levels – the key for sustaining enablement is getting buy-in from individual contributors – they are the ones that execute on it at the end.

5.??? Once you have those teams bought into the concept of revenue enablement and the intended support, it is important to prioritize the enablement initiatives you will focus on.

6.??? To do so, you will have to ask both company leaders and individual contributors to rank their priorities. Use data for this exercise. Look at ramp time of roles, pipe generation, deal velocity incl. pipe progression, length of sales cycle, time to close, and deal size etc. ?

With those results you determine jointly the priorities enablement will focus on to get started and/or agree to time lines (like per quarter).

Sidenote:? I strongly recommend to focus on only a few of the most impactful to start with. Remember – we talk REVENUE enablement - you want to present quick and real impact that is measurable. And - whether it’s a learning program, whether it’s just like introducing a tool, are all related to a change.

7.??? Talking about measuring - think about how to demonstrate or even proof the success or failure of your activity?

This is a very important step on the long run - define goals and objectives, look at measurable KPIs – the correlation between your efforts and the business impact.

8.??? To evolve from here to sales readiness and coaching – go into regular check-ins with your stakeholders in each identified pillar. Start to identify their knowledge gaps to offer options to fix these gaps.

Here is are 3 simple rubrics where I do see gaps generally:

• Knowledge?– what do I need to know and understand to do my job? (What does our product do/service offer? What is our market and our buyer personas? What methodology do we follow? Who else in the company is driving revenue? What operating rhythms do we follow?)
• Skills?– what are the skills required to leverage and optimize the knowledge I need to do my job?
• Tools?– what tools can we train our teams on to optimize the skills needed and enable the knowledge required?

9.??? From here you define a long-term enablement cadence or even consider an enablement quota.

For example, leadership coaching has been identified, you can focus on during a particular quarter. Or implementing a new process or skill will require a regular training cadence. And not to forget the preparation – factor that in, for your own team as well as the learner and inform them to influence with clear expectations and motivation.

Side Note: People are motivated by 3 main things: Achievement (getting things done), Power (having influence) and Belonging (having good relationships) – factor that into your communication!

10. Finally, for an enablement function to actually make an impact you will need to evaluate your own team and resources.

Are there the right resources you need to execute on the priorities and are they skilled in specific pillars of enablement? Do you (may have to) consider growing the team or will you be looking into help from other subject matter experts like me – make sure you are clear about where the help ideally comes from, and agree on the support and the purpose of it with their leaders.

Do we have the relevant tools, documents etc. that support whatever priorities are in front of us?

11. Lastly - Enablement leaders can’t do it all!!! Any training and process building requirements are often coupled with resource-strapped enablement teams. That demands you as a leader to also look at professional development for your team.

In my next article I will share my experience on scoping a Revenue Enablement function and give you further detail of the capabilities of this strategic function.

Like to learn more about my experience and thoughts on Sales & Revenue Enablement – have a look at my LinkedIn Profile.

If you want more tips - book a consultative 20 mins meeting with me.