8 Reasons Why Sales Enablement Is Important to Help You Drive Revenue

Helen Waite on March 13, 2024

Sales enablement leaders often struggle to demonstrate the impact of their efforts on business outcomes.

But closed deals don’t happen in isolation; effective sales enablement is an important piece in making sure sellers have everything they need to be productive.

The truth is that in 2023, only 42.8% of reps hit their quotas.

In 2023, only

of reps hit their quotas
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Companies miss significant benefits without proper investment and structured programs geared toward revenue generation. Effective sales enablement drives revenue and equips sales reps with the tools to cultivate meaningful customer relationships, attract qualified leads, and close deals successfully.

Key takeaways

  • A robust sales enablement structure centralizes all resources, knowledge, and content into a single source of truth. This means reps have just-in-time access to the information they need to engage buyers, saving time and enhancing productivity.
  • Continuous training and skill development are essential to successful sales enablement initiatives. By providing regular training and opportunities for practice, sales enablement ensures that reps stay updated on industry trends, product updates, and best practices.
  • Sales enablement empowers managers to create a coaching culture by providing them with data-driven insights and tools to facilitate individual reps and teams coaching sessions.  Managers are better able to identify areas for improvement.

Sales enablement supports overall seller productivity

We define sales enablement as 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.

Practically speaking, sales enablement teams identify skill gaps through performance metrics, assessments and feedback. They then tailor training and development programs based on these skill gaps.

Example: Skill and knowledge gaps

Let’s look at a hypothetical, but realistic, problem. ABC company is in the process of assessing its sales readiness. During the process, the sales team noticed that there were gaps in the skills their sales reps have versus the skills they need to sell effectively. Sales leaders at ABC correlate this to a recent decline in deals closed, which has also resulted in not meeting revenue goals.

ABC can employ sales enablement efforts to fix this misalignment. They can identify which parts of the sales workflow are most difficult for each sales rep, like converting leads into opportunities or upselling, for example. Then they can leverage that data to train and enable each rep based on their individual skills gap.

Mindtickle Missions

Sales enablement provides an accessible knowledge base

A strong sales enablement structure gives your salespeople access to a knowledge base, one that’s designated as a single source of truth. A designated knowledge base saves them from spending a lot of time looking for information or answers while they’re working with a customer. It promotes just-in-time access to the resources they need.

Sales enablement makes knowledge more accessible by gathering all resources, knowledge, and sales content into one spot. Here are some examples of what to include in your knowledge base:

  • Sample scripts or talk tracks
  • Information about customer personas and pain points
  • Links to training modules
  • Customer-facing content

No matter what they need to access, they can get it all within this single source of truth.

Example: One source of truth

Say your sales teams have knowledge spread out across multiple tools (like a CRM, a company wiki, and multiple drives). With too many places to look, it’s hard for your reps to find what they need in a timely manner during a customer interaction.

Sales enablement managers should come together to decide which source will be designated as the single source of truth. If you already have a drive or knowledge base tool in place that every necessary person has access to, start there. Even a simple tool like Google Drive can work for organizing all your relevant content and knowledge in one spot.

Mindtickle Asset Hub

Sales enablement promotes ongoing sales training

Sales enablement helps your reps hone their skills and develop industry knowledge through ongoing sales training and practice. Technology evolves all the time – products are updated; new tools are adopted; objectives and KPIs are changed. Ongoing training prepares your reps for these inevitable changes. Training gives them insights and advice they can use during customer interactions like more compelling messaging examples or how to resolve common conflicts or objections effectively.

Training is a big part of any successful sales enablement initiative. Sales enablement promotes an environment where your salespeople are continually building their skills and knowledge. Then they put their skills to the test in common real-life scenarios through role-playing or other simulations.

Example: Stopping skill erosion

Skill erosion refers to a decline in a certain skill set, usually because that skill isn’t used often enough. Ongoing training helps your reps with skill reinforcement, so they can integrate those skills into their tasks, leading to more valuable and successful customer conversations.

To avoid skill erosion, make ongoing learning part of your sales team’s everyday routine. One tool that can help is Mindtickle. In the Mindtickle platform, you can use AI-powered skill reinforcements, role plays, and more to protect your reps from skill erosion.

Sales enablement helps your managers create a coaching culture

For your sales teams to succeed, they need a supportive and knowledgeable coach. Sales enablement can help you create an effective coaching culture using data-driven insights, provide teachable moments, and easily facilitate coaching sessions for teams and individual reps.

A strong sales enablement strategy includes specific skill resources and behavioral training that help your managers coach your sales reps. This includes data they can use to identify areas of improvement in the workflow and technology to help make those improvements.

Take conversation intelligence technology, for example. This technology lets you tap into sales calls to understand your sales reps’ behaviors and skill sets. 

“With recordings and transcripts from sales calls, I can get a sense immediately if a rep is struggling with closing a call, and listen in on what’s going well. This allows me to coach my team to more wins and emphasize what’s working for us."
Greg Myers headshot
Greg Myers
Regional VP of Sales at Turing Video.

Example: First-time manager training

If you have a lot of first-time managers, it’s especially important to provide training on topics relevant to leading a team. These topics include effective communication, conflict resolution, how to handle performance reviews, and how to provide support to sales reps.

For instance, all sales managers should be well versed in how to handle objections since this is a common obstacle for every sales rep. Moreover, your managers should have resources and support to make them feel confident in their coaching abilities, enabling them to give their sales reps effective solutions to any problem.

Sales enablement removes silos between sales and marketing

When marketing and sales are siloed, each one is more focused on their individual goals rather than the overall company goal. This can affect overall productivity and collaboration, making it harder to get tasks done related to content, branding, and general marketing.

When sales and marketing can work together, companies can attract and close more leads. Think of marketing as the bait that attracts the leads and sales as the line that reels them in.

By implementing standards and processes on how these two teams should work together, you can break down the silos and increase collaboration.

Example: Content creation

Sales reps don’t have the time or often the skills to create their own content – they need marketing. Your marketing team is experienced in creating content that resonates with your target audience and attracts qualified leads.

Let’s say you need a specific piece of relevant content from your marketing team. With no standards or processes for content creation, your marketing team doesn’t know that they’re supposed to create the content. Your salespeople may feel obligated to create it themselves or skip it all together. The result is often less effective sales tactics and resources.

Alternatively, with a process in place, your sales reps will know when and how to engage marketing, and marketing folks will understand the types of situations they may be employed to help.

Sales enablement can expedite onboarding for new salespeople

Sales enablement in your onboarding programs can get your reps effectively prepared to sell. Reps at winning orgs onboard their reps faster and get their sellers out into the field — and productive — much faster. 

Example: Personalized training to decrease ramp time

Each one of your salespeople is different. They all have varying skill levels and skill sets, and they come from different professional backgrounds. The idea behind sales enablement is to be able to personalize training based on the experience each rep already has and the skills they still need.

A sales enablement platform like Mindtickle automates your onboarding process from start to finish with personalized training based on each rep’s background and experience. It helps them build on the specific skills and knowledge they need to be successful without sitting through training that might be irrelevant to them.

Sales enablement can reduce sales rep turnover

Sales enablement can decrease rep turnover by keeping your salespeople engaged. Engaged employees feel more committed to the work they do and to the company they work for. On the other hand, disengaged employees often feel more burned out and end up costing you much more than engaged employees.

Sales enablement can help build a team of engaged sales reps by helping them develop their skills and navigate challenges as they arise and generally cultivating a positive seller environment – all factors that make them less likely to leave.

Example: Keep your reps engaged

Engaged salespeople are more optimistic, selfless, and team-oriented and show a passion for learning. One way to keep your sales reps engaged is by showing an interest in their career goals and helping them reach those goals.

For instance, if you have a sales rep who wants to become a sales manager, you can suggest resources, training, and content they can access to build their knowledge and skills.

automotive-enable-on-the-go-learning

Sales enablement keeps your potential customers informed

Sales enablement is also about properly communicating and educating your customers via helpful content and your well-prepared sales reps. Informed customers are more likely to make a purchase from you if your product aligns with their needs.

With effective sales enablement, you can proactively answer customers’ questions and acknowledge the challenges they experience every day.

Example: Create memorable experiences to keep customers in the sales funnel

To keep your customers engaged, create memorable experiences that keep them in your sales funnel. Personalize your communications to them, craft impactful messaging, and provide high-value content that meets them where they’re at in the funnel.

For example, if you’re writing content for people who are somewhere in the middle of your sales funnel, write blogs or emails to offer helpful advice and tips like “How to Use [Our Software] to Do [This] Task” or “X Reasons You Need [Our Software] to Boost Sales.”

This type of content addresses pain points and offers helpful solutions, which can help convince them that your product is the right one for them.

Refine your sales enablement by measuring sales effectiveness over time

We know what you’re probably thinking: “This is a lot.” 

It can be.

But one easy way to incorporate sales enablement into your company is to use a software tool specifically designed for that purpose. A sales enablement tool can capture, analyze, and score all buyer interactions, so you can measure how effective your sales tactics are.

Rather than trying to change the systems of multiple departments and processes, you’ll have one platform from which you can roll out the changes with minimal disruption.

Mindtickle’s suite of tools and processes can help your salespeople increase their knowledge, boost their performance, and feel confident going into every customer conversation.

Schedule a demo with us or learn more about how sales professionals use Mindtickle for effective sales enablement.

Sales Enablement in Mindtickle

Schedule a demo to learn more about how sales enablement pros at winning orgs use Mindtickle for effective sales enablement.

Get a Demo

This post was originally published in August 2022, updated in July 2023, and again in March 2024. 

How to Measure the Impact of Your Sales Training Program

Helen Waite on March 4, 2024

Sales leaders increasingly see the importance of investing more in their sales training programs. 

But are they investing in the right things? 

While the majority of organizations are investing in a sales enablement department (84%), only 40% of these C-level executives said they can identify rep strengths and weaknesses for customized training.

You should constantly evaluate your sales training program so you can make the most of your investments. Evaluating your sales training allows you to see what areas of training need more or less resource allocation, so you can improve performance and reach your goals.

Why do you need to measure your sales training impact?

The core question at the heart of sales training evaluation is: Did your results benefit the organization in some way? If your training is going to be impactful, it has to provide measurable ROI. Evaluating the impact can be done by measuring how much time was saved, how much money was made, and/or how many clients were gained as a result of your program.

Evaluating your sales training program enables you to:

  • Identify what the organization gained.
  • Determine the costs versus benefits of the gain.
  • Determine justification for continuing training.

If you’re not measuring and evaluating the results of your efforts, you won’t be able to see how well your sales training program is working. By creating a clear evaluation process — and a timeline for studying results — you can help everyone stay focused on the end goal.

  • Step 1. Set a goal & define metrics

Every sales training program should have a goal or desired outcome. Then you can use that goal to define the metrics that will measure progress toward that goal. For example, if your goal is to increase the number of new accounts opened by 20% over the next six months, then you’ll need to define what that looks like and how you’ll measure it.

First, define your goal. Most goals fall under one of three categories: time-related, quota-related, or revenue-related. Here are a few examples:

Goals that deal with getting your sales team trained during a certain time frame. These include decreasing time to productivity or time to the first milestone.

Goals that focus on making sure your sales team meets their quota. For example, your goal might be to increase quota attainment by X% in the next year.

Goals that focus specifically on increasing revenue over time. For example, your goal could be to increase sales revenue by X% in the next year.

  • Step 2. Establish sales training costs

To know if you’re getting a return on your training investments, keep a record of the costs associated with the program. The costs associated with your sales training program will be both indirect and direct. You have to consider not just the cost of what you spend directly on the training program but also the cost of time spent on training and time spent away from work.

The standard formula for calculating your training ROI is: ROI (percentage) = [(Monetary benefits – Training Costs)/Training Costs] x 100. ROI can also be measured in terms of decreased product cost or time.

Salaries, benefits of personnel, technology, tools, and other equipment

Sales onboarding costs, training material, technology costs, facilities, travel, communication and marketing of the program, instructor’s salary, and benefits

The salaries and benefits costs that will be dedicated to the time spent on training

Cost of time spent away from work

Cost of time needed for your employees to adapt to new practices and ways of working after the training program

Cost of incentives (tangible and intangible) put into place to foster wanted behavior after training

Evaluating training costs can be challenging without having a system in place. Here are some areas to consider when building an all-inclusive training cost analysis framework:

Once you’ve established the full costs associated with the program, you can figure out the monetary benefits — the revenue your sales training has generated for your company — and calculate the ROI. For example, have there been significant sales increases after employees have gone through training or a noticeable boost in productivity? These are tangible areas that can be measured by looking at the before and after stats.

  • Step 3. Gather feedback from sales representatives

Feedback from your sales reps will be crucial to understand what is and isn’t working with the program. It’s important to make sure that the program you’ve put together for them is effective in helping them meet their individual goals and, therefore, helping the company meet its commercial goals.

Use quarterly surveys, anonymous feedback forms they can submit anytime, and one-on-one meetings with managers to find out how employees feel about the sales training program. Here are some example questions to ask to get the answers you need:

  • Are you able to easily apply what you’ve learned from the training program to your job?
  • Did you learn a new skill or enhance an existing one?
  • Do you believe the training program helps you bridge any gaps in your knowledge or skills?
  • Has the training program been effective in helping you meet your goals?

Use these open-ended questions to build a dialogue between sales reps and sales leadership.

It’s important to understand that not all feedback will be feedback that you implement. Your sales leaders will have to evaluate all feedback to decide whether or not to implement it. For example, some feedback may not improve the sales training program or won’t be feasible to implement.

  • Step 4: Continually assess results + implement feedback

Establish a cycle of assessing results using these steps and then implementing team feedback so that you can identify and improve areas of weakness in the sales training program.

Evaluating the program can help you identify problems in the sales training program that need to be fixed or components of the program that need more resources allocated. If the results show that your training program has weak areas, you can make a plan to identify specific bottlenecks or issues within the program.

 

Sales coaching report card in Mindtickle

Sales coaching timeline

Sales coaching in Mindtickle

For example, if you see that your training program isn’t helping your sales reps improve their win rate, that’s something that needs to be assessed. Maybe they need more sales coaching or skills training to increase their confidence. These are weak areas that an evaluation of your training program can uncover.

Make an ongoing plan to set aside time (e.g., every quarter or twice a year) to go over the training program and compare it to the goals you set for the program and the sales outcomes from that time period. Go through any feedback you’ve received from sales reps to identify areas where specific improvements could be made. For example, if several sales reps leave feedback about needing more resources for cold calling, you can easily add more resources to the program. This small change could have a big impact on your sales reps and their confidence in making calls and talking to customers, leading to more deals closed.

Effective sales training yields stronger sales enablement and productivity

By taking some time to evaluate your current sales training program, your team will be better prepared to meet their goals and achieve success. Regularly evaluated training is crucial if you want to create a winning sales team for the long term. It’s not enough to just hope that your staff will improve on their own. In order to prepare your sales reps to be ready to confidently sell your product, they need resources, knowledge, the right content, and coaching. Your sales training program has to provide that for them.

Mindtickle has a comprehensive suite of sales enablement and productivity tools to provide your sales team with a positive learning environment that engages them and sets them up to succeed. With Mindtickle, you can easily create sales training programs that reinforce knowledge quickly to improve your overall sales process.

Are you able to show the ROI of your efforts?

Learn how you can stand up effective sales training in Mindtickle that actually impacts revenue.

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This post was updated in August 2023 and again in March 2024. 

What is Sales Effectiveness – and How Do You Improve Yours? 

Helen Waite on February 28, 2024

Every revenue leader aspires to have an entire team of effective sellers. After all, effective sellers are well-equipped to engage with buyers, deliver value throughout the sales cycle, and close more deals.

But in many cases, sellers aren’t as effective as they could be. Often, it’s because they’re spending so little time interacting with buyers and closing deals. Salesforce research found that sales reps spend a mere 28% of their week selling. 

Sales reps spend only

of their week selling
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The rest of their time is spent completing time-consuming administrative work and toggling between the tools they’re expected to use to close deals.

Even when buyers are meeting with prospects, they aren’t always effective. Sometimes, they’re not spending time with the right prospects. Over 70% of sales reps believe 50% of the prospects they speak with aren’t a good fit for what they’re selling. Sales effectiveness can also fall short when sellers haven’t yet perfected the skills they need to be successful.

To grow revenue, leaders must make it a priority to boost sales effectiveness. But what exactly does that mean?

Read on to explore sales effectiveness, why it matters, and how you can measure it at your organization. We’ll also share some best practices you can use to increase your organization’s sales effectiveness (and revenue growth).

Sales effectiveness definition

Most sales leaders agree that sales effectiveness is important. But without a clear definition, it’s impossible to measure it. If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it.

With that in mind, let’s start by answering the question, “What is sales effectiveness?”

At the most basic level, it refers to how well your sellers turn prospects into buyers. Throughout the typical purchase journey, a seller has multiple interactions with a potential buyer. Effectiveness gauges the seller’s ability to conquer each of these interactions. Of course, their ability to conquer these touchpoints depends on many factors, including the quality of training and coaching – and how (or whether) they put this training and coaching into practice to improve.

Sales effectiveness vs. sales efficiency

Oftentimes, “sales effectiveness” and “sales efficiency” are used interchangeably. While they’re certainly related, they’re not the same thing.

Sales efficiency is about what your team is doing. For example, you might measure how much time your sales team is spending on training.

On the other hand, sales efficiency is how your team is performing. Sales effectiveness considers how much your sales reps are actually getting out of their training – and whether they’re putting that learning into practice in the field.

It’s possible to have a team that’s efficient – but not effective. In other words, your sales reps may complete tasks quickly. However, that doesn’t mean they’re completing the right tasks to move deals forward.

How to measure sales effectiveness

There’s an old adage that you can’t improve what you don’t measure. This definitely rings true for sales effectiveness. If you’re not continuously measuring it, it’s impossible to identify areas for improvement.

But many aren’t sure how to measure sales effectiveness.

5 essential sales effectiveness metrics

There’s no single metric for gauging sales effectiveness. Instead, sales organizations must track myriad metrics to get an accurate picture of it.

The exact measurements vary from organization to organization. However, there are five key metrics for any organization.

Quota attainment measures the percentage of your reps that are achieving quota. This metric is one of the most obvious ways to determine sales effectiveness.

This is the percentage of prospects who ultimately end up purchasing your product or service.

CAC is a measure of how much it costs the company to convert a prospect to a customer. This includes both the cost of sales and marketing, divided by the number of new customers acquired.

This is how quickly prospects progress through the sales cycle. Obviously, the shorter the sales cycle length, the faster money comes in. This is a metric you’ll want to compare to industry benchmarks. If your sales cycle length is significantly longer than industry average, there’s obviously something that needs to improve.

The average amount of money a business makes from closing a deal. A high average deal size can be an indicator that your sellers are effective at building relationships with customers.

Using KPIs to assess and improve sales performance

Sales effectiveness measures how your sales team is performing. As such, it’s important to focus on accessing your reps’ performance – and then taking data-based action to improve it.

Let’s take a look at some of the tools and techniques winning sales orgs are using to access and improve sales rep performance.

Sales dashboards and reporting

Improving your reps’ performance requires access to the right data. You can’t help them improve if you don’t know where they’re excelling and where they’re falling flat.

Most organizations have no shortage of data. But often, it lives in myriad locations. It’s important to ensure you have access to sales dashboards and reporting tools that make it easy to not only pull the right data – but also make sense of it so you can take action on it.

Sales call recording analysis

Sure, a sales rep may complete all training and enablement activities. But that doesn’t guarantee success. It’s important to understand whether the rep is actually using their newly acquired selling skills while in the field.

Conversation intelligence software records sales calls – and then analyzes those calls. This gives managers insight into what’s really happening in the field. That way, managers can provide training and coaching to improve the effectiveness of the rep – both on that deal and long term.

Mindtickle Call AI with conversation intelligence insights

Quarterly rep feedback cycles

Ongoing feedback is essential to improving rep performance and boosting sales effectiveness. Managers should perform quarterly reviews for each rep. These reviews are a great opportunity to examine sales performance quarter-over-quarter. In addition, it’s an opportunity to discuss opportunities for improvement.

But remember: feedback should be ongoing. Don’t wait until these quarterly meetings to provide feedback.

Newer reps vs. experienced rep analysis

It’s important to measure overall sales effectiveness. But be sure to measure sales effectiveness on a variety of levels too.

One example is newer reps vs. experienced reps. Experienced reps likely have different strengths and weaknesses than newer ones. Measuring sales effectiveness based on tenure can shed light on opportunities for improvement specific to each group.

Mindtickle Readiness Index

Sales enablement and sales training technology

Each rep has different strengths and weaknesses. Ongoing measurement helps you identify where sellers may need additional support to improve sales effectiveness.

Sales training, sales enablement, and sales coaching are all key to boosting seller performance. The sales effectiveness tools can help you identify the needs of each rep – and then deliver personalized sales training, sales enablement, and sales coaching to increase sales effectiveness.

Proven techniques for improving your sales effectiveness strategy

Improving sales effectiveness is a top goal of most sales organizations. But what can you do to boost this key metric?

Here are some foundational techniques to improve your sales effectiveness strategy.

Identify target markets and ideal customer profiles

Sometimes, a deal doesn’t move forward simply because the prospect isn’t the right fit for your products or services. It’s important to develop ideal customer profiles (ICPs), outlining the qualities of companies that are a good fit for your products and services. Be sure your sellers know these ICPs inside and out. Sellers should be spending the bulk of their time with prospects that align with these ICPs.

Provide personalized training and coaching

Sales training and coaching are key to building each seller’s competencies to succeed. But oftentimes, organizations deliver training and coaching that’s one-size-fits-all.

First, organizations must define the skills and competencies that are required to succeed in the field. Then, each rep should be measured against that ideal rep profile (IRP). Finally, personalized training and coaching can be delivered to strengthen those weaker skills – and boost sales effectiveness.

Ideal rep profile competencies

Improve sales and marketing collaboration

Typically, marketing teams create plenty of material for reps to use throughout the sales cycle. But often, these materials are created without input from the sales team. Marketing and sales teams must work together to identify what reps need throughout the sales cycle – and what actually helps move deals closer to the finish line. That way, marketing teams can focus on the content that’s proven to work. Sales and sales enablement teams can help ensure sellers know how and when to use these marketing-created materials.

Deliver continuous feedback

Feedback shouldn’t just come during a quarterly review. Instead, managers must make it a priority to deliver feedback on an ongoing basis. That way, their reps understand what they need to work on to improve sales outcomes.

Improving sales effectiveness with Mindtickle

Your sales reps might be efficient at “checking off the boxes.” But that doesn’t mean they are effective in the field. Increasing sales effectiveness must be a top priority for any organization looking to grow revenue.

It’s key to identify the competencies needed for success at your organization. Then, you must measure your reps against this gold standard to understand where additional support is needed.

With Mindtickle, you can shed light on where reps are excelling – and where they’re falling flat. Then, you can leverage the platform to deliver personalized, data-based sales training, coaching, and enablement to boost skills – and increase sales effectiveness.

Hypercharge sales effectiveness

See for yourself how Mindtickle can help you increase sales effectiveness at your organization.

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This post was originally published in September 2023 and was updated in February 2024. 

Video: How to Use CRM Data and Conversation Intelligence to Inform Your 2024 Enablement Plan

Helen Waite on February 20, 2024

Over the past few weeks, we’ve shared some tips on reducing the chaos in your tech stack. (You can check out Rahul’s video on accelerating bigger, faster deals with consolidation and Elisha’s tips for using your CRM, enablement analytics, and Call AI to inform better coaching.)

Today we’re sharing one of our most popular videos, which features Helen Waite from our product marketing team sharing ways for enablement professionals to streamline their tech stack and enhance their 2024 enablement plans.

Key takeaways:

During sales stage review:

  • Use CRM data to analyze conversion rates at different sales stages.
    Identify specific stages to see where win rates may decline.
  • Leverage conversation intelligence tools to review calls from the identified stage.
  • Examine whether sales methodologies like MEDDPICC are consistently followed.
  • Take corrective actions, such as reinforcing training or coaching, to address weaknesses in specific stages.

For a product or service launch:

  • Evaluate revenue performance against goals for previous product or service launches.
  • Assess how reps messaged, used content, and addressed prospect concerns.
  • Refine content based on reps’ understanding, prospect engagement, and feedback for future launches.
  • Incorporate learnings into the plan for subsequent product or service launches in the coming year.

To help ramp time for new reps:

  • Look at your CRM to determine the time to first deal for new hires.
  • Assess coaching effectiveness and manager involvement for new reps in the field.
  • Conduct role-plays to prep new reps for real-world selling scenarios.
  • Implement a new hire survey to gather feedback on the onboarding process.
  • Use feedback to improve coaching strategies, enhance onboarding processes, and reduce ramp time.

Transcription

Hey there. I’m Helen Waite from the product marketing team here at Mindtickle. And today I will talk a little about how to reduce your tech stack chaos. And really how enablement professionals can use all the different tech they use in their day-to-day job to better inform their 2024 calendar enablement.

Professionals, just like sales reps, are juggling a ton of different tech just to get their job done. Sometimes this means we’re not always using all the insights data and reports from these different systems to best inform a cohesive strategy.

Today, I’ll cover three ways that our customers have shared that they’ve used specifically their CRM data, and their conversation intelligence data, to better inform their enablement calendar.

As we’re getting into planning season, think of these three tips and how they can help you. First, we’ll look at a sales stage review. How CI and CRM data can play into looking at the individual stages your reps go through and how they perform in each stage? Then we’ll look into how to use this data to inform a product or service launch you may have coming up next year. And finally, we’ll look at ramp time. If you have new reps coming on board next year, how can you use learnings from this year to inform that plan? So let’s get into it.

The first tip is around a sales stage review.

A customer came to us who saw a massive spike in a decrease in their win rates at a certain sales stage, the discovery stage. How can they use the data points they have from their CRM and conversation intelligence to better attack this sales stage for the coming year? So in this scenario, the report you’re going to use will come from your CRM, and that’s your conversion rates by sales stage.

In this example, this customer saw this discovery stage was declining in their win rates; their win rates weren’t good and discovery, so the enablement team wanted to look into why that was. You’ll take action to review calls from the discovery stage of those reps to look at what’s happening in these discovery calls. And what’s the action that you’re going to take?

In this case, you can look at sales methodology. Is the methodology that you’ve implemented, maybe it’s MEDDPIC being followed? Or are there certain stages in discovery where MEDPICC is not being adhered to? You can look at the types of questions that your reps are asking or the content that they’re sharing in this stage, what is being evaluated across several different calls, and then take those findings and make sure that’s implemented in our 2024 plan, that could be in the form of reinforcement.

If a certain stage has declining win rates, you may need to focus on reinforcing training around that stage; what are your best practices that reps, or BDR, is depending on the stage you should be doing? And then also look at how role plays or coaching can play a hand in reinforcing this sales stage performance. By doing these call reviews, looking at if there’s a certain sales stage where you’re losing more than you were before, how can you find similarities across these calls and implement this as part of your plan for next year?

Our second tip is around a product or service launch.

In the next year, if you are launching a new product or service, take learnings from the previous year; how you’ll do that is looking at a report for a new product or service launch, what the revenue you made on that launch was versus your goal.

Maybe you launched a new service into the market and you’re looking at how you achieved how you performed on that launch versus your goal. Maybe you didn’t quite reach that revenue goal for that new product or service, and you want to reinforce that going into the new year. Maybe you have an additional product or service launch where you want to take learnings from that initial one last year.

Look at your revenue versus goal. The action you will take is digging into each of the calls where this product or service was pitched. So you can do this in conversation intelligence tools by easily searching the product name you’re looking for. You can drill down into the calls where this was discussed. To analyze what happened in those calls, what content was used or not used? How was the rep landing the messaging for this product or service launch? Was it aligned with what marketing or product marketing put together? Were they using the content correctly? Did the prospect understand the new product or service? Did it fit with their use case or help them solve a problem for them?

And then your action, how this will inform your plan for next year, is any launch plan adjustments, maybe there was some content missing that the rep didn’t have, to speak to this product or service?

Maybe there’s team-specific enablement where your reps were able to nail the messaging for this product. But when it comes to implementation, things fell short of what the customer expected. Or maybe the implementation wasn’t as smooth as possible. That could be something that you want to focus on for next year. And then, finally, content refinement. How was the content that you had for this new product or service? Did the reps understand it? Did they use it? Did prospects engage with it? Are there learnings from prospect reactions to further pass on to marketing or product marketing for next year?

Finally, ramp time evaluation. So if you have new reps coming on board, you are always looking at that time to first deal for new hires. How long is it taking for them to get revenue in the door? That’s the report you’ll look at in CRM. And then the action you’ll take is looking at these new reps when they’re in the field. How are they being coached? Is this an opportunity to coach the coach where their managers weren’t as present, or do they need more feedback and guidance from their managers? Maybe their managers need a little help on how best to coach new hires coming in.

You can also look at role plays. So preparing them for the field by doing several simulations that prepare them for real-world selling scenarios. And finally, doing a new hire survey. What is the feedback from new hires on their onboarding process? What do they think could be improved? Make sure all of that is incorporated into your plan for next year.

Those three tips can help you use your CRM data in your conversation intelligence data to help inform your 2024 enablement plan. For more actions and insights into how you can help plan and use all of your different tech and reduce some of that tech stack chaos, scan the QR code here to get more tips from our team. Thanks so much.

Tech Consolidation in Mindtickle

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The 6 Best Sales Enablement Tools of 2024

Helen Waite on February 15, 2024

Only 43% of salespeople reach their quota. On top of that, without the proper tools, it’s hard to tell what problems make them miss their quota. But with sales enablement tools, you can understand the attitudes, content, and skills that help your sales reps reach their objectives.

With features like personalized skill development and user analytics, sales teams can improve closing rates, strengthen communication skills, sales coaching, and provide insights to enhance sales cycles.

What to look for in a sales enablement tool

Sales enablement tools help teams understand the health of a sales cycle, spot weaknesses, and manage content that reduces a company’s risk of falling behind its goals by 27%.

Understanding analytics and finding material should be easy. And, as sales reps are always on the go, opt for cloud-based and mobile-friendly tools that are always accessible.

You should be able to extract insights to perform better and points to improve on for future sales.

Merge contact information with the sales cycle so sales reps can personalize the right content and approach for each contact, depending on previous sales history.

Content distribution and storage is important for fast and accessible material. It is also important to track data to show which content performs the best depending on the user profile.

Insights on sales rep performance can spot weaknesses and strengths. These data points capture roadblocks in the sales process, and you can offer sales rep coaching and training when needed.

The following list goes over the best sales enablement tools of 2024. Each platform has strong features that offer support for your sales team.

  1. Mindtickle
  2. Seismic
  3. Highspot
  4. Showpad
  5.  Allego
  6.  Gong

Mindtickle

Mindtickle is a market-leading sales enablement platform that helps revenue leaders boost sales through analytics, skill development, and content management. The platform has proven to increase sales rep revenue by 64%.

Benefits of Mindtickle

The biggest benefit of Mindtickle is the integrated platform of sales enablement insights, content management, conversation intelligence, coaching, and training.

Here’s why.

The platform records each interaction with customers, the content used, and the sales courses that the sales rep has completed. Not only that, but Mindtickle also compares every sales rep’s behavior and tone through recorded calls and emails to find the winning strategy and improve its sales recommendations.

With all this data, Mindtickle gives a full understanding of weaknesses in the sales pipeline and what skills a sales rep should learn to improve their sales rate.

In turn, the continuous development of sales reps increases win rates whilst simultaneously improving sales strategy and learning pitches for future suggestions to other sales reps.

Lastly, Mindtickle sales training differentiates itself by using gamification and video to tap into personal motivation and encourage employees to develop their skills. The platform uses engagement tactics like quizzes and role plays to ensure learned skills are applied to everyday tasks.

This is especially helpful for new hires and developing managers. In fact, Mindtickle was able to cut Janssen India’s onboarding ramp time in half.

Features

  • Analyzes account interactions and sales rep negotiations to identify winning behavior.
  • Centralized content management accesses situation training, tools, and marketing content and provides insights on when and how to use each piece of content to suit the customer target.
  • AI engines give feedback on tone, keywords, and pace of conversations. Then, the conversation insights are used to create training programs and personal coaching.
  • AI-recommended next steps and deal risks are identified with health scores, calls, and email sentiments.
  • Predictive revenue models use real-world pipeline data to suggest training with role-plays and recommended content.
  • Integrates with CRMs, APIs, calendars, and most platforms to centralize the sales stack. This avoids lost information and reduces scheduling, account notes, and communication time.
  • Mobile experience for sales reps on the go.

Price

Schedule a demo to learn about Mindtickle’s offer and experience a personalized walkthrough of the platform.

Final thoughts

Mindtickle was ranked the highest-rated sales enablement platform by G2. The platform’s ability to translate sales rep performance into insights helps teams improve and integrate new skills in a way that is evident in their future sales interactions.

Additionally, the app has the best adoption and is rated the easiest to use by G2.

G2 rating: 4.7 

Seismic

Seismic equips sales teams with training and content to close deals. The biggest differentiator is the ability to pull data from CRMs and create personalized charts, presentations, and other sales material automatically.

Benefits

Seismic can personalize the buyer experience with customizable dashboards that give detailed buyer insight and recommend actions. The platform pulls data and content performance insights from CRM data.

It gives sellers ownership over the sales materials with centralized content management, where reps customize materials to add personalization to their deals.

Features

  • Content management for teams to create, organize, control, and take ownership over content.
  • Automate and personalize content with data integrations to deliver a customized workflow.
  • Learning and coaching courses to onboard and improve sales skills.
  • Integrates with all types of platforms, from analytics to CRM.

Price

Prices are unavailable.

Final thoughts

Seismic is helpful for teams looking to automate and customize their sales materials. And Seismic’s strong analytics helps sales reps improve their sales and onboarding.

G2 rating: 4.4

Highspot

Highspot focuses on coaching and measures seller behavior to give recommendations that improve sales.

Benefits

Highspot aligns sales templates with selling scenarios to suggest the appropriate approach. The training portal helps sellers follow role-specific courses to improve knowledge retention by engaging in virtual selling activities.

Highspot integrates with social media platforms to directly pitch to customers through their network.

Features

  • Content management stores personalized content and uses AI management to highlight resources relevant to existing workflows.
  • Integrates with over 100 platforms.
  • Reps have access to sales templates that are industry best practices.
  • Analytics on content usage, sales performance, and interactive data reports to pinpoint content performance.
  • Personalization of landing pages, emails, and micro-portals.
  • Sales performance using scoreboards and customer scenarios.

Price

Prices are unavailable.

Final thoughts

Highspot provides industry context recommendations which are helpful for teams learning different industries that need fast adaptation. ROI pinpoints successful content in the pipeline, which is helpful for companies who require high buyer engagement to invest in products.

However, Highspot doesn’t offer call monitoring and feedback.

G2 rating: 4.7

Showpad

Showpad improves B2B selling by giving reps guided experiences for each scenario. It has two main solutions that can be used separately or together. Showpad Coach is for sales training and coaching. Showpad Content is for content creation and distribution.

Benefits

For companies with many different industries and target audiences, Showpad’s sales plays help reps with new client relationships. Reps are given seller information, industry insights, and opportunities for upselling or cross-selling.

And to ensure each team member is working towards better selling behavior, Showpad uses quizzes and tests to identify any skill gaps for training.

Features

  • Tracks buyer interest to recommend which customers to invest time in.
  • Analytics to gather top performance and replicate behavior.
  • Content management identifies opportunities for cross-selling and recommends next steps.
  • Powerful integrations and collaboration features for content creation and management.
  • Sales forecast predictability.
  • Videos embedded for personal workflows.

Price

Prices are unavailable.

Final thoughts

Showpad continuously trains employees and has analytics to understand skill gaps. Its content management stores and distributes selling content easily. Although Showpad does identify winning sales behavior, it doesn’t offer an ideal rep profile for selling behavior reference.

G2 rating: 4.6

Allego

Allego’s platform is comprehensive with analytics, skill training, conversation monitoring, and content management. The differentiation comes with using video for learning and communication.

Benefits

Allego records pitches and asynchronous communication, and course creation are easy with content tools that publish new lessons onto the platform.

Analytics monitors conversations, gives sellers feedback, and gives written suggestions when reps feel stuck in customer interactions.

Features

  • Accessible content management and analytics show ROI, instructions, and peer examples.
  • AI-powered coaches recommend next steps and courses.
  • Conversation intelligence to improve the conversation.
  • Pre-board new hires with onboarding channels and virtually show good examples.
  • Insights on calls and deals to identify weaknesses in pipelines.
  • Score sales readiness to assess the probability of sales closing rates.

Price

Not available

Final thoughts

Allego has extensive AI-powered metrics for sales readiness, sales content, and courses. Although Allego analyzes words spoken, it doesn’t provide feedback on tone or presentation to improve sellers’ communication skills.

G2 rating: 4.6

Gong

Gong captures customer interactions and analyzes salesperson behavior for communication risks and improvement opportunities.

Benefits

The benefit of Gong is the amount of analysis and reports given to coaches from sales rep interactions.

Front-line managers receive insights on sales reps for improvement, but successful sales cycles record talk tracks so the next sales rep knows exactly what to say to close a deal.

And for busy sales reps, Gong ensures no actions are missed with real-time alerts when actions are required.

Features

  • Shares top-performing salespeople strategies.
  • Identifies weaknesses in sales rep interactions and provides insight for improvement.
  • Helps strategize buyer path from other successful reps.
  • Comprehensive integrations with every type of platform.
  • Centralizes the content for revenue teams to work together and collaborate on accounts.

Price

Not available.

Final thoughts

Gong’s platform transforms each interaction into insights. However, there’s little onboarding and educational training for sales reps to work and develop their skill set. And Gong doesn’t offer video role plays or practice situations to reinforce learned behaviors.

G2 rating: 4.7

Whatever you choose, your sales enablement tool should scale as your company grows

Your sales enablement tool choice should complement your team’s needs. As your company grows, your choice of sales enablement platform must scale with you. So it’s important to look for a solution that gives support to growing roles and content libraries.

When companies grow, their products and offers expand. It’s important to ensure your sales team feels supported with the tools to navigate growth and new clientele without losing the brand’s guidelines and company objectives. That’s why clear content management and analytics help sales teams keep content that performs and organize material that drives revenue.

And this can come in the form of courses and knowledge tests to onboard new hires into the company with clear expectations and ideal rep behavior. The insights from winning sales rep behavior ramp up the onboarding process and empower hires with knowledge and traits to reach their quota.

Mindtickle supports your team with its content management system, sales readiness, analytics, and courses to provide support and direction for your team to grow.

Sales Enablement in Mindtickle

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

The Ultimate Guide to Building a Sales Enablement Strategy

Helen Waite on January 10, 2024

When sales enablement is done well, we know it gets results. Research shows that orgs with sales enablement achieve a 49% win rate on forecasted deals, compared to 42.5% for those without.

Win rates for orgs

with sales enablement
0 %
without sales enablement
0 %

But there’s still a disconnect. 

According to CSO Insights, only 27.5% of stakeholders feel that sales enablement initiatives meet or exceed their expectations

A well-designed sales enablement strategy can provide the necessary tools, resources, and support to empower sales teams and drive revenue growth. 

In this guide, we will explore:

  • What sales enablement is
  • Why it is important
  • How to implement a sales enablement strategy
  • Best practices to consider
  • How to find the best sales enablement platform

What is sales enablement?

Sales enablement is the training, tools, and resources provided to sales reps to help them successfully close more deals. The goal of sales enablement is to equip salespeople to be indispensable consultants to their buyers, build long-term customer loyalty, and drive profits for the organization as a whole.

With an effective sales enablement program, reps are better equipped to provide their customers with valuable information and offer insight that guides buyers into optimal purchasing decisions. Salespeople, therefore, become trustworthy resources that buyers rely on for the long haul.

Why is a sales enablement strategy important?

With a clearly defined sales enablement strategy, sales enablement practitioners can continually drive revenue and achieve key business objectives like quota attainment.

A sales enablement strategy encompasses a range of tactics and initiatives aimed at empowering sales teams with the necessary tools, knowledge, and support to drive success.

The importance of a sales enablement strategy lies in its ability to address common obstacles faced by sales teams, streamline processes, and maximize the potential of every salesperson. By aligning marketing and sales efforts, optimizing training and development, and providing the right resources, a sales enablement strategy can have a profound impact on an organization’s bottom line. Here are just a few hard-to-ignore benefits of sales enablement:

 

#1 Onboard new salespeople faster

Sales enablement is critical for organizations to onboard new salespeople faster, ensuring they are equipped with the knowledge and skills to contribute quickly. In fact, our 2022-2023 Sales Enablement Outlook Report found that almost a quarter (23%) of C-level sales executives said onboarding was a top priority in 2023. By reducing ramp-up time, organizations can accelerate the time it takes for new hires to become productive members of the sales team, resulting in increased revenue generation.

#2 Enable salespeople to spend more time selling

Almost 65 percent of a salesperson’s time is spent on tasks that don’t generate profits, such as administrative work or data entry. Effective sales enablement programs help an organization identify processes that waste time so reps can be more efficient and profitable. Some sales enablement technology can also automate CRM data entry and other repetitive, manual processes so reps can spend more time selling.

#3 Help retain sales talent and boost revenue

Sales enablement ensures that salespeople have the support and resources they need to succeed. This not only increases job satisfaction and reduces turnover but also helps drive revenue growth by equipping sales teams with the necessary skills and knowledge to close deals. Enablement driving more revenue means more sellers are meeting or exceeding their quota. In addition, an enablement strategy that encompasses sales coaching ensures a more positive relationship between sales reps and their managers, also reducing churn and turnover.

#4 Effectively meet next year’s increased quotas

An organization’s plans to increase sales quotas can be a stress point for sales managers. While most of the top salespeople will be ready for the higher requirements, many of the C- and B-players will need to be coached up to prepare. Sales enablement mitigates this challenge by using bespoke training processes that shorten sales cycles and boost sales rep performance.

#5 Maintain a long-term strategy in seasons of high growth

As the business grows, organizations experience new customer expectations, unexpected employee challenges, and other growing pains. When company leadership gets caught up in these urgencies, they’re usually focused on the here and now rather than long-term strategies and future growth. This approach, albeit understandable, leads to unpreparedness over time.

Effective sales enablement programs help organizations conduct effective sales training and coaching to prepare reps for future growth even while other priorities dominate leadership’s attention.

Naturally, all of these benefits work to achieve the most important goal of any sales team: driving revenue. Sales enablement empowers reps to become more knowledgeable, maximally efficient, and capable of building profitable client loyalty that the competition can’t match.

How to implement a sales enablement strategy

Because every organization is different, there isn’t just “one right way” to implement a sales enablement program. There are, however, a few important pillars to keep in mind. Here are a few non-negotiables:

The first step to creating your sales enablement process is to establish your sales enablement manager. This person will be responsible for unifying marketing and sales and overseeing the entire process, so the person should be a great fit for both areas and have the buy-in of executive leadership.

For a sales enablement process to succeed, your organization will need an environment of alignment and unification. No more silos, anywhere! The unification process might be one of the first tasks of the sales enablement manager.

First, the executive team must be aligned and supportive of the organization’s sales enablement mission. Next, all employees in the organization, especially marketing and sales, need to understand the role of enablement and how marketing and sales interact and support the enablement function. Some common frameworks, like RACI, can be really helpful here when outlining all of the priorities for enablement and how other teams will work together to achieve shared goals.

In collaboration with marketing, start developing your onboarding materials and an everboarding strategy. If there is onboarding already in place, interview newly onboarded reps on their experience and measure key indicators like time to first deal and time to fully ramped quota. Use this information to determine changes in your onboarding approach. Use best practices in enablement like making training engaging, using many modalities of instructor-led, bite-sized microlearning, and knowledge tests.

You’ll also want a sales coaching system in place for ongoing encouragement and development. This will require a strong partnership and buy-in from your sales management to implement. Check out our resources on implementing a coaching culture.

Next, equip reps with content and vital field resources that will help them effectively sell and provide value. These can include white papers, data sheets, sell sheets, product videos, and playbooks that outline effective next steps and milestones. An effective sales content management system can ensure your content is available to reps anytime, the content is up to date, and can be tracked as they share collateral with prospects.

Also, offer in-depth information about buyers and buyer personas so your team can effectively maintain long-lasting buyer relationships. This can include persona deep-dives, common pain points, industry knowledge, and use cases that solve persona challenges.

Now that you have the key pillars of your sales enablement strategy in place, ensure you have open channels for feedback from all stakeholders. This includes your reps, like issuing surveys and conducting interviews to gain insight into their experience going through onboarding and ongoing enablement. Meet regularly with your sales leaders and sales managers to stay apprised of challenges their teams are facing and how enablement can be nimble and release targeted programs to resolve these. Finally, attend weekly pipeline and forecasting meetings with your CRO or CSO to know how deals and teams are progressing, where gaps are related to deal stages or competitive hardships, and how enablement can be leveraged to accelerate and close more deals.

 

Sales enablement best practices

With a solid sales enablement foundation in place, you can now build on it. These best practices will help boost the effectiveness of any sales enablement program.

Just as the sales team should be aligned with the marketing department, sales enablement should be aligned with sales operations. The role of sales ops is to ensure that the sales organization is functioning efficiently. A sales enablement program should therefore be built and maintained with sales-ops in mind.

Sales enablement should glean from the data that sales ops uncovers. For example, sales ops might reveal certain stages in the sales cycle that are falling flat. When problems are flagged by sales-ops, sales enablement can roll up its sleeves and determine the best fixes.

Staggeringly, up to 80 percent of content created by marketing goes unused by sales teams. Much of the reason for this low usage stems from a lack of marketing-sales alignment. But another simpler reason is that reps either can’t find the content they need or they don’t even know a certain piece exists.

Lengthy course work is difficult to remember and frustrating to reps. Microlearning removes the frustration by presenting content in short, easy-to-consume training modules. Short and engaging learning sessions improve memory retention, reduce learner fatigue, and make training enjoyable. Microlearning modules are also easy to update and less expensive than traditional training formats.

Your sellers are just one piece of the revenue puzzle. Ensure your enablement extends beyond sales, to other revenue-generating roles such as:

  • Customer success
  • Presales
  • Sales engineers
  • Business development representatives
  • Marketing

This is becoming more popular in terms of revenue enablement. Some enablement departments even break their team members up to focus on enabling certain roles. If you are able to grow or restructure your enablement team, consider focusing resources on the additional revenue-generating roles outside of sales.

 

How to find a sales enablement platform and what to look for

When researching sales enablement platforms, begin with a list of must-have features based on your needs and nice-to-have features. Consider some of these table stakes capabilities when creating this list.

Trainers should be able to create engaging micro-learning modules and update them as needed. The modules should be mobile-friendly so reps can access them anytime and from anywhere. Automated training paths are a must for ensuring each team member is progressing in his or her specific role. Also, look for gamification capabilities that provide scoring, badges, and leaderboards for healthy team competition.

Look for a platform that provides sales certifications to help reps and managers track progress. If you can accurately gauge whether or not reps have acquired the intended knowledge and identify any gaps, you’ll be confident every time a rep comes face-to-face with a client.

Streamlining your sales and training content in a singular enablement platform is key. You want to ensure you can easily store and manage sales collateral, making it filterable and easy for sales reps to find in the moment. A huge plus in a sales content management platform is the ability for reps to share content with prospects and customers and track their engagement. We also suggest a content management provider that also has digital sales rooms for tailored buyer enablement.

You’ll want to find a sales enablement platform that enables you to incorporate a structured coaching program. Coaching paths should be guided by competency maps, and your coaches should be able to assign new training and micro-learning modules based on the results of the coaching. In addition, knowledge retention for a range of topics including products, services, and industry trends is critical for sales representatives to have educated, direct conversations with customers and prospects. In addition, the ability to deliver role-plays (including video-based and screenshare) and get immediate AI-powered feedback on role-plays are critical for skill development.

Sales Kickoff and events are intended to make a lasting impact on sales reps’ motivation and readiness. You’ll ensure time and money are well spent by leveraging the technology that a great sales enablement tool can offer. Find a platform that can collect, measure, and analyze feedback during every step of your SKO or event to determine what worked, what could be improved, and whether or not your desired objectives have been met. Even more, your platform should allow reps instant access to videos and presentations shown during the event, which will encourage teams to continue their engagement.

Look for a platform that provides the ability to integrate with CRMs, business intelligence tools, content management systems, and communication tools. This will provide a seamless and efficient sales enablement ecosystem.

There are table-stakes analytics and reporting that should be available like engagement, adoption, and performance on enablement programs. Also, seek platforms that can report on the impact enablement is having on business outcomes like quota attainment, win rates, and increase revenue. Bonus points for being able to import data into Business Intelligence tools for even deeper analyses.

 

Getting started with your sales enablement strategy

Now that you’ve learned the importance of enablement, how to structure a strategy, and how to implement that strategy it’s time to start driving revenue for your organization.

Sales Enablement in Mindtickle

Request a demo to learn more about how the Mindtickle data-driven sales enablement platform can help your sales teams close more deals.

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This post was originally published in January 2020, updated in June 2023, and again in January 2024.

 

What is Sales Engagement and How is it Different From Sales Enablement?

Helen Waite on December 20, 2023

Think of your most recent major purchase – either in your personal or professional life. Chances are, the interactions you had with the sales rep had a significant impact on your purchase decision.

If so, you’re not alone. Sellers who effectively engage their sellers are more likely to close deals. It’s as simple as that.

But taking a random, ad hoc approach to sales engagement isn’t effective. Instead, the most successful sales organizations understand the importance of a solid sales engagement plan.

In this post, we’ll explore what sales engagement is, why it’s important, and how sales engagement differs from sales enablement. We’ll also explore steps you can take to create a plan that empowers your sales reps to build relationships, foster trust, and close more deals.

What is sales engagement?

Sales leaders recognize the need for effective sales engagement. In fact, recent research from Gartner found that 90% of sales leaders plan to invest in “technologies and methodologies to help their sellers engage effectively with prospects and customers.”

Gartner research found that

of sales leaders plan to invest in technologies and methodologies to help their sellers engage effectively with prospects and customers
0 %

But what is sales engagement?

The term refers to all interactions a sales rep has with their buyers. This includes:

  • Email interactions
  • Phone calls
  • Interactions on social media
  • Face-to-face interactions

Why is sales engagement important?

Now, we’re in alignment about what sales engagement is. But why does it matter?

Great products and services are still important. That will never change. But the experiences a buyer has with your brand also have a big impact on whether they choose your solution – or opt for another.

A sales rep who effectively engages with a buyer is more likely to earn their trust – and ultimately, their business. After all, people want to do business with people they like and trust. Of course, when sellers close more deals, your business’ revenue grows.

On the flip side, if a seller struggles to engage buyers, they’re more likely to lose deals. Over time, this will have a negative impact on your bottom line.

Sales engagement vs sales enablement: How are they different?

These two terms are often used interchangeably. Though they’re certainly related, they’re not the same thing.

As we’ve already covered, sales engagement is focused on the interactions a sales rep has with their prospective buyers. As a general rule, better sales engagement leads to better sales outcomes.

On the other hand, sales enablement is focused on providing sales teams with the tools, training, information, content, and support they need to close more deals. Every seller needs a certain set of tools and competencies to be successful in the field. Sales enablement is focused on ensuring sellers have mastery of those skills and competencies.

There is often overlap between the two. For example, a sales enablement team may develop a training module on more effective email communication. Or, they may provide the sales team with email templates for sellers to use in their interactions. These are both examples of sales enablement. However, the goal of these initiatives is to improve sales engagement.

Sales engagement Sales enablement
What is it? Interactions and communication sellers have with prospects throughout the purchase journey Equipping sales reps with the training, tools, content, and information they need to be successful in the field.
What is the focus? Buyers Sellers
What is the goal? Building trust and fostering relationships with prospects Ensuring sales reps have the skills and competencies needed to close more deals
What are the key components? Calls, emails, face-to-face interactions, sales engagement platform Sales coaching, sales content, sales enablement platform
KPIs Win rate, quota attainment, time to close Completion rates, ramp time, productivity

How to create a sales engagement plan

Leaving your sellers to their own devices usually isn’t the best approach. Instead, it’s best practice to develop a plan first.

What is a sales engagement plan?

Think of your plan as a documented outreach roadmap for your sales team. It’s a framework that outlines how and when sellers should engage with buyers. It should also cover how sales reps can leverage the technology that’s available to them to improve sales engagement.

A sales engagement plan isn’t based on what sales leadership thinks will work. Instead, it’s based on what’s proven to work for that particular organization.

Your plan must be flexible. For example, if a prospect is largely sharing negative feedback during interactions, it’s probably best to back off, rather than proceed with the next outreach effort.

Tips for developing an effective sales engagement plan

What does a winning plan look like? There’s no easy answer. The right plan is the one that works best for your business.

However, there are certain steps you can take to help ensure you create an effective one.

Before developing a plan, it’s important to take a step back to define who it is your sellers are engaging with on a daily basis. You should define who these prospects are, what titles they hold, and what their key challenges and pain points are (among other things). You may already have this information documented in ideal customer profiles (IDPs) or buyer personas.

At many organizations, marketing teams spend time creating content to support sales engagement. For example, a marketing team might develop email campaigns tailored to specific industries. Or, they might develop social media content that sales reps can post on their own social media channels. Those are just a couple examples.

But all too often, marketing content is created in a vacuum – without input from the sales team. That’s a big mistake.

Instead, marketing and sales teams must be aligned on content creation. A great way to do this is to schedule a recurring meeting between the two teams.

During these meetings, sales teams can provide feedback to marketing teams on their challenges in the field. Then, marketing teams can create content that addresses those challenges.

When marketing and sales teams are aligned, sales reps are more likely to have the content they need to increase sales engagement and ultimately, close more deals.

There are many stages of the sales journey – from prospecting to closing the deal. It’s important to define what this journey looks like for your customers. Your sales team can provide great insight on this topic.

Once you’ve defined the customer journey, you can create a plan to effectively engage prospects every step of the way.

After you’ve documented the customer journey, it’s time to determine the key touchpoints a sales rep will have throughout the journey. This might include:

  • Marketing emails
  • Emails from the sales rep
  • Phone calls
  • Voicemails
  • Engagement on social media

This will provide reps with a framework they can use to understand what step to take when.

How many customer touchpoints should there be? Again, there’s no easy answer. It depends on a number of factors including industry and how engaged the buyer is.

The right content can help your sales reps effectively engage with buyers. Sales and marketing teams should take an inventory of existing content and determine where there may be gaps. Then, these teams can work together to develop content to engage buyers throughout the purchase journey.

The best place to store completed sales content is in a sales content management solution. That way, sellers can always find the latest versions of any content they need – all in one place. In addition, organizations can track how both buyers and sellers are engaging with this content – and how (or whether) it’s impacting sales outcomes.

It’s important to remember that buyers are more informed than ever before. Often, they’ve done plenty of research on their own.

As such, generic, one-size-fits all outreach, communication, and campaigns aren’t effective. Instead, it’s important to develop targeted, personalized campaigns that address the challenges and pain points of each prospect.

You can’t simply develop your sales engagement plan – and then never think about it again. Instead, it’s important to monitor and measure the success of your sales engagement plan on an ongoing basis.

Make it a priority to examine your sales engagement and sales enablement dashboards and analytics on a regular basis. In addition, ask for feedback from your sales team. Your top sellers have great insight into what’s working and what isn’t. Then, use the insights you uncover to make impactful changes to your sales engagement plan.

How to choose a sales engagement platform for your business

The right technology is essential to a successful strategy. After all, sellers need the right tools to effectively engage with buyers.

Increasingly, sales teams are leveraging B2B sales engagement software to improve sales engagement at scale. In fact, research from Gartner tells us that 87% of sales teams use a sales engagement platform.

According to Gartner

of sales teams use a sales engagement platform
0 %

Not all tools are the same, though. It’s important to find the right sales engagement platform for your organization. The right platform will have robust features and functionality that automate and optimize sales engagement and improve outcomes at your organization.

A revenue productivity platform can also help ensure sellers are ready to engage with buyers throughout the sales cycle.

A revenue productivity platform like Mindtickle equips sellers with the training and content they need to effectively engage sellers throughout every stage of the sales journey. In addition, a revenue productivity platform with conversation intelligence helps sales managers understand how sales reps are engaging with buyers on calls. These insights can shed light on opportunities for additional coaching to improve sales engagement.

Finally, strong revenue productivity solution provides robust analytics that help sales leaders understand how buyers and sellers are engaging throughout the sales cycle. Sales leaders can use these insights to optimize their sales engagement plan and ensure their sellers have what it takes to effectively engage with any buyer.

Sales Enablement in Mindtickle

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Revenue Enablement: What is it and What Do You Need to Know?

Helen Waite on November 28, 2023

You’ve probably been on a call, email, or meeting lately where “revenue enablement” has come up in conversation and is used more frequently. 

But it’s not just a buzzword or the jargon of the moment. 

Revenue enablement is a crucial concept for revenue-generating teams due to evolving customer expectations and the need for seamless collaboration across different functions.

The reality is that customers want personalized and engaging experiences throughout their buying journey. Revenue enablement recognizes that all customer-facing teams, including sales, marketing, customer success, and support, must work together to deliver exceptional experiences.

By empowering these teams with the same tools and data, revenue enablement ensures cohesive alignment and enables organizations to optimize the entire customer journey. It drives revenue growth, enhances customer satisfaction, promotes collaboration, and boosts operational efficiency, making it a vital concept for revenue-generating teams.

Here’s everything you need to know about revenue enablement. 

What is revenue enablement?

Revenue enablement is the next iteration or V2 of sales enablement. It’s the idea that all revenue-generating teams at an organization — not just sales — are empowered with the same tools and data. That way, the whole company works seamlessly to provide engaging buying and selling experiences.

Revenue enablement vs. sales enablement: How are they different?

Sales enablement and revenue enablement are related concepts, but there are some key differences between them.

Sales enablement refers to the strategies, processes, and technologies that support and empower sales teams to sell more effectively. This includes activities such as providing sales training and coaching, developing sales collateral and tools, and ensuring that sales teams have access to the right information and resources to close deals.

Revenue enablement, on the other hand, encompasses a broader range of activities that go beyond just supporting sales teams. It involves aligning all customer-facing functions of an organization, such as:

    • Marketing

    • Sales

    • Customer Success

    • Support

This includes optimizing the entire customer journey, from lead generation and nurturing to post-sales support and renewal. Revenue enablement aims to drive revenue growth by maximizing the lifetime value of customers.

In summary, sales enablement is focused on supporting and empowering the sales function specifically, while revenue enablement is focused on aligning all customer-facing functions around a common revenue goal. (Find out where your revenue enablement IQ stacks up here.) 

Why should you implement revenue enablement?

Today’s business-to-business (B2B) customer expects more from their buying experience. They want relationships, experiences, and understanding, not sales-driven transactions. In fact, Salesforce research indicates that 66% of customers expect companies to respond to their unique needs.

When sales enablement and revenue operations (RevOps) work hand in hand, organizations are poised to:

Increase revenue

By aligning all customer-facing functions around a common revenue goal, you can help optimize the entire customer journey, resulting in increased revenue generation.

Improve customer experience

You can ensure that customers receive a consistent, high-quality experience throughout their entire journey with an organization, from initial engagement to post-sales support.

Better alignment and collaboration

Promote better alignment and collaboration between different customer-facing functions, such as marketing, sales, customer success, and support, leading to improved efficiency and effectiveness.

Increase customer lifetime value

By optimizing the customer journey and ensuring a positive customer experience, you can help increase customer loyalty and retention, leading to higher customer lifetime value.

Better data and insights

 Get a have a holistic view of the customer journey, which can lead to better data and insights into customer behavior, preferences, and needs.

Overall, revenue enablement can help organizations drive revenue growth, improve customer satisfaction and loyalty, and increase operational efficiency and effectiveness.

How can revenue enablement help your sales team?

Taking this approach can help your sales team by doing the following:

Better aligning with other customer-facing functions

Revenue enablement aligns all customer-facing functions around a common revenue goal, ensuring that sales teams work collaboratively with marketing, customer success, and support teams. This alignment ensures a consistent customer experience throughout the entire customer journey, which can help sales teams close deals more effectively.

Improving lead generation and nurturing

 Revenue enablement helps organizations develop a more comprehensive understanding of their target market and buyer personas. This knowledge can help sales teams generate higher-quality leads and nurture them more effectively, resulting in a higher conversion rate.

Enhancing sales enablement

Revenue enablement helps organizations develop more comprehensive sales enablement strategies that go beyond just providing training and collateral to sales teams. It ensures that sales teams have access to the right information and resources at every stage of the customer journey, enabling them to sell more effectively.

Better data and insights

Revenue enablement requires organizations to have a holistic view of the customer journey, which can lead to better data and insights into customer behavior, preferences, and needs. Sales teams can use this information to tailor their sales approach and messaging, resulting in higher win rates.

Increasing customer lifetime value

By optimizing the customer journey and ensuring a positive customer experience, revenue enablement can help increase customer loyalty and retention, leading to higher customer lifetime value. Sales teams can benefit from this by having a larger pool of loyal customers to upsell and cross-sell to.

Overall, revenue enablement can help sales teams sell more effectively by providing them with the right information, resources, and support to close deals, and by ensuring that they work collaboratively with other customer-facing functions to provide a consistent, high-quality customer experience.

What are some examples of revenue enablement tools?

Revenue enablement tools are software solutions that help businesses increase revenue by improving their sales and marketing processes. Some examples include:

    • CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software: A CRM system helps businesses manage their customer interactions and sales pipelines, enabling them to track leads, forecast revenue, and automate sales workflows.

    • Marketing automation software: Marketing automation software helps businesses automate their marketing processes, such as email campaigns, social media management, and lead scoring.

    • Sales enablement software: Sales enablement solutions provides sales teams with the tools and content they need to engage with prospects and close deals, such as sales collateral, training materials, and analytics.

    • Content management software: Sales content management software allows businesses to organize and manage their marketing and sales content, such as product information, marketing collateral, sales decks, competitive battlecards, pricing sheets, and case studies.

    • Sales forecasting software: Sales forecasting software uses data analysis and machine learning algorithms to predict future sales trends, enabling businesses to make more informed decisions about their sales and marketing strategies.

    • Customer analytics software: Customer analytics software provides businesses with insights into their customer behavior and preferences, enabling them to tailor their sales and marketing strategies to better meet customer needs.

Best practices for getting started with revenue enablement

As you’re building up your revenue enablement strategy, here are key things to keep in mind:

  • Establish key business objectives for revenue enablement, such as overall revenue growth and individual seller productivity metrics
  • Decide whether to consolidate technology and data under one revenue productivity platform versus integrating point solution products, or some version of each
  • Determine a cadence for discussing and analyzing revenue enablement initiatives – prioritize and stick to it
  • Hold front-line management, marketing, sales enablement, and ops accountable to overall business goals
  • Create a cadence around org readiness to be discussed alongside forecasting and pipeline reviews

Ready to take the next step?

To pivot toward a revenue enablement-focused approach, organizations should take the following steps:

    1. Align around a common revenue goal: The first step is to align all customer-facing functions around a common revenue goal. This involves setting clear revenue targets and ensuring that all customer-facing teams understand how their activities contribute to those targets.

    1. Develop a comprehensive understanding of the customer journey: To optimize the customer journey, organizations need to develop a comprehensive understanding of their customers and their buying journey. This includes understanding their pain points, preferences, and needs at each stage of the journey.

    1. Implement a technology stack: Revenue enablement requires a technology stack that supports the entire customer journey, from lead generation and nurturing to post-sales support and renewal. This includes marketing automation, customer relationship management (CRM), and customer success platforms.

    1. Develop a sales enablement strategy: Revenue enablement goes beyond just sales enablement. However, it’s still essential to develop a sales enablement strategy that ensures that sales teams have the right information, resources, and support to sell effectively.

    1. Measure and optimize performance: To ensure efforts are effective, organizations need to measure performance regularly and optimize their approach based on data and insights. This includes tracking key performance indicators (KPIs) such as revenue growth, customer lifetime value, and customer satisfaction.

Implementing revenue enablement is an ongoing process that requires continuous refinement and improvement. By taking these steps, organizations can create a customer-centric revenue growth engine that optimizes the entire customer journey and drives business success.

Ready to learn more about how Mindtickle can make this a reality at your organization?

Revenue Enablement in Mindtickle

Connect with our team so we can learn more about your revenue enablement challenges and discuss how Mindtickle can help. 

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This post was originally published in April 2023 and was updated in November 2023. 

The 8 Essential Features Your Sales Enablement Tool Should Have 

Helen Waite on November 15, 2023

In 2022, only 26% of sales reps reached 90% or more of their quota. That’s not a very successful win rate, considering new sales revenue streams are the bread and butter of an organization. So the question is, how can we empower our sales teams to successfully reach their sales quotas?

Percentage of reps who hit quota in 2022
0%

The simple answer: introduce sales enablement tools.

With sales enablement tools, you can train your sales reps to effectively target new customers, tackle difficult negotiations, close more deals, and increase your company’s bottom line.

Once you’ve read this article, you’ll have learned about:

  • The advantages that the right sales enablement tool can give your company
  • The essential features to look out for in sales enablement tools — and why
  • The top five sales enablement tools
  • Our helpful recommendations

Why are sales enablement tools important for your business?

The most powerful feature of sales enablement tools is their ability to centralize knowledge between the sales and marketing departments.

This has a butterfly effect that increases revenue, boosts quota attainment, and solidifies brand identity across the company.

When sales and marketing departments have centralized access to content, insights, and approaches, it impacts sales revenue due to streamlined processes, provides successful strategies, and shapes sellers with winning behaviors and skills.

With sales enablement tools, your business can:

  • Align sales and marketing teams with clear goals, tasks, and knowledge sharing. This is important, as 50% of teams feel they need additional resources to properly execute enablement tasks.
  • Learn winning attitudes and skills from top-performing sellers, and transform those behaviors into skills for other sellers to learn and replicate.
  • Optimize material for better win rates with content insights.
  • Accelerate the onboarding ramp process for new hires. In turn, this sets up new hires for success, with almost 79% of companies that have effective training meeting 100% of their sales quotas.
  • Keep sellers up to date on new strategies, product launches, and market approaches. In fact, 90% of sellers who hit more than 75% of their quota participate in sales training monthly.
  • Keep track of KPIs and goals. Over 71% of companies that have clear sales KPIs reach 100% of their sales quotas.

The benefits that sales enablement tools bring to your team

Modern sales enablement solutions make all of your sales processes simpler, more measurable, and more actionable.

1. Centralize access to content

Sales enablement tools help reps know what content is available to them and how to use it in their sales interactions.

With half of all customer engagement coming from only 10% of a company’s content, reps need to quickly find relevant sales material to nurture leads, follow up with prospects, and convince important decision-makers of the value of your products.

But Forrester found that “not having the right content” is one of the biggest challenges for sales teams. Sellers reported that finding content and information is a significant productivity obstacle, affecting their daily work.

With a sales enablement tool, your enablement team can tag content to categorize it based on buyer persona, stage in the sales funnel, customer outcome, or the stakeholder it’s most relevant to. This includes:

  • Case studies
  • Whitepapers
  • Sales playbooks
  • Competitor comparisons
  • Microlearning modules
  • Training call recordings

Then your reps can search for key content terms and easily find relevant sales enablement content. This system equips sellers with the knowledge and content they need to progress conversations with prospects, helping them improve their win rates and close more deals.

2. Increase collaboration between sales and marketing

LinkedIn found that 85% of survey respondents believe that better marketing and sales alignment would provide major business growth. Unfortunately, sales and marketing teams often fall into silos with little communication between them.

Sales enablement improves alignment between these teams and gives better visibility into the effectiveness of their processes. Marketers can see how sellers use marketing content in their sales conversations and get measurable data on how different content types impact the sales process.

Additionally, sellers can see what content the marketing team has produced and get updates about new case studies or product sheets that they can use in their nurturing flows.

Both teams can see which messaging, content, and campaigns are working, so they can collaborate to improve overall sales performance.

3. Improve visibility into team performance

Sales enablement gives sellers access to content, resources, and training materials to help them build the skills and knowledge they need.

Sales leaders, can see their reps’ performance data alongside insights into their content usage and training completion.

This helps managers understand how the content, resources, and training provided affect the sales team’s performance.

With access to data on how training content and exercises affect team performance, managers gain insights into providing a data-informed and personalized approach to sales coaching programs for each team member.

8 features you need in your sales enablement tool

Organizations in the market for a sales enablement tool should look for the following key features:

  1. Insights and analytics
  2. Onboarding management
  3. Gamification
  4. Automated workflows
  5. Program management
  6. Content management
  7. Integrations
  8. Governance

1. Insights and analytics to optimize sales efforts

Most organizations spend a great deal of time, money, and resources training their sales teams. But without a way to measure those efforts, it’s hard to understand what’s working and what parts of the training process need improvement.

With sales enablement tools, you get detailed analytics and insights into what works, what doesn’t, and how to improve.

With data and insights from your sales enablement platform, you can make data-driven decisions to improve sales initiatives or develop a specific skill in individual reps.

For example, managers can benchmark a sales rep’s performance in a key area, like closing. After training sessions and 1:1 coaching designed to improve closing skills, the manager tracks the close rate and other closing-related KPIs to see how the rep’s performance changes. Based on those measurable results, the manager can adjust the training program accordingly.

Also, sales enablement tools show how much time and money it costs to train each sales representative. If costs are higher than managers would like them to be, they can take steps to reduce inefficiencies and improve productivity.

2. Onboarding management and accelerating ramp time

Sales enablement tools help onboard new sales hires with the knowledge and training they need to succeed in their roles.

During the sales onboarding process, it can be a challenge to keep reps engaged, track their readiness, and provide them with easy access to forms, manuals, and other onboarding materials.

 

However, using sales enablement tools for onboarding helps teams to:

  • Improve learning and testing through automated training paths that get reps ramped up faster.
  • Ensure better communication by keeping reps constantly updated and thoroughly engaged, leading to higher productivity and fewer turnover costs.
  • Enhance coaching by leveraging the tools and content that empower reps and managers to identify and address any areas — like knowledge and skills — requiring improvement.

3. Gamification to motivate sales reps

It’s not easy to keep sales representatives engaged during sales onboarding and continuous training.

That’s where gamification comes in.

Through gamification, organizations can turn routine tasks into enjoyable activities that motivate and incentivize sales reps to develop their skills.

 

Through gamification, managers encourage friendly competition, break learning into bite-sized segments, offer relevant games and quizzes, and introduce real-life scenarios.

Gamification can also add a social element to onboarding and training and promote open communication among sales representatives.

Gamification can be used by new reps during the onboarding process and by seasoned reps who need to build upon their skills and experience consistently. It can assist with continuous training and the fine-tuning of skills, all in a fun environment.

4. Automated workflows to streamline sales strategies

Collaboration and accountability are common struggles for organizations. Not only do automated workflows make it a breeze to collaborate — but they also hold all the right people accountable.

For example, you can use automated workflows to create a seamless feedback loop between managers and sales reps. Here, audio or video recordings submitted by sales reps are sent automatically to sales managers who can offer qualitative and quantitative feedback. This removes manual reminders and a continual back and forth, streamlining the learning process.

Automated workflows help managers and sales representatives tackle tasks instantly and through a centralized process that tracks progress.

5. Program management to reach strategic goals

Program management helps sales teams reach their targets through strategic initiatives, such as voice of the customer programs or sales onboarding programs.

These initiatives include multiple connected projects, with a project manager overseeing the team members who are focused on different projects.

These projects are bigger than the individual sellers working on their deals. Instead, they involve different teams, such as leadership for strategic direction, marketing for content creation, and IT for technical implementation.

If your sales enablement tool doesn’t have a program management feature, it’s difficult to manage and execute these strategic initiatives, and this can negatively impact your sales enablement efforts.

But with a program management feature, program managers can ease some of the stress they face by creating and structuring programs, adding and managing collaborators, creating and publishing relevant content, and automating communication.

6. Content management and centralized resources

Throughout the sales cycle, sales representatives depend on a variety of content to increase buyer engagement and understanding.

The challenge with all of this content is that it must be well-organized so that it can be easily located and fully utilized.

A content management feature makes it simple for sellers to access sales material quickly. By having a simple and accessible content management system, you empower sellers to utilize the correct content at the right time within the sales journey.

Additionally, enabling multiple people to collaborate in the content authoring process, whether in PowerPoint, PDF, or video, empowers teams to bring shared experiences and best practices into play.

An effective sales enablement tool helps your team track content usage and gives insights into the content with the highest engagement rate and how to properly use and introduce content resources.

7. Integrations to facilitate organizational planning

As sales enablement practices evolve within organizations, new tools are purchased. This can overload users with numerous platforms and multiple logins.

The solution for consolidating disparate tools is to integrate them with a sales enablement tool.

A sales enablement tool that offers integrations helps organizations keep their communication, calendaring, CRM, reporting and business intelligence, content management, and other tools all in one place.

Integrations allow sales representatives to spend less time digging through multiple platforms and more time doing what matters: selling and improving their skills.

8. Governance to organize tasks and data insights

Sales enablement programs have a lot of moving parts. Therefore, you’ll need to operate under complete confidence that your organization is using its resources efficiently and securely at scale.

Platform governance allows you to set up different access levels across multiple user roles and locations.

This helps you simplify coaching workflows and roll-up reports based on organizational hierarchy and define custom roles for those who need special access.

The 5 best sales enablement tools to improve revenue

Tech marketplace and review site G2 lists over 160 tools in the sales enablement category. So, if you’re looking for sales enablement software, you have plenty of options.

We’ve picked out five top-rated tools to help you find the best one for your sales team.

A powerful and comprehensive sales enablement tool

Mindtickle’s platform increases sales rep revenue by 64%. This is because Mindtickle’s strong combination of sales enablement features with advanced insights continuously works to improve seller and content performance.

Mindtickle’s sales readiness platform provides tools and processes to help sellers increase their knowledge, enhance performance, and go into every customer conversation ready to succeed.

One of the biggest challenges of traditional sales enablement is that reps forget their sales training quickly, so they aren’t able to make the best use of the content and resources available to them.

Mindtickle helps reps build and maintain their knowledge and skills through gamification, reinforced training, continuous skill assessments, and coaching exercises.

Our platform combines sales enablement, content management, conversation intelligence, sales training, and manager-led coaching. It provides continuous training, content, and enablement to ensure that sellers remember — and use — the knowledge and skills they’ve learned in their training and coaching sessions to move sales conversations forward.

Sales enablement is an essential part of Mindtickle’s comprehensive sales readiness framework. We make sales enablement best practices an ongoing part of the sales process rather than a siloed additional tool or exercise that sellers only think about a few times a year.

Notable Mindtickle features:

  • Centralizes content management and provides content insights to personalize materials to mimic winning strategic approaches
  • Records phone calls and interactions and, using AI, provides feedback on tone, sales opportunities, and future insights
  • Identifies winning behaviors from sales reps across the company to propose skill development and training
  • Analyzes real-world data to suggest relevant training and role-plays to improve the sales approach
  • Centralizes the sales stack with CRM integrations and APIs
  • Creates an Ideal Rep Persona to track KPIs and training progress
    Includes a mobile app for sellers to always be prepared — even on the go

  • Mindtickle G2 rating: 4.7

To break down marketing and sales silos

HubSpot is best known for its CRM and inbound marketing platform, but it also offers a Sales Hub to help companies already using its marketing tools break down the silos between their sales and marketing departments by getting everyone on the same platform.

HubSpot Sales Hub is primarily an easy-to-use CRM, giving sellers and their managers greater visibility into their deal pipeline and task list.

However, its free plan includes content management to give sellers easy access to sales content. Enterprise customers can use sales management playbooks such as battle cards and call scripts to better enable sellers to close deals.

While the most robust sales enablement features aren’t available to all customers, HubSpot integrates with more than 148 other sales enablement tools, so it may work well in combination with other instruments in your tech stack. Additionally, HubSpot has a vast library of training content and certifications to help sellers master best practices and essential skills.

Notable HubSpot Sales Hub features:

  • Email templates that can be personalized to prepare your team for success
  • Email tracking to keep up to date on lead health and opportunities
  • Document management and content tracking that can be directly sent through email inboxes
  • Automated sales workflows to keep sellers on top of tasks
  • Phone calls logged in your CRM
    Conversation intelligence to find opportunities for improvement in phone calls

  • HubSpot Sales Hub G2 rating: 4.4

For personalized and engaging content materials

Seismic is one of the leading dedicated sales enablement platforms. Its standalone platform provides a centralized hub where sellers can access the content and resources they need to engage with their prospects.

It recommends content and training at the time when they’re most relevant to your sellers. For example, when a prospect moves from a sales-qualified lead to an opportunity, it shows content and resources relevant to that stage of the buyer journey.

As a dedicated sales enablement platform, it’s a better choice for sales enablement teams than a tool that’s a CRM with enablement functionality added on. It has a great reputation and established customer base in the finance industry — particularly for wealth management, asset management, and banking organizations — which makes it a trustworthy option for companies operating in those spaces.

Notable Seismic features:

  • Offers resource personalization with advanced content management
  • Provides learning and onboarding courses to train new hires
    Integrates with almost all platforms
  • Connects and logs prospects through social media, email, and phone

 

  • Seismic G2 rating: 4.7

For sales enablement with strong CRM features

Salesforce is one of the best-known sales tools available. There are split opinions in the sales world: some companies love it, and others find it has a steep learning curve and is difficult to implement for their business.

Like HubSpot, Salesforce is a CRM first, with additional features and functionality built on top. The Salesforce sales enablement tool is a paid add-on for its Sales Cloud product at the cost of an extra $25 per user per month on top of the original subscription.

If your company already uses Salesforce for its CRM, then its sales enablement add-on may be the simplest option for your team. However, it probably isn’t worth switching to Salesforce just for its sales enablement tool.

Notable Salesforce features:

  • Forecasts pipelines with the help of KPI management and logged interactions
  • Manages accounts through logged communication history and internal notes
  • Uses process workflows to automate business processes and save time
  • Mobile app for ease of use outside the office

  • Salesforce G2 rating: 4.3

To understand prospect health and upsell approaches

Showpad is a revenue enablement platform that helps sellers prepare for each sales conversation and gives them the resources to ensure each call or sales interaction makes a positive impact on the customer.

It combines training and coaching functionality with content management, ensuring sellers have access to the content they need. Its platform is split into two parts: Content and Coach.

Each is an essential part of sales enablement, but the two parts of the platform are priced separately. This means companies need to pay twice to benefit from the full sales enablement functionality they can get from other tools.

Notable Showpad features:

  • Tracks content ROI and enforces brand compliance in content creation
  • Lets users identify upsell and cross-selling opportunities as well as in-deal coaching
  • Share information through brand microsite for prospects to share content with their internal stakeholders
  • Gauges and tracks prospect interest to understand next steps

  • Showpad Coach G2 rating: 4.4

The tool you choose needs to support your team’s growth for ongoing success

The best sales enablement tool will be the one that your team will find the easiest to adopt in their everyday tasks and responsibilities.

It’s important to keep in mind your company’s growth as you choose your sales enablement tool. You want to be sure that it’ll continuously grow and adapt to your business needs, market changes, and new product releases.

This support comes with insights and data that continuously update with each interaction and sales training that prepares your sales team for success through engaging and motivating material and courses.

Mindtickle can help support your team with its comprehensive sales enablement platform that provides direction and new skills to your sales team.

Learn more about Mindtickle’s sales enablement tool, or play around with our demo and take a peek into how we continuously help companies reach their revenue and growth goals.

Find the sales enablement tool that works for you

Talk to our team about your challenges and we'll show you how Mindtickle can scale and grow your sales enablement efforts so your team is hitting quota every quarter. 

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Sales enablement tool FAQs

What is sales enablement software?

Sales enablement software provides a centralized place for the training, resources, and data needed to help salespeople sell more effectively.

Sales enablement software:

  • Helps sales reps easily access training materials, product documentation, and other content (no matter where it is stored)
  • Records key sales metrics, so managers can identify opportunities to improve certain skills through coaching
  • Tracks reps’ progress against development goals
  • Improves visibility and alignment between sales and marketing teams
  • Enables micro-learning and virtual training to teach and reinforce key skills

At its core, a sales enablement tool does much more than just support a more efficient and effective sales team. With the proper tool, all types of organizations can boost their sales processes to enhance every step of the sales journey. And, what’s more, the right tool supports sales teams by providing them with the content and information they need to successfully engage with customers the first time and every time.

What are the best sales enablement tools?

The best sales enablement tools that have the most impact on your company are:

  • Mindtickle
  • HubSpot Sales Hub
  • Seismic
  • Salesforce
  • Showpad

For a full list of all the sales enablement tools and features, read our guide.

What are the essential features of a sales enablement tool?

The features that your sales enablement tool should have are:

  • Integrations
  • Content management
  • Program management
  • Automated workflows
  • Gamification
  • Governance
  • Onboarding management
  • Insights and analytics

How much should I spend on sales enablement tools?

Every company’s budget is different, as are their definitions of success. To understand how much you should be spending on sales enablement tools, you need to understand how the ROI of sales enablement can be measured. This will give you a better understanding of the benefits a sales enablement tool will have on your company.

Now with all of this knowledge, you’ll be empowered to make an educated choice on the best sales enablement tool for your team.

Sales Enablement in Action

Connect with our team to learn more about how Mindtickle helps you prove the ROI of your sales enablement efforts. 

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(This was originally published in May 2022, updated in December 2022, and re-published in November 2023.) 

How to Create a Sales Certification Program That Actually Build Sales Competencies

Helen Waite on November 2, 2023

You wouldn’t put a pilot in a cockpit without ensuring they’d passed the simulator first, right?

It’s the same idea behind sales certifications. It’s your way to measure whether a new hire is ready for actual sales — how much knowledge they retained, where the gaps are, and what they’ll be able to utilize when face-to-face with a customer. Sales certification or sales training programs include knowledge-based assessments and simulations to answer all those questions and more. All you have to do is determine which key skills a sales rep must demonstrate to pass.

Here’s what to know about sales rep certification, how it works, and what sales training programs should look like.

Defining sales certification

Sales certification is proof that a rep has completed assessments, exercises, or tests to demonstrate specific knowledge and skills. Certification can begin as early as onboarding, where reps learn what and how to sell and are ready for coaching; however, sales training certification programs can occur at all levels and take different forms depending on your goals.

Of course, there’s more to sales certification than just passing or failing. Sales reps should be able to demonstrate their knowledge and skills and how these meet customers’ business needs. Essentially, it’s important to set a standard of achievement.

What is a sales certification program?

Sales certification or sales training programs are the systems through which you deliver educational material and experiences. They can include courses, learning modules, role-plays, assessments, and more. Our research found that most sales certifications are completed in January and March.

January and March

Months when most certifications programs are completed

Good sales representative certification programs should provide visibility into every step of the learning process, allowing trainers to track progress, identify gaps in the material, and connect educational outcomes to future sales performance.

Sales training certification programs can be as basic or specific as necessary. You can choose the best training topics based on existing knowledge gaps, common questions during the onboarding process, and any relevant goals.

How to create a sales certification program for your sales reps

When you know what you want to assess, you need to design a sales certification program (or choose a premade option) that achieves your objectives.

Firstly, you need to set up an effective review process. No matter what assessment or sales certification training program you choose, a real person should review most exercises. That’s how you can determine whether the rep has “passed” and achieved their certification. This is also a great opportunity to learn more about your reps’ selling styles, habits and coaching needs — not to mention the effectiveness of your learning material.

Along the way, keep in mind that you’ll need to connect your learning objectives with business and revenue outcomes. That often means collaborating with leadership on multiple levels and going beyond the sales department to get the big picture. On top of that, you’ll need to balance the pacing of your sales training program; self-paced is often best, but you still need to be careful to avoid “information overload” — especially during onboarding.

As learners progress through your program, check in to evaluate engagement, readiness and confidence levels. If you notice your content isn’t “clicking” for new hires or existing reps, consider restructuring your approach so topics more gradually build on one another — and remember to utilize roleplaying to let sales reps cement their new skills and take a break from book learning.

You should also think about what happens after sales training. Once a rep has passed, remember they’ll need to hone their skills through:

  • Feedback sessions
  • Shadowing senior reps
  • Listening in on calls
  • Developing confidence and capability through face-to-face coaching

Noting all of these things is key to creating an effective sales certification program for your reps. When you know where you’re going, it’s much easier to create a path — or in this case, a program — to get you there.

Here are three different training approaches and how to leverage them:

Knowledge assessment

This assessment is focused on sales rep knowledge — what they’ve retained and understood — and how they apply it in the context of customer needs. Tests and quizzes are a common choice but roleplays can be particularly useful.

Knowledge assessments should include a range of materials and test structures to more accurately gauge different aspects of the training. For example, Mindtickle’s sales training software has eight quiz types — from multiple choice to label matching — that can all be performed using our online platform. The platform calculates whether the rep passes this section and is ready for the next level of certification.

Copilot - Assessment

There are two ways to structure these assessments:

Participants don’t have access to any resources, notes or supporting material. This is purely a test of what they’ve retained and how well they adopted key concepts or skills.

Participants have access to the sales enablement or support content they would utilize in a real scenario. This more closely simulates the job environment, where sellers have access to specific resources but have limited time to act.

Simulation missions

These “missions” are a dry run of the sales process and the associated techniques. For example, to test the rep’s ability to articulate your company’s value proposition, you could have them record their sales pitch. This video can be used to:

  • Help the rep get a more objective view of how they performed.
  • Inform trainers and coaches on knowledge gaps or problem areas.
  • Test the rep’s ability to respond to unfamiliar questions, situations, and objections.
Copilot - Mission review

To get even more out of these missions, create a library of sales pitches from all new hires. This library isn’t just a training tool; it’s also a way to gamify your sales training programs by using crowd voting to highlight pitching styles, share ideas, and get the whole sales team engaged.

Dummy leads

Another great exercise to test a sales rep’s understanding is to have them actually run through the sales process using “dummy leads.” This allows you to give out leads depending on what you need to assess; for example, one dummy lead might be a tough sell, making it a great way to test sales reps on their ability to position your value proposition.

Through this assessment process, sales reps can:

  • Identify and track leads.
  • Do background research on leads.
  • Populate the CRM.
  • Demonstrate knowledge of your systems and processes.

Better yet, the dummy lead approach can connect with a simulation mission for an even more in-depth process. This helps leaders, managers, and trainers know whether reps can juggle the right things when working with real leads.

Benefits of a sales certification program

Sales training certification programs aren’t just a great way to hone key skills, improve sales readiness and close more deals. They also have significant benefits for your teams, including:

Passing a training program gives reps the confidence and engagement they need to better connect with their roles.

Training courses provide vital performance information and can help address issues before they arise.

When reps know more about processes and tools, they spend less time asking questions or fixing mistakes.

Case studies

Want to see how four companies revamped their sales certifications and saw real benefits thanks to Mindtickle sales training programs? Here’s a quick look:

Introhive

Improved onboarding and used gamification, roleplays, and microlearning to grow certifications by 100% and shorten sales cycles. Read the full case study here. 

Trimble Viewpoint

Used analytics-driven enablement dashboards to reduce ramp time from 69 days to 52 days. Read the full case study here. 

Integrace Health

everaged manager dashboards and certification programs to win up to 82% sales rep approval ratings and reduce onboarding times from 22 to five days. Read the full case study here. 

MongoDB

Implemented a 30-60-90 day onboarding program to reduce ramp time by 45%. Read the full case study here. 

Plus, check out this case study from Wiley Publishing:

Get sales-ready with the right training programs

The right sales certification program can take your new hires from good to great. This is your chance to start them off on the right foot — not just for their own sake, but for the rest of their team, the company overall, and even the customers they’ll someday serve. Don’t forget that sales training certification programs benefit leaders and coaches with rich insights and valuable data, too.

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Take your sellers' skills to the next level by building out your sales certification program in Mindtickle. 

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This post was originally published in February 2016, updated in April 2023, and again in November 2023. 

 

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