Improve Win Rates With a Sales Enablement Strategy

Stagnating sales velocity may not be due to external market factors. Empower your sales team to drive higher win rates and boost revenues.

EXECUTIVE BRIEF

Analyst Perspective

Achievable wins are undermined by immature sales enablement processes. Deliver sales-enabling assets to boost selling competitiveness and velocity.

Let's assume a few things

1. Your marketing team has produced compelling buyer personas and journeys.
2. You’ve diagnosed key problems with your lead generation engine and started to optimize lead scoring.
3. Brand health and customer advocacy is improving.
4. Your marketing team has developed the right message to engage buyers.

The problem: These efforts fall flat if your sales team is not enabled to leverage this content or is unable to provide feedback to enrich marketing content. When this happens, the sales department ends up creating its own content instead of focusing purely on selling – a waste of both departments’ time.

Your sales team needs to know how to effectively find and use relevant marketing content to close more leads faster. Marketing staff need to know what content is working and what needs to be changed to enhance that content’s quality. Unfortunately, many organizations experience reactive relationships between sales and marketing that hinder sales effectiveness and restrict synergy.

However, if your organization is honest and responsive enough to this problem, a significant opportunity emerges. When we understand sales enablement as a maturity process, marketing staff can identify and act on concrete initiatives for building proactive relationships with the sales team. This opens the door to advanced marketing strategies (such as account-based marketing), which more readily beats out competition and increases win rates. Both teams want this: it’s time to act.

Thomas Randall

Advisory Director, Applications
Info-Tech Research Group

Executive Summary

SoftwareReviews Insight

Solutioning immediately for sales enablement is tempting but will not resolve any underlying process issues. Planning for key initiatives along sales pipeline operations and sales coaching, for example, allows organizations to identify and prioritize high-value wins quicker – in turn, boosting morale for the overall initiative.

Sales enablement processes are crucial to drive revenue growth

Sales enablement aims to improve sales to increase revenue. Organizations without mature sales enablement processes could be missing win rate opportunities.

Sales enablement maturity levels

Optimized

Center of excellence created, with funding for innovation and best-in-class supporting technologies.

Managed

Documented vision and strategy, executed. Aligned with business objectives.

Defined

An understanding of sales enablement and its benefits. Formal processes not yet executed.

Ad hoc

Tactical, one-off sales enablement initiative. No formal vision or strategy.

To benchmark your sales enablement maturity level, use these six categories to comprehensively assess your processes

Leadership

Without buy-in from senior leadership, sales enablement initiatives fall flat. The good news? 65% of sales leaders that invested in their sales enablement team report that they outperformed their revenue targets.

(Alfred, 2022)

Marketing/Sales relationship

Sales and marketing teams must share KPIs to advance sales enablement. Marketing must empower sales with lead nurturing and quality content so the sales team can increase deal velocity. 47% of buyers view three to five pieces of the company’s content before talking with the sales team.

(Spotio, 2023)

Pipeline operations

Triaging leads from marketing to sales teams needs to be as smooth as possible. The more efficient this process, the quicker deal velocity increases. This is why 48% of marketers say they are prioritizing the improvement of their sales funnel.

(HubSpot, 2018)

Sales coaching

Companies with a formal sales coaching strategy reach 91% quota attainment. The sales team is set up for failure when its onboarding and ongoing training is generalized, infrequent, and inconsistent. Marketing staff can assist by providing high-quality content on a formal basis for coaching.

(Oppedisano, 2023)

Marketing content access

Easy access to marketing content is crucial to salespeople for converting prospects. Better still is content that aligns with where the prospect is in their buyer journey. Yet, one-fifth of salespeople say they still do not have access to the resources needed to achieve their sales goals.

(The Center for Sales Strategy, 2023)

Supporting technology

Accessing content, documenting leads, and automating the sales funnel cannot be achieved without foundational and (when mature enough) advanced technologies for detailed analytics and account-based marketing. A CRM, for instance, can boost conversion rates by 300%.

(Goldberg, 2023)

Enhance sales enablement maturity with initiatives that unlock revenue potential

Sales leaders should use the example on the right for how to categorize different sales enablement initiatives according to SoftwareReviews’ six categories.

As you begin Phase 1 of this blueprint, keep your sales enablement drivers front of mind. The maturity of your current state will be assessed across all six categories: sales enablement leadership, marketing/sales relationship, sales pipeline operations, sales coaching, marketing content access, and supporting technology.

Sales enablement strategies have positive impacts across the organization

A sales enablement strategy creates faster pipeline velocity by improving the speed of win rates, boosting salespeople’s satisfaction, and growing revenues.

Stakeholder satisfaction

Formalizing a sales enablement strategy increases stakeholder satisfaction by 44% when enablement initiatives are eventually rolled out.

(Gitnux, 2023)

Buyer engagement

Organizations are 57% more likely to experience high buyer engagement when organizations have dedicated sales enablement teams.

(Bosch, et al., 2022)

Time saved

Sales enablement tools give the sales team back 3 hours a week. Sales teams experience an increase in closure rates by 25%, relieving selling cycles from dragging on.

(Gitnux, 2023)

“I’ve worked with CEOs who misunderstand sales enablement as simply equipping teams with the latest technology and offering training programs once or twice a year. In reality, sales enablement has the power to grease the wheels of an organization, creating a culture of continuous learning, collaboration and innovation — giving them a distinct advantage over competitors.”

Oscar Chavez, Founder at Growthly Group (Forbes)

Plan for risks when implementing a sales enablement strategy

Constrained time, poor leadership buy-in, and unoptimized content all need to be accounted for. Otherwise, organizations risk perennial sales team attrition.

65% of sales managers say that the biggest challenge for them is the lack of time and resources to perform their job. This impacts the quality of training they can give.

(Gitnux, 2023)

61% of sales leaders say digital content is essential for sales, but only 32% consider their organization effective at using it. This creates poor training environments.

(Holmes, 2021)

“Successful onboarding is critical to the success of each new member of your sales team. If a rep struggles through onboarding, they are unlikely to hit their quota – and if they are unlikely to hit quota, they are increasingly likely to go to a company where they can.”

– Melanie Fellay, CEO at Spekit (Forbes)

Diagnose sales enablement failures to reach future state

Internal retrospectives and learning from other organizations’ experiences can help mitigate issues before they emerge.

1. Sales enablement technology remains unleveraged: 48% of salespeople don’t use their CRM (or find it valuable) for automating basic tasks (The Center for Sales Strategy, 2023).
2. Data remains underused or perceived as untrustworthy. Marketers can’t update their content, salespeople don’t trust the content, and managers are unable to provide quality sales coaching with the content. Consequently, organizations typically have a lack of discipline with purging and regularly updating old content.
3. Sales enablement initiatives don’t explicitly tie into business objectives, losing senior management’s sponsorship.
4. Few or no metrics of success – how do you know if a sales enablement initiative is working? Are all teams aligned on those KPIs?
5. Due to a lack of post-onboarding reinforcement for sales teams, 80% of information is forgotten in the first two days post-training (Cloke, 2018).

Reach a sales enablement center of excellence

A center of excellence (CoE) is a cross-functional methodology promoting collaboration and best practices for sales enablement processes.

What roles are included in a sales-enablement CoE?

Responsibilities of a CoE include:

• Reporting and metrics: Measurement of the value derived from the sales enablement processes the CoE is supporting.
• Governance: Coordination and prioritization of the sales enablement pipeline.
• Process mastery: Standardization and optimization of sales enablement-related processes.
• Shared learning: Training, certification, and skills assessment.
• Knowledge repository: Systematized classification of standards, processes, and methodologies to guide the user community.
• Infrastructure management: Accountability for optimizing sales enablement supporting technologies.

Leveling up your sales enablement maturity is dependent on your supporting “marketecture”

Marketing automation tools

Automate repetitive tasks such as email marketing, social media, and ad campaigns. Helps with lead generation, nurturing, and measuring the overall ROI on campaigns.

Sales enablement platforms

Provide sales teams with the resources to close more deals through a repository for marketing collateral and sales playbooks. Sales enablement tools help sales representatives find the right content, send it to prospects, and track buyer engagement.

Sales engagement platforms

Streamline sales outreach activities and automate customer/prospect interactions.

Configure, price, quote (CPQ)

Help companies automate their data to configure products and pricing and generate quotes or proposal documents.

Learning management system (LMS)

Encompass software applications for the administration, documentation, tracking, reporting, and delivery of educational courses, training programs, or learning and development programs.

Improve Win Rates With a Sales Enablement Strategy

SoftwareReviews’ methodology for building a sales enablement strategy

Insight Summary

You have more control than you might think to improve win rates

Sales enablement strategies empower organizations to drive sales velocity and boost revenues. Don’t be too quick to blame stagnating win rates on external market factors.

Benchmark maturity

Honest retrospectives when benchmarking your sales enablement maturity will quicken time to effective action. There are multiple facets to sales enablement success – jumping to solutioning without a comprehensive review is a core reason for sales enablement strategy failures.

Boost selling morale

Ruthlessly prioritizing your sales enablement initiatives that align with helping salespeople close deals faster will deliver high-value results. With quick and strategic wins, morale for sales enablement is reinforced. Sponsorship, resources, and investment for innovation thereby increases.

Help sellers sell

Planning a realistic timeline for delivering sales enablement initiatives sets the right expectations with senior leadership. Pilot with high producers to develop “you can do this” proof for the main body of sellers. Aligning initiative rollout with sellers' abilities to close and earn faster builds support and trust in outcomes.

Aim high to achieve higher win rates

Understanding the art of the possible prevents path-dependency with sales enablement initiatives. Don’t immediately get caught in the weeds!

Collaboration is crucial for sales enablement

Taking collective responsibility for past sales enablement failings is empowering. Solidarity between sales, marketing, and other core departments rallies toward future state success.

Who benefits from this project?

This research is designed for:

• Marketing and sales operations leaders who are:
  • Interested in how sales enablement can drive alignment between their departments toward higher win rates.
  • Looking to benchmark their sales enablement maturity.
  • Identifying high-value initiatives to enhance their sales enablement processes across several metrics (including sales coaching, marketing content access, and pipeline operations).
  • Understanding how IT can be a strategic partner with sales and marketing operations in bringing sales enablement processes to life.

This research will also assist:

• CMOs, sales trainers, product marketers, and IT who are stakeholders in:
  • Building marketing content for sales pitching.
  • Sales coaching and delivery.
  • Implementing sales enablement technologies.

This research will help you:

• Articulate the value of sales enablement processes for bolstering revenue potential.
• Benchmark your sales enablement maturity to better understand how your current state compares to best-in-class processes.
• Develop relevant high-value initiatives that can push your sales enablement process closer to an optimized state.
• Understand the technology marketplace for sales enablement platforms and other dependency solutions.
• Join marketing and sales teams to break down siloes.

This research will help you:

• Enrich marketing content and ensuring it follows the sales operations pipeline journey. Salespeople should have the right content at the right time.
• Deploy high-value applications that will improve sales enablement metrics.
• Create world-class sales training programs.

Executive Brief Case Study

The Economist

Industry

Media

Source

Bigtincan

The Economist has a lean marketing team that generates proposals and presentation ideas for sales teams to use with prospects. However, given the few resources available, the marketing team did not have strong visibility into tracking which content was resonating well. It was impossible for marketing representatives to appear on every sales call or pitch to take notes.

To resolve this problem, The Economist invested in Bigtincan’s Engagement Hub platform. The aim was to use supporting sales enablement technology to boost marketing insights and empower salespeople with quality and relevant content.

Results

Using Bigtincan’s Engagement Hub, The Economist’s marketing team was able to gain visibility into what parts of a proposal or presentation were resonating with prospects. In turn, this feedback loop increased ability to create more meaningful content for the sales team to leverage.

Engagement Hub also provided sales activity tracking, to create better sales forecasts. If one salesperson is doing well with certain content, the sales manager can recommend that information to other salespeople, saving time for them and their prospects.

Blueprint deliverables

Each step of this blueprint is accompanied by supporting deliverables to help you accomplish your goals:

Business Drivers and Environmental Analysis (a component of the key deliverable)

Identify the internal and external drivers for why sales enablement initiatives are warranted.

Application Portfolio Assessment (a component of the key deliverable)

Align sales enablement initiatives with your technology portfolio.

Initiatives Roadmap (a component of the key deliverable)

Establish concrete next steps for sales enablement across a two-to-three-year horizon.

Sales Enablement Maturity Diagnostic

Benchmark your sales enablement maturity across six criteria.

Key deliverable

Sales Enablement Strategy Executive Presentation

Capture your business case and initiatives roadmap for sales enablement excellence, in a boardroom-ready strategic deck.

Guided Implementation

What does a typical GI on this topic look like?

A Guided Implementation (GI) is a series of calls with an analyst to help implement our best practices in your organization.

A typical GI is 4 to 6 calls over the course of 2 to 4 months.

Workshop Overview

Contact your account representative for more information.
workshops@infotech.com 1-888-670-8889

SoftwareReviews offers various levels of support to best suit your needs

Included with Advisory Membership

DIY Toolkit

“Our team has already made this critical project a priority, and we have the time and capability, but some guidance along the way would be helpful.”

Guided Implementation

“Our team knows that we need to fix a process, but we need assistance to determine where to focus. Some check-ins along the way would help keep us on track.”

Optional Add-Ons

Workshop

“We need to hit the ground running and get this project kicked off immediately. Our team has the ability to take this over once we get a framework and strategy in place.”

Consulting

“Our team does not have the time or the knowledge to take this project on. We need assistance through the entirety of this project.”

Before starting your sales enablement strategy, put your team together

Sales leader

A sales director, VP of sales, or CRO who will provide sponsorship and oversight from the sales perspective.

Operations

Typically represented by sales and marketing operations. This person has ownership over MarTech and pipeline processes.

Project manager

Project manager has accountability of the overall project success. Typically sits on the business side, especially under sales.

Sales effectiveness

This team member will provide representation from the sales training and enablement perspective.

Technical IT

This team member will contribute their knowledge around enterprise architecture, security, and other integrations.

SoftwareReviews Insight

It is critical for the selection team to determine who has decision rights. Organizational culture will play the largest role in dictating which team member holds the final say for selection decisions.