How To Build a Sales Enablement Plan in 8 Steps & 10 Best Practices
Get a step-by-step guide to building an effective sales enablement plan, plus 10 best practices to maximize success.
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Sales teams are under constant pressure to deliver results and meet ever-changing targets. This means any change to their operations must be carefully planned and executed to avoid disrupting productivity. A sales intelligence tool is a great way to help teams transition smoothly when implementing sales intelligence tools and improve sales productivity and performance. This article will help you learn about drawing a sales enablement plan to ensure a successful transition to using sales intelligence tools.
Amid the various strategies for developing a sales enablement plan, Aumni's sales intelligence software stands out for its ability to streamline operations and help sales teams and their managers transition smoothly to using sales intelligence tools.
What Is a Sales Enablement Plan?
A sales enablement plan is a strategic approach designed to equip sales teams with the following:
- Tools
- Resources
- Training
These elements help ensure they perform at their best. It addresses the who, what, when, and why behind each initiative, ensuring that sales teams are aligned with broader business goals and well-prepared to drive revenue growth.
Key Components of a Sales Enablement Plan
Tools: What We Need to Succeed
Sales teams need access to specific solutions, platforms, and software that help them:
- Manage customer relationships
- Optimize their workflow
This could include CRM systems, communication platforms, and analytics tools. The plan identifies necessary tools and ensures sellers know how to use them effectively.
Sales Enablement Materials: What We Need to Succeed
Sellers rely on various content throughout the sales process to educate potential customers and close deals. This includes resources like:
- Sales playbooks
- Case studies
- Research reports
- Pitch decks
A sales enablement plan ensures these materials are available, up-to-date, and aligned with the company's messaging and goals.
Onboarding and Training: Preparing for Success
Whether for new hires or seasoned sellers, continuous training is essential to keeping the sales force informed about:
- New product features
- Pricing strategies
- Market trends
- Messaging
A well-structured sales enablement plan outlines how to train the team to engage confidently with prospects and customers.
By developing a comprehensive sales enablement plan, organizations can create a clear roadmap for supporting sales campaigns, equipping their teams with everything they need to meet business objectives and close more deals effectively.
Why Is Sales Enablement Important?
Sales is a complex and challenging process. Reps often start each deal with more questions than answers:
- Who are the key stakeholders?
- What strategy will work best?
- How do they guide the conversation toward a solution that matters.
Navigating these challenges can feel like shooting in the dark without the proper guidance, and missed opportunities can quickly translate to lost revenue. This is where sales enablement comes into play. It's not just about providing tools or information; it's about empowering your sales team with:
- Education
- Insights
- Strategies
With it, even the best salespeople can close deals efficiently. One key challenge is that sellers are now expected to be experts.
According to a June 2022 Salesforce survey, 74% of sellers noted that their roles are becoming more consultative, requiring them to understand deeply:
- Products
- Customers
- Market
They’re no longer just selling a product but guiding clients through complex decisions, making product expertise and market knowledge essential for success. The rise of virtual selling has added another layer of difficulty.
The Skills Gap in Virtual Selling
The same Salesforce survey found that 58% of sellers find selling virtually more challenging than in-person, yet only 29% have received adequate training on being effective in remote environments. The digital shift requires new skills, and with enablement, sellers may be able to engage prospects as effectively online as they would face-to-face.
There must be more room for error in today's uncertain economic landscape. Sales teams are being asked to do more with less. It’s not just about growth anymore, it's about maximizing effectiveness. Every interaction counts, and enablement provides the resources to:
- Help sellers sharpen their approach
- Streamline processes
- Close deals faster
Effective sales enablement isn’t just a nice to have. As noted by the Harvard Business Review, "Enablement in leading organizations is tasked with true capability building—not simply relegated to onboarding and training."
Future-Proofing Your Sales Team with Enablement
It’s about building long-term sales competence, ensuring that teams are always equipped to excel in a rapidly evolving market. With a solid enablement strategy, your sales team is better prepared to navigate challenges and meet the demands of today’s buyers, leading to more closed deals and sustained revenue growth.
Revolutionizing B2B Sales Performance
Aomni addresses critical pain points for sales managers whose Account Executives, Account Managers, and Customer Success Managers must perform better and include quotas. By leveraging our advanced AI technology, sales professionals can significantly enhance their preparation for customer conversations, leading to the following:
- Larger deal closures
- Increased promotion opportunities
For individual sales professionals, Aomni provides the tools and insights needed to:
- Elevate their performance
- Close more substantial deals
- Accelerate career progression
Try Aomni Today
Our platform transforms the way B2B sales teams operate, ensuring they enter every customer interaction:
- Fully prepared
- Strategically positioned for success
Our platform transforms how B2B sales teams operate, ensuring they enter every customer interaction fully prepared and strategically positioned for success.
Try our sales intelligence software for free today!
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How Does Sales Enablement Plan Benefit Organizations?
Get Aligned to Sell More with Sales Enablement
Sales enablement helps sellers understand the entire cast of characters involved in a deal. This could be other:
- Sales team members
- Marketing
- Product development
- Finance
- Customer success
Sales Enablement for Collaboration
With sales enablement, reps learn about these other roles’ perspectives on the products sold to better communicate with them and leverage their expertise during the sales process. Additionally, sales enablement helps to align these resources to guide prospects through the buying process and deliver better outcomes for all parties involved.
Create Consistency and Improve Sales Performance
Sales enablement creates consistency in sales. It provides a framework for sales teams to follow, including:
- Standardized processes
- Training materials
With sales enablement, reps are better prepared to tackle each new deal, as they can access a wealth of data and resources to inform their approach. This reduces errors and improves overall sales performance.
Improve Efficiency with Sales Enablement
The payoff of sales enablement is that sellers can use their time more wisely and productively. With everything they need to know about the product in front of them, they can focus their energy on developing the types of relationships that close deals. Add sales enablement software with real-time success metrics, and sellers can more easily tie their training to their daily work.
Sales Enablement Creates Stronger Sales Data
Many tools designed for selling B2B products focus on data like collecting, organizing, and activating it for sales teams. Key insights include:
- Buyer preferences
- Pain points
- Personas
Sales Enablement Increases Deal Velocity
With better data and tools at their disposal, sales reps tend to have quicker access to what they need and as a result, are more “sales ready” leading to more fruitful conversations, a smoother buying process, and a better win rate.
Building a Sales Enablement Plan in 8 Steps
1. Define Your Sales Enablement Plan Goals
Before creating your sales enablement plan, clarify your objectives. What business outcomes do you want to influence? Are you aiming to improve win rates, shorten sales cycles, or enhance customer satisfaction?
Aligning Sales Enablement with Business Objectives
These goals should tie directly into your organization’s larger business objectives, allowing for measurable results and return on investment (ROI). For instance, if the company aims to increase revenue by 15%, your sales enablement plan should align with initiatives that support this target, such as improving seller performance or ramping up product training.
Set realistic goals, but include stretch targets to keep the team motivated. Ensure these objectives are both achievable and measurable.
2. Identify What Your Team Needs
Understanding the needs of your sales team is critical to shaping your enablement plan. This involves gathering insights directly from sellers about their pain points and challenges. Are they struggling with product knowledge, lacking efficient tools, or facing long lead times to access materials?
To address this, conduct surveys, interviews, or workshops with sales reps and managers to capture their feedback. Use this information to:
- Identify the tools and resources they need.
- Develop a comprehensive sales enablement playbook.
- Pinpoint gaps in training that need to be addressed.
Addressing these pain points allows you to tailor the plan to have the most significant impact, driving productivity and better sales outcomes.
3. Define Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
Once you’ve established the needs of your team and aligned them with company objectives, the next step is to define how success will be measured. Key performance indicators (KPIs) will help you track the effectiveness of the enablement efforts. Joint sales enablement KPIs include:
- Sales revenue growth
- Win rates
- Sales cycle length
- Customer satisfaction
- Seller productivity and effectiveness
These KPIs should be specific, measurable, and aligned with short-term and long-term goals, helping you assess progress and pivot as needed.
4. Partner with Key Influencers
Sales enablement is not a one-department initiative. It requires cross-functional collaboration with key stakeholders in:
- Marketing
- Sales
- Product teams
- Leadership
Work closely with influencers who can provide insight into messaging, product developments, or customer trends.
Building Cross-Functional Partnerships for Effective Enablement
Establishing strong partnerships with these departments ensures the holistic sales enablement plan reflects the organization's broader needs. For example, marketing can help craft enablement materials, while product teams can provide crucial training for new features. Enablement teams should act as facilitators, collaborating across departments to ensure alignment and maximum impact.
5. Establish Roles and Responsibilities
A successful sales enablement plan involves several moving parts. Assigning roles and responsibilities early on is essential so everyone understands their role. For example:
- Who will lead the creation of enablement materials?
- Who is responsible for conducting training sessions?
- Who will track and report on the success of the plan?
By clearly defining each person's role, you ensure accountability and make tracking progress against specific tasks easier. Use project management tools to streamline delegation and monitor task completion across the team.
6. Set Realistic Timelines
Define a timeline that outlines when each aspect of your plan will be rolled out. Consider the time it will take to create training materials, implement new tools, and conduct training sessions. Setting realistic timelines helps manage expectations and ensures each phase of the enablement process progresses smoothly.
Be flexible with your timeline; some initiatives might require more time than anticipated. Review and adjust deadlines regularly based on progress.
7. Measure and Communicate Success
As you execute your sales enablement plan, continuously track your KPIs to measure success. Evaluate performance against benchmarks you’ve set and make data-driven adjustments where necessary. Regular communication with the sales team is also crucial to keeping them engaged and informed.
Reporting on progress to stakeholders not only ensures alignment but also builds buy-in for future enablement initiatives. Share both wins and areas for improvement openly.
8. Use the Right Sales Enablement Tools
The right tools can significantly streamline your sales enablement efforts. Traditionally, organizations used multiple project management tools and communication platforms, which could create inefficiencies. Today, purpose-built sales enablement platforms offer a more streamlined approach, integrating content management, training, coaching, and reporting all in one place.
Invest in a platform allowing seamless content delivery, user-friendly dashboards, and performance tracking. This will enable quicker execution and adjustments, speeding up the time to market.
6 Core Sales Enablement KPIs To Measure
1. Sales Win Rate: The Ultimate Test for Sales Enablement Efficiency
Sales win rate measures the percentage of deals won over a period. It indicates your sales team’s efficiency and effectiveness in the sales enablement strategy. A low win rate can be symptomatic of gaps in sales training or misalignment between your sales process and customer needs. You are honing your sales team’s competitive edge by tracking and improving this rate. You’re ensuring they’re not just entering races but crossing the finish line first.
2. Sales Cycle Length: A Window into Sales Process Efficiency
Sales cycle length is the average time your sales team takes to close a deal from the first touchpoint. Why does this matter? A prolonged sales cycle can tie up resources and diminish your team’s agility. Understanding this KPI helps you pinpoint stages where deals stall, allowing you to address issues promptly by streamlining the qualification process or enhancing product knowledge.
3. Quota Attainment: The Straightforward Barometer of Sales Success
Quota attainment measures the percentage of sales reps meeting or exceeding their quotas. It’s not just a reflection of individual performance but a litmus test for the effectiveness of your sales enablement program. High quota attainment means your team is:
- Well-equipped
- Motivated
- On track
Low figures may point to unrealistic quotas or areas in your sales enablement approach that need refinement.
4. Sales Content Usage and Engagement: Do Your Sales Resources Resonate?
Sales content usage and engagement examine how frequently and effectively your sales team uses the materials created to facilitate the sales process.
- Are the case studies and datasheets you provide being utilized?
- Do they resonate with prospects?
Measuring Content Effectiveness for Sales Enablement
This KPI isn’t just about usage rates; it’s about understanding the quality and relevance of your content. With this insight, you can tailor your content strategy to ensure your sales team has the best ammunition to close deals.
5. User Satisfaction: The Gateway to Sales Productivity
User satisfaction gauges how satisfied your sales reps are with the enablement tools and resources. Happy sales reps are typically more productive and driven. By measuring this KPI, you can foster an environment where sales tools are available, user-friendly, and practical, directly influencing performance and retention rates.
6. Customer Feedback and Satisfaction: The True Measure of Sales Success
While internal satisfaction is key, external satisfaction is the true measure of success in the marketplace. This KPI provides direct insight into how your product or service stands in the eyes of your customers post-purchase. High customer satisfaction often correlates with repeat business and referrals, which are golden in sales. It’s also a reflection of the quality of the pre-sale process that your sales team is orchestrating.
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10 Sales Enablement Best Practices To Implement For Sales Success
1. Define Business Outcomes and Goals
Understanding the goals you want to achieve is the first step in implementing sales intelligence. To understand the focus areas for your strategy, consult with:
- Business stakeholders
- Sales representatives
Consider the following questions:
- What are our overarching sales goals? (Do we want more deals? More sales? Higher quota achievement? Better customer retention? How will we define success?)
- What challenges/frustrations are we facing?
- Where are our sales reps spending most of their time? Is this where they should be devoting their efforts? If not, then where?
- How closely are we working with marketing on content creation?
- How can we enhance the sales content creation process to make everyone’s life a bit easier?”
Once you gather this information, start defining goals around how your sales enablement team will:
- Help increase companywide KPIs
- Tackle and reduce ongoing sales challenges
- Streamline sales processes cross-functionally across marketing, sales, and sales operations
Luckily, many sales enablement technologies can help translate these goals into realistic, measurable KPIs. These metrics then give your company and sales leaders a blueprint for coaching sellers toward tangible rather than arbitrary objectives.
2. Define Buyer Personas and Customer Experiences
As potential buyers research your brand, you should be doing the same. Accenture reports that 75% of consumers are more likely to buy from retailers that recognize them by name, know their purchase history, and provide purchase recommendations accordingly.
Before you start creating a buyer persona, you’ll want to:
- Look at current target customers
- Assess their differences
- Group them by their differences
Once you organize them into main categories, research further to add any other valuable information, like:
- What’s the person’s role, and what are their responsibilities within their organization?
- What are some of their top goals and KPIs?
- What industry do they work in and what’s their company size?
- What are their basic demographics? (age? education level? location?)
- What challenges might their role pose for them?
- What kinds of opportunities does their role afford?
- What motivators might help them do their job better?
- What sources do they use to research new products?
- Do they have a preferred method of contact? (email, phone, in-person meetings)
Speak to your marketing team for additional insights on social media or website analytics. Your salespeople and customer care team should also be able to provide you with more intel. Once you have this qualitative info in hand, you’ll want to break them out into the following categories:
- Who is this prospect? (background, demographics, preferences)
- What are they looking for and why? (goals, challenges)
- Why might they be resistant to your product? (objections, common concerns)
- How can you best approach them? (viable positioning, elevator pitches, sales call templates, etc.)
After all this, you will be equipped to create a customer experience for each buyer persona and begin personalizing messaging, campaigns, and collateral through their unique customer journeys.
3. Collaborate with Marketing and Sales Leaders
One critical question to ask yourself when creating a sales enablement strategy is this: How well do my sales and marketing teams collaborate?
Without an enablement strategy or designated sales enablement team to help enforce it, the answer might be: Not that well.
The Importance of Marketing-Sales Alignment
In fact, it’s possible your sales and marketing departments currently work in isolation. And sadly, siloed operations can sometimes derail your sellers as they try to move their prospects along the buyer’s journey. All this to say: A well-oiled sales machine depends on a closed-loop relationship between marketing and sales and a collaborative culture among all relevant stakeholders.
Aligning Marketing and Sales Content Creation
As you work to get sales enablement up and running, involve your colleagues in marketing by hosting regular feedback sessions to help align top-of-funnel content creation with middle-to-bottom-of-funnel sales activity. Marketers should understand what pieces of content are successful with prospects, allowing them to capitalize on winning messaging strategies going forward.
Leveraging Sales Enablement Tools for Content Management
Similarly, sellers should be familiar with the marketing content being produced. This allows you to see gaps in content coverage or flag irrelevant or outdated content for review. A sales enablement tool that prioritizes sales content management and content metrics can assist you in this process.
Fostering Collaboration Across Teams for Sales Enablement Success
Collaborative communication shouldn’t be confined to marketing and sales alone. For sales enablement to thrive, you’ll have to engage in an open communications policy across all teams and stakeholders, from your sales managers to your chief security officer (CSO) and all other professionals within your organization that can help promote a united front and mobilize the entire company around your sales enablement strategy.
4. Have Empathy Toward Customers' Problems
Sales reps should have high emotional intelligence to understand customers' pain points and build rapport with them. This can be natural for some but can be learned by others. Sales leaders should ensure their team members have the right communication style, personality, and emotional intelligence to put the customer at ease and be good listeners.
While this can apply to sales reps, it can also apply to customer service agents who answer customers' questions online or over the phone.
5. Adopt Sales Technology Tools
While some sales reps may dread sitting in front of a computer to enter their opportunities and activities, data is critical to support any sales strategy. For example, entering data into a CRM system offers insights into what's in the pipeline and can help sales reps maintain appropriate goals and reminders for communications with their customers.
These tools can also help sales leaders see an account's history and gain insights into what opportunities are won or lost and why.
6. Create Well-Defined Procedures and Processes
Sales leaders should establish standard operating procedures to avoid pitfalls, such as incorrect
quotes and missed follow-ups. Sales playbooks are valuable resources to support new representatives and address common objections.
7. Assess Metrics and Analytics
Sales leaders can manage their teams by analyzing sales data. This information often presents leading and lagging indicators that can predict if fewer calls or customer interactions will result in lower closing rates.
Sales leaders should examine several KPIs to measure the success of their teams beyond dollar amounts. This practice can identify areas for improvement and provide insights into which sales reps perform well and which may need additional coaching.
8. Encourage Sales and Customer Feedback Loops
The ultimate goal of a sales enablement strategy is to give buyers the best experience possible when they use your product. Customer feedback is the only way to know if you’ve achieved this goal.
When you show customers that you care about their opinions, you’ll attract brand loyalty and more revenue per customer. Customer feedback loops involve collecting product reviews to learn your business's perceived value and areas for improvement that customers would love. Your sales team is best equipped to handle customer feedback since they deal with c from pipeline to sales.
9. Personalize Buyer Engagements
A study by SmartHQ revealed that 72% of buyers would only engage with marketing content tailored to their specific interests. Buyers want personalized experiences and get frustrated when they don’t get it. The average buyer already has enough information about their pain points and what product they need to solve their problem. Therefore, they must be convinced that your product fits their needs seamlessly.
Sales enablement should support personalization beyond just putting a customer's name on a template document or email. You should thoroughly understand your customers:
- Likes and dislikes
- Onboard them individually after they purchase your products
- Constantly reach out to them to collect feedback.
You drive customer loyalty this way and increase the chances of your product being recommended to other people.
10. Develop Comprehensive Training Programs
Sales training can boost sales representatives' performance by up to 20%. Reps who receive training are more likely to engage customers in productive conversations and give them personalized buying experiences. Comprehensive training programs are essential for helping sales reps effectively use the sales enablement resources you provide, including:
- Onboarding
- Upskilling
- Reskilling
Try Our Sales Intelligence Software for Free Today
Aomni is an AI agent platform designed specifically for B2B sales intelligence software. Our solution empowers enterprise and strategic account executives to execute account-based sales and marketing strategies with unprecedented efficiency and effectiveness.
Key Features
- AI-powered prospect and account research
- Comprehensive account mapping and planning
- Data-driven sales strategy development
- Automated call preparation
- Personalized AI agents for sales optimization
- AI chat interface for streamlined sales processes
- AI-assisted account-based sales/marketing campaign execution tool
Aomni addresses critical pain points for sales managers whose Account Executives, Account Managers, and Customer Success Managers must perform better and include quotas. By leveraging our advanced AI technology, sales professionals can significantly enhance their preparation for customer conversations, leading to the following:
- Larger deal closures
- Increased promotion opportunities
For individual sales professionals, Aomni provides the tools and insights needed to:
- Elevate their performance
- Close more substantial deals
- Accelerate career progression
Our platform transforms the way B2B sales teams operate, ensuring they enter every customer interaction fully prepared and strategically positioned for success.
Try our sales intelligence software for free today!