Most sales reps are not automatically highly effective employees who are prepared to close sales, meet goals, and help customers find precisely the product they need. With effective training, however, those sales reps can rise to meet those challenges, guiding customers through the buyer’s journey and excelling in their roles.
What Is a Sales Enablement Plan?
A sales enablement plan is a set of guidelines that lays out the content and training the sales team members need to help them reach their goals. This includes:
- What type of tools the members of the sales team are expected to use, and how those tools can help them accomplish their goals
- An overview of the sales process for your company, including a look at the buyer’s journey
- The framework and guidelines your marketing team is expected to follow
Without a solid sales enablement strategy, you may find your sales team lagging as they struggle to access the tools they need. Your marketing team may lack the necessary insights or information they need to achieve their goals, or they may not have the CRM tools they need to guide customers, close deals, and make sales. With a sales enablement strategy, on the other hand, you will often see your sales team becoming much more effective—and your sales leaders rising to new heights.
Creating a Sales Enablement Plan for 2024
This year, you need to create a sales enablement plan to help your salespeople learn more about the sales process, identify the KPIs (key performance indicators) that will determine your overall effectiveness, and better establish your sales initiatives for the coming year. Through these strategies, you can improve your sales organization and put the members of your team in a better position to meet sales quotas and improve the overall function of your business.
1. Talk to Your Sales Management Team
Before you can start designing an effective sales enablement framework, sit down with your sales management team to get a better idea of what is needed. Your sales management team is your vital connection to your salespeople—and, as a result, your connection to your customers. Discuss:
- Your sales cycle. What steps do customers typically go through as they decide to make a purchase from your company? What about future purchases? Upsells?
- The metrics currently used to measure employee performance. What metrics are you using to judge salesperson effectiveness? How do your salespeople know how they measure up?
- Current sales enablement tools. What tools are the members of your sales team currently using? Do they need additional support or tools to achieve their goals, or are those tools working effectively?
- Current sales training. What training do employees receive before going out on the floor or connecting with customers as salespeople? What does the current onboarding process for your sales team look like?
- Areas of need. Your sales management team members are often ideally positioned to identify potential areas of need and give you a better idea of where your salespeople may need further support to achieve their goals.
- Your current sales operations. What does the current strategy look like? How are your team members evaluated? Are there any staffing shortages or other issues that could contribute to your sales team’s effectiveness?
Your sales management team members can also provide you with a closer look at the messaging currently going out related to sales and sales goals and how you may need to adapt that messaging to meet the needs of your employees and your brand.
2. Lay Out Your Goals and Your Strategy
Creating a sales enablement plan for your brand sounds like a great way to increase sales. But before you can start that process, it’s critical that you clearly define your goals. What are you hoping to accomplish with your new strategy? Include:
- The KPIs you will track to measure success. How will you know whether your new sales enablement plan is working and how it is helping you meet your goals? Make sure it is clearly defined as part of your plan.
- The onboarding and training methods and tools you intend to use to get your sales team up to scratch.
- The case studies, sales content, and other content you may need to provide for your sales team to make them more effective.
To design an effective sales enablement plan, you must have a clear idea of what you are trying to accomplish, how you will measure it, and the tools that you have at your disposal. You may also want to include current metrics and strategies that you can use as a yardstick for future performance.
3. Clearly Define Your Metrics
Your sales enablement plan must include clear sales performance metrics that will give you a better idea of how the sales enablement team is performing and how your new sales training is impacting the members of your sales team.
Training Metrics
Training metrics incorporate those directly related to the training process. They may include elements like training course completion rates, which will tell you how many employees have actually reviewed your sales enablement content.
Retention Metrics
In addition to monitoring the training process, you may want to measure how your new sales enablement processes impact your employee retention. You should provide a clear playbook that helps improve sales skills and allows employees to close more deals. Not only that, your training should show that the organization is committed to your representatives and willing to go the extra mile for them. Track turnover during training, which could indicate an excessive or problematic training process or ongoing retention as salespeople move through your courses and training.
Sales Metrics
Of course, you want to track how your new sales enablement process impacts overall sales. That may include tracking things like:
- Influence on revenue
- Win rates
- Closed deals
- Quota attainment
These metrics can provide better insight into the overall performance of your new program.
4. Connect the Sales Enablement Process to the Buyer’s Journey
Ultimately, the sales enablement process is all about the customer. It takes potential customers through the buyer’s journey as they become satisfied customers and, in many cases, repeat customers of your organization. As you create your sales enablement content, it’s important to link your materials to the stages of the buyer’s journey.
Sales enablement content includes all the materials your sales team can use to help that process along. It may include:
- Scripts
- Case studies
- Whitepapers
- Email templates
- Blog posts
- Testimonials
- Playbooks
- Customer research
- Competitor insights
- Ebooks
- Social media content
Each type of content has its own place in the buyer’s journey. For example, customer testimonials may be most effective as buyers near the end of the sales funnel when they’re ready to make a decision. You may also have email templates for each stage of the sales journey.
Identify Pain Points at Each Stage
Potential customers will have different concerns and needs at each stage of the buyer’s journey. Identify pain points for each stage of the customer journey. What questions do they have? What concerns can your sales team answer for them? Check out what relevant content you may already have for those concerns at each stage.
Lay Out Content Needs
As you consider your sales enablement content, carefully consider your content needs. Are there stages of the buyer’s journey that seem to be missing content? Over time, you may want to build that content so that you can improve the customer experience. Through the content management process, you can ensure you have content for all your buyer personas at every stage of the journey.
Aim to Streamline the Content Delivery Process
Streamline your sales team’s workflow as much as possible. That may include, for example, utilizing automation to ensure that customers get the right content at the right stages of their journey. Your sales team does not necessarily have to personally share that content with every customer. The bottom line is that content can help guide them through the buyers’ journey. Automated content delivery can help ensure that they get it at the right time.
5. Create a Launch Plan
Before you’re ready to launch your new sales enablement efforts, it’s important to put a clear launch plan in place that will allow you to achieve those goals.
Establish How You Will Get Buy-In
Having buy-in from key stakeholders, from your frontline sales team to your management team, is critical. Establish how you will get buy-in for any new plan.
Define Your Goals for Your Team
Lay out your sales enablement goals in a way that every member of the team will understand and be able to utilize.
Lay Out What Tools You Need
Sales enablement software can prove essential in providing your sales professionals with the tools they need. Not only do you need an effective sales enablement platform, but you may also need solutions like a new training program or CRM (customer relationship management) software that will help guide your new endeavors. Don’t forget about sales tools that can help your employees guide customers through the buying process. Keep in mind that when you intend to add to your tech stack, you will need to make sure that any new solutions integrate effectively with your current technology.
Determine Feedback Methods
You already know how you will be calculating the success of your new sales enablement program. Not only do you need to track sales success, but you also need a method that will allow you to communicate those successes to the members of your sales enablement team, your management team, and your salespeople. Clearly lay out how you will provide that vital feedback and how often.
Create a Training Plan
Many of your new sales enablement goals will require fresh employee training. Establish both a training plan for your current employees and an onboarding plan that will allow you to bring new employees on board, equipping them for success in their roles.
Establish the Ideal Training Plan for Your Team
At Docebo, we provide training solutions that will make it easier for you to equip the members of your team. Contact us today to learn more about our online learning platform and how it can help your team achieve their goals.
