Enablement Leaders’ Key Considerations For 2024
We have been fortunate to have been joined by a number of great sales enablement leaders at our recent industry roundtables and hearing them discuss their challenges and priorities for the coming months has been insightful. Here are some of the themes that have been discussed:
Measuring Enablement’s impact on productivity and revenue
We have heard this a lot from enablement leaders over the past year but the ability to measure the impact of Enablement continues to be a priority. Measurement is vital for every stage of the Enablement journey, from being able to measure the skills gaps to focus in the first place right through to seeing how your activity has impacted those skills and the leading and lagging indicators and knowing what is working.
One thing sales is not short of is data, so there is really no reason why Enablement should not be able to analyse the right data at the right time to gain a better insight into these factors. It’s hard to be a strategic business driver without this.
The right tools for the best results vs tool fatigue
Like data, tools are also something that sales is not short of and tool fatigue, particularly amongst front-line reps, is real! The Enablement leaders we heard from believe that this can have a real impact on how well they are able to deliver their programmes and embed learning. They also know that there are almost always tools that are not delivering the value they were brought in to achieve, whilst at the same time there are more pressing gaps in the tech stack that need to be filled but budgets are tight. 🤯
Gartner has predicted that by 2026, 65% of B2B sales organisations will use technology to better unite workflow, data and analytics to make data-driven decisions yet currenly only 22% of Enablement budget is allocated to technology. They believe that Enablement leaders have an increasing role in promoting technologies that will grow the team’s influence and effectiveness.
It can seem like an onerous task but there are ways to analyse the value and impact achieved by tools within your current tech stack AND there are also some powerful tools out there that deliver value without relying on front-line adoption (e4enable Zero for example 😉)
Stakeholder accountability
During our roundtable discussions, leaders revealed that establishing clear ownership and responsibilities among all enablement stakeholders, including leadership, sales teams, and enablement professionals, is essential to the success of enablement initiatives. Clear and transparent communication of roles, responsibilities and expectations is important as well as having well-defined KPIs, and regular check-ins to ensure that everyone remains accountable for their contributions to enablement efforts.
The power of champions
Enablement Champions were a popular choice among many leaders as a solution to build engagement with enablement initiatives. Acting as advocates for Enablement within their organisations, champions can play an important role in promoting its importance and bridging the gap between day to day operations and adoption and strategic business goals (see below 👇)
Bridging the gap between sales and enablement
It can sometimes feel like Enablement and sales teams are not perfectly aligned - Enablement are creating useful content and arranging training to help sales reps whilst the reps are time poor and are focused on numbers and results. Our discussions touched on the importance of establishing a collaborative environment, fostering open communication, involving front-line sellers in the enablement process and using data to back up the 'WHY' and importantly, what’s in it for them. We have a helpful guide on Bridging the Sales and Enablement Gap which provides 7 useful steps to follow.
Linking competencies and career pathways
Another priority of many of our Enablement leaders was making use of competencies in career pathways. This involves aligning competencies to every stage of each role, mapping out clear and transparent development paths for sales professionals and aligning training programs with specific career stages. Not only does this help to reduce staff turnover and assists with succession planning but when employees see how enablement benefits their long-term careers, they become more engaged and motivated. Take a look at our webinar on this very topic for more helpful tips.
Our next roundtable is on 15th February at 3pm GTM/10am ET. If you would relish the opportunity to talk to like-minded Enablers place, simply fill in the form below and we’ll be in touch!