From Start-up to Enterprise: What GOOD Sales Enablement Looks Like at Different Stages
Let’s talk about Sales Enablement and how prescriptive approaches to sales success can vary across companies.
What does GOOD Sales Enablement look like?
When you think of “Sales Enablement,” what comes to mind - is it Sales Onboarding? Content Management? Sales Coaching? All of the above and then some?
What if I told you that Sales Enablement isn’t a set of deliverables but instead a strategic approach to problem solving?
Sales Enablement is the end-result of solving for a revenue teams challenges, of which are roadblocks to immediately achievable revenue goals, through a variety of methods, ranging from: education to content to process and change management. The solution will always vary depending on the problem at hand.
Knowing this, how does this change your POV of what GOOD Sales Enablement looks like?
If we accept the above definition as truth, then Sales Enablement outputs can never be the same two shades of grey across two seemingly similar companies. For every company has a unique set of challenges to solve, which results in an equally unique set of Sales Enablement solutions.
Furthermore, companies are ever-changing as markets shift with growth. This means the job of a Sales Enablement is never “done” at a company - as GOOD Sales Enablement is a continuously iterative process of evolution that grows and changes with the business.
In a practical sense, Sales Enablement will never look exactly the same across multiple companies, but it can be fairly prescriptive if you know what to look for and expect, based on the maturity of a companies go-to-market (GTM) operations.
This article will help you understand what GOOD Sales Enablement might look like for your company.
Early Stage Maturity:
This is you if…
✓ Your revenue org has 0-2 dedicated Sales Enablement professionals
✓ Your sales team has 2-10 representatives
✓ You have less than 100 paying customers
The goal of Sales Enablement at this stage is to create the foundations that align and define a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) sales strategy for your business.
You’re a newer sales team, so there isn’t much on-hand historical data to drive sales strategy and go-to-market positioning. Therefore, you need to create an initial effective strategy based on the only accessible resources at your disposal: combined conclusions from anecdotal internal thought leadership and industry best practices. This information can be leveraged to define a measurable baseline of sales processes and strategies for future improvement and first-stage scalability.
At this stage, you need to focus on:
Documentation: Identify and document all internal processes and best practices
Sales Process: Define and document the customer journey and translate that into a step-by-step sales process and align that with a tracking modal, such as a CRM
Value Messaging: Translate product messaging into priority field enablement resources, such as: Pitch Decks, Talk Tracks, and Playbooks
Lead Generation: Define Buyer Personas and top-of-funnel targeting processes
Sales Automation: Evaluate and implement priority sales enablement technologies to increase sales efficiency, such as with a: CRM, Emailing Platforms, and Lead Gen Tools
Sales Negotiation: Create product pricing strategies and contracting processes
Content Management: Consolidate and organize Go-to-market teams content and documentation into a single place for all employees that is easily access
Sales Onboarding: Create the first interaction of a sales-specific onboarding program which focuses on company basics, product knowledge and messaging and sales skills
This is a BIG JOB and can get costly in the early phases. To get a quick-time-to-value without sacrificing on quality of outcomes, I recommend hiring an experienced short-term Sales Enablement Consultant to come in and help you set the ship a float and build out this content. The upfront investment will pay heavy dividends and better utilize your full-time staff to accelerate sales strategic initiatives.
Middle Stage Maturity:
This is you if…
✓ Your revenue org has 3-5 dedicated Sales Enablement professionals
✓ Your sales team has 25-100 representatives
✓ You have a history of at least 300 paying customers (including churned)
The goal at this stage is to leverage sales data and field feedback to improve and scale up sales programs and content, while growing your enablement arsenal.
At this point, your revenue team has been selling long enough to have some streamlined process and verifiably effective value-based product messaging. This means, you can shift your business operating model away from being reactive and mostly tactical, to largely proactive, strategic, and data-driven. This can be done by enhancing current Sales Enablement programs with measurable success metrics, and implementing a holistic sales methodology in alignment with your selling process, to better drive market value.
At this stage, you need to focus on:
Success Measurement: Identify impactful leading and lagging indicators of sales success and create a process to measure them within Sales Enablement programs and content strategies
Sales Methodology: Define and implement a sales methodology and align it with the selling process
Deal Strategy: Create a repeatable deal strategy process for a collaborative selling and coaching environment that is aligned with your sales methodology
Process Automation & Simplicity: Optimize your sales teams tool tech stack by enhancing integrations to create a “single pane of glass” experience and improving automation and data capture processes
Value Messaging: Leverage field feedback to fine-tuning sales messaging and update/improve upon related content resources
Sales Team Growth: Prepare for rapid sales team headcount growth with improved sales onboarding programs that have role-specialized learning paths and certifications
At this stage of maturity, your Enablement function is likely transitioning out of a “reactive” state of responding to the rapid growth needs of the organization. The chaos and ambiguity at this stage isn’t optimal but it’s necessary in order to help you get to the next phase.
In order to help elevate your team to become more strategic, you need some big, quick wins that can only come from a highly experienced professional that has a sole purpose to bring the above mentioned items to life for you and the team.
For this, a short-term Sales Enablement Consultant can be a saving grace, helping you increase the ROI of your full-time sales enablement team investment, by simultaneously helping you prioritize and forecast objectives. The “extra hands” for high-impact project execution will rapidly expand your Enablement teams impact.
Late Stage Maturity:
This is you if…
✓ Your revenue org has 6+ Sales Enablement professionals and/or a team with specialization
✓ Your sales team is global and has 100+ representatives
✓ You have a history of at least 750 paying customers (including churned)
The goal at this stage is to focus Sales Enablement Programs on specific, metric-driven, identified growth areas within Revenue teams. This includes programs that offer continuous reinforcement and are specialized per audience across the whole GTM.
Your sales team should be operating at peak performance at this stage. However, there is always room for improvement as markets and internal operations shift with growth.
At this stage, you need to focus on:
GTM Processes: Define and implement sustainable go-to-market internal collaboration and launch processes
Sales Reporting: Enhance sales technology reporting for data-driven decision making on strategy and process improvements
Sales Enablement Structure: Create a scalable structured sales enablement team with specialization in skillset, audience delivery, and/or functional focus
Continuous Sales Learning: Develop and implement consistently run training programs for post-onboarded sales reps that focus on a variety of topics needing education and reinforcement, such as: product, sales skills, process, and more
Non-Sales GTM Onboarding: Create and implement onboarding programs for non-sales Go-to-market teams such as customer success, sales operations, and marketing as a step towards cohesive “one team” cross-functional operations
Can your full-time Enablement Team do the above as well as every other initiative they’ve been managing for years? Absolutely. Can you make them more efficient and effective with a small investment of dedicated strategic Enablement expertise? 100%.
Much like the previous stages, a Sales Enablement consultant can bring substantial, measurable, revenue growth outcomes, quickly for little overall cost to an annual budget. With the right expert, you can optimize your go-to-market operations across the entire global organization with strategies geared towards streamlining complex initiatives and creating predictable outcomes.
At this stage, a GOOD consultant should help you break operational silos, reduce redundancy, and align all projects under the Revenue team to the same business objectives.
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GOOD Sales Enablement will make-or-break the success of your B2B software company at every stage of your GTM operational maturity. From creating a strong foundation to optimizing existing processes, partnering with an expert Sales Enablement consultant, can help you gain a competitive advantage in the market and better achieve your goals, faster.
Looking for a Sales Enablement Consultant that can achieve the objectives outlined above for your business? Contact GTM Enabler for a free consultation today!
GTM Enabler provides emerging B2B software companies with highly customized Revenue Enablement services, covering: strategy, content, training, and more. With GTM Enabler's expertise, clients experience increased win rates, shorter sales cycles, and better go-to-market operations. Choose GTM Enabler as your trusted partner for accelerated business growth.