Sales enablement and the need to drive sustainable revenue growth

Building world-class high performance sales teams, no matter in which domain or vertical, is - simply put - always about people, mindset, values & ethics, process, sales enablement, execution and control. When the time comes, it's fun to enjoy the success together with the team.

Of course, behind all this is willingness of leaving your comfort zone at any time, the strong desire to win, curiousity, focus, a healthy self-reflection, preparation, reliability, to take accountability, collaboration and team play, and above all - what I would like to talk about today - the eagerness to learn and constantly improve. If the latter is supported by constant, ongoing enablement, nothing stands in the way of the individual's success in sales.

In general, amongst sales managers and leaders according to posts, communication and feedback from account executives etc., there is a consensus, that better sales training translates to better performance, productivity and retention across the organization.

One of the main drivers of digital transformation is sustainability. Digital technologies have led to massive changes in B2B sales, e.g. the power has shifted from the seller to the buyer. More important - Carbon is a new currency creating new imperatives for action.  Achieving climate-compatible revenue growth in sales  will require to create / build the conditions for sustainable growth.

For companies and their sales executives, this offers huge opportunities to set themselves apart from the competition. In simple terms and with reference to a business, sustainable growth is the realistically attainable growth that a company could maintain without running into problems, means without having to increase financial leverage and climate footprint.

When it comes to sustainable revenue growth, it’s all about people, process and execution. Thinking from a sales enablement perspective, value is an important component we need to consider when we think about the future of sales. We need equip our sales executives with the tools, the metrics and the right kind of engagement, so that they are prepared for the changed requirements to provide significant added value, i.e. also in the direction of sustainability for their customers.

This is why it is essential to discuss the importance of sales enablement as an iterative, strategic, ongoing process to provide the required foundation to salespeople. Sales effectiveness is the result of a well-executed sales enablement and readiness strategy.

At the end of the day, we need ensure & boost predictable and sustainable sales effectiveness and productivity. This means - before creating the content – understanding the strengths and weaknesses of our sales individuals is absolutely key. We need to align with our revenue objectives. Other topics are “Value-centric”, consistency throughout the entire organization. We need think about, how can we foster a learning culture amongst the sales team and the entire organization.

According to the definition from research firm CSO Insights, Sales enablement is "a strategic, cross-functional discipline designed to increase sales results and productivity by providing integrated content, training and coaching services for salespeople and front-line sales managers along the entire customer’s buying journey, powered by technology."

In other words, we need to ensure to foster a learning culture amongst the sales team and the entire organization. By leveraging cross-organisational collaboration synergies,  the well-trained sales executives need to deliver a world-class experience throughout the customer journey. 

In order to get any budget for sales trainings, sales enablement tools etc, the discussion is often about  how to determine the value of sales training efforts, about ROI  and how to calculate.

On a high level, sales enablement provides:

Sales Readiness - which is a core component of sales enablement, where the goal is ensuring salespeople have the knowledge and skills to maximize every client interaction.

Client-Facing Success - everyone who directly faces buyers will also benefit from relevant content, training, and coaching. This includes everyone from sales engineers and customer success, to service teams and channel partners.

Effective Usage of different Sales Tools which Sales reps might use on a given day

More detailed, sales enablement helps to:

• make new sales people productive
• enable all customer-facing employees to consistently and systematically have a valuable conversation with the right customer stakeholders at every stage of the customer's problem-solving process to optimise the sales system's return on investment
• provide the most relevant content for each customer dialogue
• prepare salespeople for new assignments
• sell new products or services
• optimise the sales process to grow the pipeline
• drive opportunities further and more efficiently close larger sales to drive profitable growth
• apply analytics so that sales strategies and content can be optimized
• support changes in sales messaging
• sharpen successful salespeople’s skills
• address skill deficiencies
• improve the ability to accelerate strategic initiatives
• …

Quantifying Sales Enablement’s Value

According to a research by the Sales Management Association (2019), on average, new sales hires spend 10 weeks in training and development and only become productive after 11.2 months. Companies with a dedicated sales enablement function improved their sales training effectiveness by 29%, improved quota attainment by 6.7% and reduced retention rate.

Sales rep turnover is exceedingly expensive, a DePaul University (2016) study reports a turnover of 26.9% reported for inside sales positions and 25.7% for outside sales positions. It costs organizations $97,960 to replace the average sales rep, when you add up recruiting costs, training costs, and lost sales. Employees are 60% more likely to remain with an organization for three years or longer when a standardized onboarding process is used.

Goal

• Ensure & boost predictable and sustainable sales effectiveness and productivity
• Empower the entire sales team to deliver results – sustainable revenue growth
• Foster a learning culture

Calculating the ROI

requires answering three questions:

1.      What are the results of your sales training program?

2.      What are these results worth to your organization?

3.      How much does it cost to create and maintain your training?

Potential ROI with quantifiable metrics:

When working with quantifiable metrics, calculating ROI is relatively straightforward:

·      x% higher SAL conversation rate

·      x% faster sales velocity

·      x% higher opportunity win rate

·      x% higher average deal size

·      x% higher quota attainment

·      x% improvement in overall sales performance

·      faster Ramp up time - the time it takes for new AE to effectively perform their role (typically 7 months)

·      improve /decrease retention rate

·      reduce the non customer focuced time -time spent researching and creating sales materials (average 3 to 4 hours per week per sales)

Potential ROI on intangible results

One of the things that make calculating sales training ROI so tricky is that there are a lot of results you can’t really put a price on. These are things like sales executive’s engagement and confidence after their training or message consistency across teams. While these factors are intangible, you can make educated guesses and use anecdotal evidence to get a sense of how your training impacts them. 

Sales enablement covers a wide range

• Onboarding (general topics) and continuous learning programs
• Sales process, SFDC, sales metrics, service sales engagement
• Product training / value proposition /competition
• o  Content sales shares with customers/buyers 
• o  Content that will be consumed internally by the sales team
• Objection handling, sales battles cards
• Sales qualification methodology (MEDDIC)
• Sales methodology (TBD)
• Creation of sales assets and content updates
• Sales communications
• Cross-functional communication
• Management of sales tools and user best practices
• Measuring and reporting on sales enablement program success
• job-related further education
• ...

Sales enablement in a nutshell

Nowadays, there is broad variety of ways to create, provide, execute and measure the impact and success of sales enablement, which  can mean the difference between success and failure, i.e. using an AI powered sales enablement plattforms and more.

According to a study from Forbes (2018), approximately 94% of business customers want to work with sales teams who have a unique understanding of their company’s issues.

As we have discussed, the sales enablement should provide the foundation to  sales executives so that they are prepared for the changed requirements to provide significant added value, i.e. also in the direction of sustainability for their customers.

True sales enablement leads to success, means it will ensure & boost predictable and sustainable sales effectiveness and productivity.