How to win friends and influence people, enablement style!
Both Gartner and Forrester have talked about how important it is for enablement functions to be able to measure their business impact however for a role that is used to having a lot of responsibility but very little power, it can be hard to be seen as a strategy-maker rather than a strategy-taker and get buy-in from key stakeholders.
We believe that a competency framework is the key to a strategic enablement plan but, once you have that plan in mind and have identified tools that you need to deliver it how can you best communicate that to the business, secure any necessary investment and ensure everyone is aligned?
Here are 3 key areas to think about:
Show how your plan will help to achieve the business goal
You will have been through a process to identify the areas of focus in your plan that you believe will deliver maximum impact to achieve your business goals - you might have followed the walking backwards approach that we often talk about. It is important to tell this story when communicating your plan or building a case for investment. Nothing should appear ‘a nice to have’ and each part of the plan should show how it moves the business one step closer to achieving its goals.
Use data to prove the value
Having the right metrics in place can help to prove the value of your proposed activity or the ROI of an investment. For example, if you have identified a skills gap that impacts on the leading and lagging indicators that you want to improve, you can quantify the value of an x% uplift in this competency. And remember, it’s not just the value of the uplift that can be useful, the cost of not addressing the skills gap in question can also be a powerful metric.
In the example above, Kunal Pandya talks about how, after benchmarking SDRs against UserZoom’s competency framework, he utilised the sales velocity metrics to calculate the revenue impact of improvements to achieve stakeholder buy in and secure investment in the process. You can hear more about how Kunal achieved this in our webinar ‘How To Solve A Problem Like Sales Enablement Measurement’ which is available on demand as well as in the ‘Avoiding Random Acts of Enablement’ podcast episode
Step into your stakeholders’ shoes - what’s in it for them?
Achieving the business goal is success for everyone but the way each stakeholder views their path to success will be different.
For example, for the CFO, a focused enablement plan leading to increased efficiency in the sales team is also likely to uncover cost savings, avoid wasted budget and will help with more reliable forecasting. For the HR Director, a competency framework and sustainable coaching programme leads to more engaged employees, helps with planning career paths and reduces staff turnover. It is a good idea to call these benefits out specifically for each of your stakeholders, emphasising the far reaching and additional benefits. Acknowledging these benefits can also help you tailor your reporting going forward, making sure that you are communicating the successes in a way that will resonate with everyone individually.
For more insight into what’s important to your stakeholders, take a look at these blogs from our Perspective Series