What is Sales Enablement?

Sales enablement is 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.

The concept of sales enablement originated in 2013 and caught on quickly when companies realized the impact it can have on business outcomes. Consider the following from research from Heinz Marketing and Mindtickle:

sales quota statistics

Sales enablement is no longer a nice-to-have; it’s a must-have. This guide will explore everything you need to know about sales enablement, including:

  1. The benefits of sales enablement
  2. Who is responsible for sales enablement
  3. How to measure sales enablement
  4. How sales enablement drives revenue
  5. How are sales enablement and revenue enablement related?

The benefits of sales enablement

Sales and marketing have traditionally been siloed, with little interaction or collaboration between the two departments. Considering that companies are better at closing deals when their sales and marketing departments are aligned, any chasm between them poses a significant problem.

Although organizations have known about this siloing for many years, bridging the gap has always been easier said than done. Until now.

Sales enablement is the solution for marketing-sales alignment. It paves the way to wider communication channels and frequent collaboration. By adopting an advanced data driven sales enablement platform and following some best practices, alignment is possible at your organization.

Here are some of the most prominent benefits of sales enablement.

benefits of sales enablement

Improved communication and teamwork

Communication between sales and marketing teams is a challenge for many organizations. Sales enablement helps address this challenge with a better system for managing sales content. This content management system (CMS) is a centralized database that houses sales resources for all departments and promotes marketing and sales collaboration during the creation of sales content.

Further, when both departments share the same sales enablement tools, CRM data, and business processes, marketing and sales teams can operate with combined insights of the target market and the sales funnel. The two teams collaborate to better define buyer personas and improve lead-scoring processes.

Optimized content

With open collaboration, content can be fine-tuned using the sales team’s knowledge of buyers and marketing’s knowledge of leads. This highly-optimized content moves prospects through the buyer journey faster.

Marketing and sales can also work together to create customizable content that reps can tailor to match the needs of any prospect. The result is highly-relevant content created for any circumstance “on the fly.”

Also, with both departments sharing the same content management system, marketing can purge outdated versions of a piece of content to make sure a sales rep doesn’t accidentally present it to a buyer. Or, reps and marketers can make small adjustments to bring the content back up to date for continued use.

Marketing and sales transparency

Sales enablement provides visibility into the effectiveness of sales and marketing processes. Transparency ensures that both marketing and sales can see which tactics and content are working and which ones aren’t. Both departments can therefore pinpoint inefficiencies and correct them quickly.

For example, with the right sales enablement technology, marketing and sales have access to a dashboard that reveals how buyers are engaging with sales materials. Both departments can see which materials are being ignored and which content is bringing prospects closer to a buying decision.

Increased revenue

Bottom-line performance is obviously the most important benefit of sales enablement. With optimized and customizable content, better customer insight, and full visibility into sales processes, reps close more deals and generate more revenue.

How sales enablement technology transforms the selling process

Sales enablement technology does more than create marketing-sales alignment and boost content effectiveness. It enhances the entire sales process by improving efficiency, providing detailed analytics on sales activities, and improving training and development processes.

Enhanced onboarding: Efficient, simplified onboarding leads to faster quota attainment. The most advanced sales enablement technology helps sales trainers identify their reps’ knowledge gaps and adjust training accordingly. Trainers can automatically assign learning paths based on their sales reps’ roles and monitor their progress with milestones and certifications.

Continuous growth and skill development: Training is only effective when it’s ongoing—in fact, 80% of what is learned in sales training is forgotten within 3 months. With the right sales enablement tool, you can develop a more structured and interactive approach to ongoing training. Sales enablement tools provide virtual role-playing exercises, simulated selling scenarios, and personalized feedback for growth and improvement to help sales reps continually sharpen their skills.

  • Micro-learning capabilities: Micro-learning presents sales training information in short and engaging training modules to promote knowledge retention. Highly-specific learning objectives, interactive gamification elements, and spaced reinforcements help reps fill their knowledge gaps right from their computers or smartphones.
  • Coaching: With sales enablement technology, coaching can be designed around the unique needs of each sales rep. Sales coaches can create personalized learning paths based on competency maps. Coaches can also assign the exact micro-learning modules a rep needs to reinforce specific concepts.
  • Analytics: Sales enablement gives you visibility into your reps’ understanding of their training. Analytics dashboards help sales coaches track, measure, and improve their teams’ capabilities.

Getting started with sales enablement

Wondering where to begin your sales enablement journey?

For marketing-sales alignment and a more competitive salesforce, many companies around the world turn to Mindtickle. With innovative training capabilities, as well as advanced micro-learning, analytics, and the ability to integrate a wide range of sales tools, Mindtickle offers a 360-degree solution for sales organizations.

Who is responsible for sales enablement

Ownership of sales enablement varies by organization. According to CSO Insights, just under half (49.2%) of sales enablement teams report to sales leadership, and just over one in five (22.6%) report to another C-level function, such as the Chief Executive Officer, Chief Operating Officer, or Chief Growth Officer, among others. The remaining sales enablement teams report to sales operations, marketing, customer, experience, or another team.

Sometimes, sales enablement teams work in silos without additional engagement or external guidance. However, the most successful programs are those that include cross-functional collaboration across key teams including:

  • Sales leadership
  • Sales or revenue operations
  • Marketing
  • Dedicated sales enablement team
  • Customer success

Cross-functional collaboration ensures each area of the organization is in agreement and working toward the same goals.

How to measure sales enablement

Continuous measurement is essential to determining the success of sales enablement – and pinpointing opportunities for improvement. Yet, per CSO Insights, less than a quarter of organizations consistently measure the impact of their sales enablement efforts with productivity metrics, milestones, or leading and lagging indicators.

Of course, measuring revenue and number of units sold is important. However, measuring sales enablement also involves correlating sales activities with tangible business outcomes to determine what works and what doesn’t.

There are many many metrics to track to gauge the impact of sales enablement initiatives. Here are 13 of the most common.

lead to opportunity conversion rate

1. Lead-to-opportunity conversion rate

As the name suggests, this metric tracks the percentage of leads that are converted to opportunities. This metric is calculated by dividing the number of opportunities by the total number of leads.

A high lead-to-opportunity conversion rate indicates sellers have the skills and knowledge needed to convince buyers to learn more and consider making a purchase.

2. Win rate

The win rate is the percentage of opportunities that end up as signed deals. Win rate is calculated by dividing the number of closed won deals by the total number of opportunities.

How to measure win rate

A high win rate indicates sellers have what it takes to carry opportunities across the finish line.

3. Competitive win rate

Competitive win rate specifically measures the rate of closed deals where prospects are also considering one of your competitors. The competitive win rate is calculated by dividing the total number of wins over a competitor by the total number of opportunities who considered a competitor.

How to track competitive win rate

Competitive win rate can be more challenging to track than win rate. That’s because accurate calculation depends on whether or not prospects inform you that they’re considering a competitor.

4. Average deal size

This metric is the average amount a customer spends on your product or service. It’s calculated by dividing the total amount of money from all customer orders in a specific time frame by the number of deals in that same time frame.

How to measure average deal size

5. Quota attainment

Quota attainment is a measure of how your sales reps are (or aren’t) achieving their goals during each sales cycle. To calculate the quota for a seller, divide their sales during a set time period by their quota for the same period.

How to measure quota attainment

If a seller is consistently missing quota, there may be opportunities to provide them with additional training and coaching.

6. Adherence to sales process

This metric tracks how well your sales reps follow your established sales process. In order to track this metric, it’s important to establish a standard way for sellers to follow and document the sales process.

If a seller isn’t adhering to the sales process – and also isn’t meeting quota – there may be a need for additional training or coaching.

7. Ramp-up time

Ramp-up time, also referred to as time to productivity, is the measure of how quickly it takes a new sales rep to reach full productivity. To calculate ramp-up time, take the total amount of time to productivity for all reps who ramped up in a given quarter and divide it by the number of reps.

How to measure time to productivity

It’s important to determine how your organization defines productivity. For example, an organization might define it as reaching a certain percentage of quota or making a certain number of calls per day.

8. Time to quota

This is the amount of time it takes new reps to meet their quota for the first time. It’s measured by adding the number of sales cycles it takes each new rep to meet their quota – and then dividing that sum by the number of reps being measured.

How to measure time to quota

If it’s taking a long time for new reps to meet their quota, there may be opportunities to optimize the onboarding process.

9. Seller turnover rate

Turnover rate measures how often sales reps voluntarily leave the company. It’s calculated by dividing the number of reps that voluntarily leave the company within a certain period of time by the total number of reps.

How to measure rep turnover rate

A high rep turnover rate suggests there’s a problem. One way to get to the bottom of the problem is by asking reps for feedback about the effectiveness of the sales enablement program.

10. Rep net promoter score

This measures your reps’ satisfaction with your company. Typically, employees are asked to complete a survey with questions related to their experience. A high net promoter score indicates an employee is satisfied and likely to stay with the company. A low net promoter score indicates the employee is dissatisfied and unlikely to recommend the company to others.

How to measure net promoter score

11. Knowledge retention

Reps must learn certain things to be successful. But more importantly, they must retain this knowledge so they can apply it in the field. There are a number of ways organizations can measure knowledge retention, including post-training assessments, role-plays, and listening to conversations between sales reps and customers.

12. Content use and adoption

Most sales enablements invest time and resources into creating both internal and external content. Yet, 65% of B2B content is never used.

It’s important to track how both sellers and buyers are using this content – if they’re using it at all. Key content-related metrics include number of views, time spent on a piece, and how often a piece of content is opened, used, or shared. These insights can help you refine your content strategy.

13. Calls-to-action

This metric tracks how often a prospective customer takes action on content – which might include ads, blogs, or emails – among others. The most effective content is that which generates the highest number of clicks.

How sales enablement drives revenue

Today, a mere 43% of sellers meet their quotas. Sales enablement, when done right, can have a dramatic impact on a seller’s ability to close deals – and an organization’s ability to drive revenue. Here are some of the key reasons why.

1. Sales enablement provides sellers with a single source of truth

Sellers need on-demand access to information in order to move deals forward. For example, sellers often leverage:

  • Talk tracks
  • Training modules
  • Customer content

Oftentimes, the information a seller needs is housed in different locations, such as the CRM, multiple drives, and a company wiki. In those circumstances, it’s challenging for a seller to find what they need when they need it. However, a solid sales enablement program provides sellers with one, single knowledge base. That way, they can always access the knowledge they need, whenever they need it. That means they can more easily move deals through the funnel – and across the finish line.

2. Sales enablement provides ongoing training

Sales training is a key component of sales enablement. Of course, it all starts with sales onboarding. But that’s not enough.

In the world of sales, change is inevitable. New products are released and existing products updated. New tools are introduced. New competitors enter the market. Sales enablement teams provide sellers with the ongoing training they need to build their skills and knowledge so they can overcome challenges and close more deals.

3. Sales enablement can help create a culture of coaching

Continuous coaching is essential to sales success. Research tells us that 8 out of 10 teams with effective coaching practices hit greater than 75% of their sales quotas.

A successful sales enablement strategy includes a strong coaching component. Deal coaching is the most common type of coaching. According to the 2022 State of Sales Readiness report, 85% of sales reps are coached on open deals. However, sales managers must also incorporate skill coaching to drive behavior change. On average, top managers deliver 12 coaching sessions per month.

Mindtickle-2022-State-of-Sales-Readiness

4. Sales enablement can improve sales and marketing collaboration

Oftentimes, marketing and sales teams work in silos, with each focused on different goals. This negatively affects overall productivity. However, sales enablement can remove these silos and encourage better collaboration between the two teams. When sales and marketing are working towards the same goals, companies are better able to attract and close leads.

5. Sales enablement can speed up onboarding

Onboarding is an important way to orient new sellers and help them understand the company, its goals, and the role they play. Sales enablement can help accelerate onboarding – without sacrificing quality.

Per our 2022 State of Sales Readiness report, sellers at winning organizations take just four weeks to complete the onboarding program – and are fully ramped within four to five months. That’s 40-50% less than the industry average. When onboarding time is streamlined, reps are able to achieve their revenue targets more quickly.

6. Sales enablement can improve rep retention

Sales enablement can increase seller engagement – which can in turn increase satisfaction. Engaged, satisfied reps are more likely to stick around and be productive.

7. Sales enablement leads to informed, engaged buyers

Sales enablement helps ensure reps are always prepared for any interaction with a potential buyer. When reps have the knowledge and content they need to keep buyers informed and engaged, those buyers are more likely to end up as customers.

How are sales enablement and revenue enablement related?

Sales enablement and revenue enablement are closely intertwined and interdependent concepts, with several key connections:

  • Sales enablement equips the sales team with tools, resources, and support to enhance their selling effectiveness.
  • Revenue enablement takes a broader perspective, aligning departments such as marketing, customer success, and operations to optimize revenue generation.
  • Sales enablement is a critical component of revenue enablement, directly impacting sales productivity and contributing to revenue outcomes.
  • Both enablement strategies foster collaboration, alignment, and data-driven decision-making across the organization.
  • Sales enablement focuses on equipping sales reps with the right content, training, and technology to engage buyers and close deals successfully.
  • Revenue enablement encompasses various functions and aims to maximize revenue growth, enhance customer experiences, and drive overall business performance.

Together, sales enablement and revenue enablement create a cohesive and efficient revenue generation ecosystem.

What is the difference between sales enablement and sales productivity?

Sales productivity and sales enablement are two distinct concepts that play crucial roles in the success of a sales team. Sales productivity focuses on maximizing the efficiency and effectiveness of individual sales representatives. It involves providing them with the tools, resources, and training necessary to close deals and achieve their targets.

On the other hand, sales enablement takes a broader approach, aiming to empower the entire sales organization. It focuses on aligning processes, strategies, and technologies to optimize the sales ecosystem. Sales enablement ensures that the sales team has the right knowledge, content, and support to engage buyers effectively throughout their journey. Ultimately, sales productivity enhances individual performance, while sales enablement drives overall sales effectiveness and revenue growth.


This post originally published in January 2020 and was updated in September 2022. 

5 Reasons to Modernize Sales Enablement

As the pressure of digitization on sales functions has ratcheted up in the past couple of years, companies are taking another look at modernizing sales enablement – for good reason. Among them:

Selling is getting harder.

Fewer reps are hitting their quotas. According to a recent article by Forbes, 57% of sales reps missed their quotas in the last year – concluding overall that what’s truly hindering sales’ success is the lack of cohesion between departments and the way new sellers are being introduced to the product.

Onboarding is taking longer.

With today’s complex product lines and ever-changing business models, it can take as much as nine months to ramp up new reps.

Buyers are bypassing sales for the information they need.

Customers often complete as much as 70 percent of their journey from their own research, according to industry estimates.

Faced with these challenges, companies are increasingly seeing sales enablement as a strategic imperative that’s vital the sales organizations success. The stage is set for a new kind of sales enablement. For hard-pressed sales organizations, it can’t come soon enough.

What is sales enablement?

Sales enablement is a catch-all phrase with many meanings. But more importantly, what is its purpose?

The idea of training new sales reps, or any other customer-facing employees, to align their objectives with the company’s goals and gain insight to be successful is not a new concept. Knowledge of product(s), brand, and the competitive landscape is imperative to their quickly becoming effective. In the search for continued revenue growth, companies have sought to better equip and prepare those on the front lines of revenue generation: sales teams.

The goal has been, and continues to be, to enable them to reach quota as quickly as possible and consistently, thus the creation of sales enablement. However, as the state of sales enablement constantly changes in scope, it’s needless to say that there’s yet to be a single, universally adopted definition.

Here are a few takes:

  • Search Google and you’ll find, “modern sales enablement is the enablement of sales teams with information, tools, and content that help salespeople sell more effectively.” A more visionary definition of sales enablement from SiriusDecisions explains, “Enablement’s purpose is to ensure salespeople have the skills, knowledge, behaviors, and tools needed to engage [buyers, team, other] in rich conversations.”
  • Forrester Research says, “Sales enablement is a strategic, ongoing process that equips all client-facing employees  with the ability to consistently and systematically have a valuable conversation with the right set of customer stakeholders at each stage of the customer’s problem-solving life cycle to optimize the return on investment of the selling system.”

When Forrester Research asks, “What is sales enablement?” they characterize it with the idea that companies should put their customers upfront. Putting customers first is an excellent approach to creating your sales enablement initiatives. That said, it’s just as important to determine whether your business needs a dedicated sales enablement manager, a big decision for any company.

No matter its current definitions, sales enablement has come a long way in the last five years towards helping sales teams perform better. Reps today are more comfortable in competitive environments, as well as those which sometimes require more complex strategic sales motions.

At the same time, engaging with today’s highly informed and ever-more scrutinizing customers requires salespeople to retain and effectively use ever-more knowledge, skills, and behaviors.

While sales enablement is designed to help sales turn more opportunities into revenue, most traditional sales enablement solutions cannot show how programs correlate to individual outcomes.

What most don’t realize is that there are huge, previously untouched areas where enablement solutions (tools, platforms, and best practice methodologies) can bring more value and revenue to companies.

What Gartner has to say about sales enablement

Companies, both purposefully and accidentally, are missing some useful and obvious strategies. This short-sightedness also applies to sales consultants and training or learning tools vendors –all of whom have implemented or offered otherwise great technology for sales enablement. Let’s take a look at some numbers behind these pain points. Here are some key statistics Gartner recently shared at their conference about the complex reality of most salespeople today:

  • Customers are more complex: over 6 people are typically involved in B2B purchases with over 3 different functions represented.
  • Product complexity: the product portfolio that sellers represent have increased in size by 2.3 times, and only 37% of sellers find it easy to customize their offerings.
  • Internal complexity: sellers have reported that 16.4% of the sales cycle is spent on internal approvals and only 24% of sellers can easily calculate their variable compensation.

What the figures above tell is a story of increased difficulty and complexity for the salesperson in your average B2B company. Now add the picture above with the new reality of how salespeople develop their skills, according to Gartner:

  • 58% of sellers develop their skills through their colleagues
  • 35% of skills sellers use today were acquired in the last year
  • 66% of sellers expect most learning and development to occur outside the classroom
  • 60% of sellers expect to learn and develop just-in-time

Traditional training programs and methods are falling short of the expectations and needs of sellers today and leaving much to be desired. The facts presented by Gartner point in a few different directions as well:

  • Managers are more than ever required to be involved and help drive sales learning and coaching
  • Onboarding programs have to adapt to the new realities of today’s sellers and better enable them to help buyers during their journeys
  • Manager enablement is a critical need to help managers have better conversations, give feedback, identify seller skills gaps, and have career conversations with their reps

Most sales enablement teams would agree that the biggest problem or obstacle they face when rolling out programs is getting managers to spend time with their sellers and with the programs.

The key takeaway? Working with managers to show the impact that their actions can have in sales performance is one of the most important action items in your next sales enablement playbook.

If you have a platform that allows you to measure your sales team’s “readiness” and you can show managers the skill gaps identified through the different initiatives rolled out, you’ll have a much easier conversation when it comes to implementation of a new sales enablement strategy. Regardless of technology, the first step is changing the frontline managers’ mindsets and presenting them with a strong case for enablement.

What modernizing sales enablement programs can do for you

The goal of modern sales enablement is straightforward: to help you and your team win more and bigger deals.

“Sales enablement optimizes the selling motion in order to increase pipeline, move opportunities forward and win bigger deals more efficiently to drive profitable growth.” – Sales Enablement Society

It helps achieve that goal through three its three core capabilities. In short, sales enablement:

  • Helps sellers build out skill sets to deliver phenomenal customer experience. It personalizes, gamifies, coaches, and provides micro-learning modules to deliver resonant and memorable experiences that help sellers master and operationalize new skills.
  • Combines a modern enablement platform with best-practice methodologies. Sellers need a digital solution that they can access anytime, on any device. Modern platforms’ design is informed with industry-leading insights on how acquired skills translate into revenue production and customer engagement.
  • Shows the connection between actions and outcomes. Modern sales enablement platforms harness artificial intelligence and data-driven analytics so you can see how your programs are improving sellers’ capabilities. You can identify knowledge gaps where you might want to do some coaching. The platform provides a clear picture of how sales capabilities impact sales performance and business outcomes.

So without further ado, here are the top five reasons you should consider modernizing your sales readiness programs.

1. Business is in a high growth phase

Many businesses experiencing high-growth tend to deal with business challenges that are right in front of them. Usually when business is booming it’s easy to forget about the longer term future. This short-sightedness can cause major headaches down the road, particularly when there are no streamlined processes in place to track personal or business performance.

Referring to an HBR blog Science of Building a Scalable Sales Team, Mark Roberge from Hubspot points out the importance of taking a disciplined approach when training salespeople so that everyone has good foundational selling skills. According to Mark the result at Hubspot stated that “our salespeople are able to connect on a far deeper level with our prospects and leads”, a process that has consistently resulted in high growth.

2. New sales reps take a long time to meet quotas

Hiring new sales reps is a significant investment for any company, and the longer they take to onboard and ramp up, the more money burned.

“According to Aberdeen Research, companies that adopt best practices across their sales teams had double the quota attainment of their peers. Each sales enablement program that gives a rep more time for core selling nets more revenue. Each best practice program that makes reps more effective translates into topline improvement”.

Modernizing sales readiness programs will help each member of the sales team achieve peak performance. Therefore, sales enablement programs should always include finding ways to improve sales reps’ efficiency and effectiveness with prospects so they can meet their quotas and keep on performing into the future.

3. Sales reps spend too much time on non-selling tasks

The primary job of any sales rep is to continually work on their sales process, generating and qualifying leads, conducting sales demos and closing deals. If Anytime they’re not on these selling tasks it’s usually unproductive, and a poor use of a valuable resource.

“To increase sales productivity, you have to reduce or eliminate tasks that aren’t productive.”- Nancy Nardin

Modernizing the sales readiness programs with a data driven sales enablement platform will help your organization have vision into the sales process and identify how it can help reduce non-selling tasks and increase efficiency across the entire process.

4. Need to increase individual sales quotas next year

According to CSO Insights, 94.5% of firms they surveyed said they were raising quotas. If you too are planning to increase quotas, then you’re going to need a new strategy and a new set of sales enablement tools to get more out of your sales team. A dedicated sales enablement manager should help to ensure that your sales reps be well trained regarding your customers’ needs, be up to date with industry and product news, have the necessary tools and information available with them when they need it. As CSO Insights discovered.

As CSO Insights discovered that the key to achieving higher quotas with the same sales team is to keep your sales team well trained and ready with a new set of skill.

5. Marketing efforts aren’t helping sales sell

If you are increasing your marketing budgets but that’s not translating into helping sales sell more, then having a sales enablement manager could be the reason. A significant part of marketing’s role is to create sales collateral for each persona for every stage of the buyer’s journey, so, it’s crucial that both sales and marketing are aligned and work closely together.

A sales enablement manager can help bridge the gap between marketing deliverables and what the sales team needs. Working with both sales and marketing can make a difference in sales ability to provide valuable content and collateral to customers. For example, the HubSpot sales enablement team sits with the sales reps but reports through to the marketing.

Why change?

To sum up, moving in a direction of a revamped, modernized sales enablement program has the potential to completely turn things around when it comes to your team and their sales readiness. A comprehensive and collaborative approach to sales enablement just might be that secret ingredient when it comes to revamping the way your organization tackles – and wins – sales deals.

Ultimately, here’s what a modern sales enablement platform do for your organization:

  • Accelerate and enhance onboarding to telescope time-to-productivity
  • Coach sellers in the exact areas where they need help
  • Energize your meetings and kickoffs to propel profitability
  • Build sellers’ confidence and effectiveness through guided role-play
  • Track and accelerate business outcomes through reporting and analytics
  • Build reps’ skills through tailored, highly engaging learning and development activities
  • Help sales leaders to make their skills go viral, company-wide.

How Large, Innovative Companies Are Using Their LMSs for ‘Revenue Enablement’

I’ve been in the trenches for over three years with big enterprises while they’ve grappled with leveraging their LMSs (Learning Management Systems; and yes, many have more than one) to drive the continuous learning and development that their sales enablement programs can provide to sales reps so they can stay ahead of their discerning, self-qualifying customers. They all have one common question, “how do we leverage our LMS systems for effective sales enablement? Or do we?”
I usually respond with, “We see the need to drive more productivity from innovative top companies like yours every day. And most companies we encounter are actively seeking better ways to diagnose, swiftly and effectively react to customer requests, and ultimately drive more sales predictability.” But, what’s usually not apparent is that change is happening so fast that companies are failing when trying to use their LMSs for effective sales coaching or adequately disseminating ever-changing sales requirements. LMSs were built for managing and certifying large company employee’s accomplishments (such as certifying that personnel is trained on sexual harassment or discrimination laws). LMSs are not designed for helping effective sales teams consume and retain useful knowledge, develop skills and behaviors they can continuously improve upon, or finally, targeting specific needs and skills’ gaps.
When it comes to enabling sales and client professionals to be successful and repeatedly win deals or renew accounts, corporate learning management systems don’t do the job.

What sales need to be customer ready – beyond an LMS

What do salespeople need? Beyond LMS systems? They need to be prepared to effectively field customer requests and objections. Therefore, they need access to the latest information in an easily consumable format—in real time, not days after a training or coaching session, but at the exact moment, the information is made available.
Then, they need to be able to articulate the right messages during crucial customer conversations. There are no second chances when your competition is on the next call. Sellers who are knowledgeable and articulate are more valued, and often the winners of new business. The fact is that today’s sales professionals need more than reviews, webinars, and classroom sessions. To truly address knowledge and skills’ gaps, managers need to coach their team members on how to improve sales strategies at an ongoing basis. And for coaching, they need robust sales enablement solutions.
Plus, many managers, especially first-time managers need meaningful guidance on what effective sales coaching looks like. Even experienced managers who know how to coach and have exhausted the capabilities of corporate learning management systems need enablement tools to help them identify problem areas and gaps. Coaching is not possible with just an LMS.

More than just sales teams impact revenue

While revenue growth involves new business from sales, it must maintain (or grow) existing revenue from expansions to renewals. That’s why it’s important to point out that those who impact overall revenue growth include not only sales reps, but also customer success managers, customer support professionals, call center professionals, sales engineers, sales enablement managers, learning and development professionals, and product marketers alike. Enablement programs must reach beyond sales’ teams and extend to everyone who impacts revenue maintenance and growth. “Revenue enablement” if you will.
When customer satisfaction (CSAT) and NPS scores are low, customers are highly unlikely to expand or renew existing products or services. That’s why many Mindtickle customers are working on pilot programs and deployments that focus on improving customer satisfaction (CSAT) scores. They repeatedly ask, “how can I diagnose and influence my company’s CSAT scores? Is it by providing all revenue influencers (sales, customer support and service roles) the right knowledge? Or skills? Or tools? How about through effective sales coaching?”

What effective ‘revenue enablement’ should accomplish

An effective revenue enablement solution begins where an LMS ends. It should onboard and updates all revenue influencers quickly and efficiently, and in a way that simultaneously helps them reinforce and retain the knowledge and skills they need.
Moving towards a complete revenue enablement model is the perfect opportunity for enterprise enablement leaders to move from measuring program adoption to correlating programs to performance. Imagine doing real-time correlations with transactional metrics, such as win/loss analysis, conversion rates, etc.
I consider Mindtickle a true revenue enablement solution because our solution actively helps managers coach, enables the retention and reinforcement of knowledge and develops skills and behaviors in an efficient and easily consumable manner. An effective revenue enablement solution like Mindtickle’s should always be there to help revenue influencers fill in skills and behavior gaps throughout the time they’re with a company.
So, if you are like many of our customers who ask where their LMS fits into sales, or what I call revenue enablement, understand that LMSs are key to a modern-day enablement solution, but, they’re just not all you need. Effective revenue enablement solutions begin where the benefits of LMSs end.
Imagine elevating the role of enablement leaders by presenting to your exec team and peers metrics that show a direct correlation between your “revenue” enablement programs and revenue growth?