What is Sales Enablement by Muhammad Husayn Ace

Q:?What is Sales Enablement??Sounds fancy.?

When I initially started looking into this role I would see positions of Sales Enablement Trainer and Sales Enablement Facilitator.?

I actually assumed the role was for Sales Trainer! Or maybe Sales Operation Manager with Training.?

Boy oh Boy?

This domain is much larger than what I anticipated. It's a recently emerging domain though it exists for sometime. Hence, people may be curious and assume something like maybe it a Marketing Support role or maybe Business Development etc.?

Actually it's much more than that.?

Sales Enablement encompasses a blend of Sales Marketing Training and even HR for that matter. It's the liaison for Sales with all relevant and concerned departments and acts as a bridge for that purpose.?Also, an alternative name to the domain is ‘Revenue Enablement’. Sales generates revenue, right? So ultimately Revenue Enablement. I may have initially confused Revenue Enablement with financial and cost management. But simply put to end the confusion, Sales Enablement is = Revenue Enablement and the names can be used interchangeably.

To Start off lets try to define this here.

The Key take away from? Meridith Elliott Powell, CSP, CPAE ?course?

Sales enablement is all about providing the information, research, tools, and training your sales organization needs to be effective. It could be marketing collateral or it could be a really good coach. Sales enablement enables reps to be better at what they do: finding leads, engaging prospects, and closing deals.

Please note Sales Enablement is a Strategic role. It drives Sales. Gone are the days when sales force was thrown into the market for blind pitching. You cannot just force sales. Your nurture it, you foster it, you grow it and Sales Enablement is needed. You cannot send the army into the battlefield with any strategy. In our case its the Sales Enablement Strategy.?

We provide the Sales force with adequate training. No army marches into the battlefield without training, so how can we expect are Sales Rep into market without any preparation. Soldiers deserve superior quality weapons - so does the Account Executives, Business development specialists and Sales reps, need sales tools be it CRM, marketing campaigns, leads or product content and portfolio. We also analyse the battlefield the marketplace. We provide the salesforce with best insights, contacts, PoCs, trends and history for the customers. Today the battlefield requires collaboration and support. Be it via intel, air, spy, naval etc. Different divisions of armies, allies and battalions come together. If Sales is to succeed it has to proactively collaborate with other organisational function. It has to gel in with marketing, hr, product, finance and support.

Therefore, Sales Enablement?primarily consists of 4 main roles:?

1.????#traininganddevelopment #Onboarding #EnablementFacilitator

Let’s jump in to the water.

Yes, I made the mistake of considering Sales Enablement as a Trainer role. Infact, some SMB organizations have Sales Trainers only.?

This is perhaps the most integral role of Sales Enablement. Prepping up the Sales force. Reducing the time to ramp up the account executives. Training the New Hires for soft skills, products, processes and policy changes.??It is also mixed with Sales Onboarding role. As the purpose is to assist the new recruits and onboard them with the adequate training. Some organizations do consider it as Enablement Facilitator role. So be Sales Enablement Trainer, Enablement Facilitator or Sales Onboarding specialist the role is same and growing in demand.?

When we talk about training it could extend to refreshers, product/policy changes and even facilitation roles for the new transition sales executives. It could start from class room training and activities such as role plays. It may involve quizzes and practice calls &emails. It could then transition to OJT and the nesting phase via or shadowing and reverse shadowing. Later on, it would be moved to 1on1 mentoring/coaching.

Side note:?Training Development is a huge process. Involves the completion of training cycle and post training 30 60- and 90-days activities for training retention. This could make or break the whole sales force. Too quick and Sales team is nervous. Too slow and the ROI decreases with investment over time. The balance here is vital. Challenge here is to design and deliver easily digestible training content that is engaging enough for learner retention and application relevance.

Unfortunately, some organizations (maybe most) get trapped in this dilemma. They want to force training. Chief Executives and leadership want to somehow increase ‘training speed’ to avoid further investment or losses. This leads to poor training quality and outcome is perplexed and frustrated new hired sales team.

Also, Sales Onboarding Specialist is not to be confused with Customer Onboarding. One is for the Sales team training and the other is for Sales and Customer orientation

2.????Knowledge Base & Content Management

Back in the days, if you were interested in certain product machine you would have to check with the seller or sales rep. For real estate your preliminary and primary knowledge came from a realtor. Internet has the pivoted the world towards 4th?Industrial Revolution and Digital Transformation. Its have revolutionized customer buying behaviors and customer personas. It has completely altered customer buying journey and hence sales strategy has to be aligned accordingly. Internet is their first resource for information.?

Today Instructional Designers have revolutionized learning and development of organizations via e- learning content. Content Management may cater to Learning Management System, content in the form of videos, notes, booklets, brochures, marketing collateral, sales support collateral, product infos, one pages, talk tracks, battle cards, flash cards, knowledge base and more.

3.????Revenue Information Reporting

Sales Reports, Quota Attainments, Action Dashboards, Graphical illustration of sales team performance, sales pipeline, leads, metrics and KPIs are critical information for Sales Operations. This may include supply chain reports too. Insight reports, customer database and so much more. Luckily CRM solutions can cater to most. However, we have interesting Sales Enablement Platforms available today. That would cater to knowledge base, LMS and CRM in one go.?

Do checkout Saleshood by Elay Cohen .

4.????Sales Liaison?

The role of relationships and collaboration is powerful synchronization with the whole organization. This is why Sales Enablement is a strategic role. It communicates with whole organization on behalf of sales. It acts as advocate of the Sales team. It resolves interdepartmental conflicts specially between Sales and Marketing, Sales & HR and Sales & Finance.

??Recruitment

Well this is not a direct linkage but a regular collaborator with the Sales team for hiring of new Account Executives, Sales Reps and sales team force. Once hired, Sales Enablement have to train them appropriately and the primary goal is to reduce the time to ramp. Hence Sales, Sales Enablement and Recruitment team are to be in synch for Onboarding the new Salesforce. This may also require Sales Enablement to participate in interviews too maybe for more senior sales team positions.

Darkside of Sales Enablement – the dilemma.

The name itself incorporates and associates the Enablement team with Sales. The team may also probably spear headed by the Sales director. Clearly, the team is integral to the Sales team itself. Hence, they are a critical team within the Sales Umbrella. The problem is born when Sales Leadership assume that the Sales Enablement and especially the trainers are responsible for Sales Reps KPIs too. They expect after swift training,??shortest and least time to ramp, they expect new hires to achieve highest KPIs and targets. When they don’t they believe it’s the fault of Sales Enablement. It should be noted Sales Enablement equips the sales team with adequate basics and some content for further study and use, but that does not mean they spoon feed sales or get them the needed sales. Its not their job to acquire or hit sales targets. Although, it maybe be an indirect measure of Sales Enablement performance but it is not a direct measurement for Sales Enablement role. As the role is not to make sales rather to assist in enabling revenue generation. This is clearly an absurd expectation but at times this is implicitly perceived by the Sales leadership. It should be transparently visible that the KPIS for the Sales team is purely sales related like Sales targets, project or account wins, sales quotas, margins and commissions but KPI for Sales enablement vary in their respective domains. Training can focus on TTR Therefore like Sheevaun Thatcher, CPC says:

Sales Enablement is responsible to Sales but not responsible for SALES. #R2N4

The other challenge Sales Enablement may face is lack of budget for new business case, proposal and plan for initiatives or projects. Especially when there are reward programs, certifications programs or SPIFFs introduced by the training teams of Sales Enablement. Since its considered mostly a support function, hence focus could be limited, so is the budget.

Although Sales Enablement is a few decades old department and recently due the success of SaaS businesses it has emerged and gaining some name out there, but that is not the case for Sales Enablement as a whole. Hence, it is overlooked, ignored or mis understood or confused with Sales and in short does not get the recognition it deserves.

Another common misconception, is that fact Sales Enablement is just Sales Training. As mentioned Training and Development is vital component of Sales Enablement and Sales training is key sub component to the training and onboarding but to say Sales Enablement is Sales training is way far from the facts. Training and Onboarding, focusses on reducing the time to ramp new Account Executives, Sales Representatives, Sales Development Professionals and Business Development specialists but its not just via Sales Training. Yes, it may involve multiple Sales Methodologies training but it encompasses a lot of other training as well. Trainings include:

·??????Communications training

·??????Soft Skills training

·??????Product/Service training

·??????HR Training eg: Inclusivity and Diversity

·??????Sales Training

·??????Project Management

·??????IT Skills training

·??????Mindset, Stress, Perception, Consumer Behavior and Motivation theory

·??????Processes and tools training

And more depending upon the industry, company, portfolio and role. This is to be understood that while the training development focus is on sales training but its not just sales training.

My current role as Training Development Coordinator in Sales Enablement, has been really fulfilling, as not only leverages my expertise in training but it has allowed me to grow in Sales Enablement domain that consists of Sales team onboarding, revenue reporting, knowledge base & content management, Sales team liaison (as this can be the most connecting one with the whole company), CRM and much more.

The Sales Enablement team at Zones has been a backbone for Sales team PK. We are working with about 100+ partners including elite partners such as Microsoft, Dell, Apple, Cisco, Lenovo, Hewlet Packard, Samsung, Veeam, Metallic, Adobe, Kensington and so many more. Our internal Sales teams in Pakistan, United States, Canada and United Kingdom catering to verticals of Workplace Modernization, Next Gen Networking, Cloud Transformation, Data Center Management and Security Fortification for Small Medium Businesses, Mid Mark Segment, Health Care, Education and K-12 and Federal. Hence, its always a dynamic work at Sales Enablement.

The future of Sales Enablement or Revenue Enablement seems promising. For the next couple of years its evident that SaaS companies will be deep diving, following would be all Cloud and Digital Transformation organizations. The next great leap would be when non IT companies start to focus in setting up a full fledge Sales Enablement department and maybe who knows the Airline, FMCG, Pharmaceuticals will invest in their salesforce for the better. Moreover, following the suit of Sales Enablement, HR Enablement and Support Enablement would bloom further.