Customers are evolving more rapidly than ever before and, as a result, buyers are getting smarter. The challenge for sales professionals is to keep up with them.
Here’s a little secret I want to tell you: one of the keys to smarter selling is having a robust sales enablement function.
When we talk about sales enablement, we’re talking about a strategic, cross-functional discipline designed to increase sales results by providing integrated content, training and coaching services for salespeople and frontline managers along the entire customer lifecycle. It’s often empowered by technology.
Sales enablement is not the same as sales operations. Organizations that make an investment in enablement do so to increase efficiency and the effectiveness of their funnel. It’s all about minimizing distractions and optimizing the time it takes to execute the highest level of activity. Sales operations create and implement individual, team and company processes that are tied to your key metrics that measure success. It’s also about making sure you have the right people in the right territory and the right compensation package in place, etc. You get the idea.
Some organizations already know the value of implementing and following a strict enablement program. We studied more than 300 companies and how they think about sales enablement, and discovered this nugget: companies that have designed, developed and operationalized a sales enablement function are more successful than companies that don’t have an enablement program in place. How much more successful? Companies with a designed enablement program, on average, see an increase of more than 10 percent in higher revenue.
We know sales enablement works.
Learn more on how you can keep up better with your customers with Miller Heiman Group's Strategic Selling.
