If you are in sales enablement, you know that marrying your measures directly to revenue outcomes is a never-ending challenge. It is the number one question we get asked on our client calls at LevelJump. Here we break it down for you in four steps that any enabler can follow to tie the two together.
The Gap — no, not the American retail store, this refers to the gap between where a prospect is and where they want to be.
I interrupt your regularly scheduled mundane scrolling with precious insights! I recently had the honor to interview Ray Owais, Retail Revenue Enablement Lead at Shopify. Shopify is the leading retail operating system for any size business that has helped 446,005 entrepreneurs sell in-person, online, social media, and even from the trunk of a car.
As a sales leader, it’s assumed that you’re good at adapting to change.
Which is important because the current environment needs great sales leaders who are nimble and can successfully pivot. Most sales forces have had to shift from in-person to virtual onboarding, but there are ways to make your team stand out and succeed despite the change.
A first-rate onboarding process will push new reps closer to their first deal and achieve the team’s goals. Consider also that effective onboarding can speed up the ramp-time to full productivity by up to 18%. Imagine having a team that gets their first meeting, opportunity, deal and consistent quota achievement faster.
You can make it happen by following the steps below.
Once you identify that your team has a sales cycle length problem, it’s time to do something about it. Here’s everything you need to know to create sales coaching programs to shorten your sales cycle.
Most sales leaders wish that C-level executives would view sales enablement as a necessity, not just an amenity for teams; but to get buy-in from the top can take some work. In a perfect world, enablement would just be a standard line-item on the go-to-market spreadsheet.
But we don’t live in a perfect world.
It’s often a grueling uphill battle for sales leaders trying to make a case for sales enablement to hard-nosed CFOs and other execs.
All too often, sales leaders are forced to build their case for enablement from scratch — articulate its value, paint a picture of the enablement function, and present evidence why hiring one enabler is better than just pouring that money into even more BDRs.
If you don't have enablement as part of your current system (but you know it's a good idea - because it IS a good idea), here's how you build a business case for sales enablement so that you can get buy-in from your CFO.
Charles Darwin said it’s not the strongest or smartest species that survives, but rather the species that’s the most adaptable to change.
Chuck might as well have been talking about sales enablement. Sales reps’ tactics often need to change to meet the required revenue goals set by leadership. And no matter how clever you think your programs are, leadership won’t care if they don’t get you closer to your revenue goals. And the only way you’re going to do that is to change seller behaviour.
Sitting in Google drives, SharePoints, and laptop folders across the world, collecting digital dust and just waiting to see the light of day, are hundreds of enablement programs that were initially meant for day-long, in-person training sessions.
But let’s face it – they aren’t going to happen any time soon.
Sales enablement is a broad term that covers a wide gamut of efforts, ultimately aimed at driving more revenue. This includes stuff like tools and processes, but also content, coaching frameworks, and practice spaces for sales to get better at their jobs.
There are several stages involved in implementing a sales enablement program. You need to create a hypothesis, get all stakeholders on board, and roll it out effectively. Once the process is in motion, there's another crucial phase — proving it works. Or, if it's not working, to quickly identify the problem and go back to the drawing board. What follows are some guidelines on how to show that sales enablement is working, and how to make improvements in any areas that need tweaking.
Last week I was lucky enough to sit down and “moderate” (read: shoot the breeze with some cool people) a panel discussion between Matt Biggerstaff, CSM at Gong, Adriana Romero, Sales Enabler at Clearbanc, and our senior CSM here at LevelJump, Becca Shaffer.
There are several key steps to building a successful digital sales enablement program. The most exciting part, however, is actually shipping the program so you can see it in action. The way it’s executed will have a major effect on how it’s received and the results you see. Here are some best practices and common mistakes to avoid to ensure you build a scalable sales enablement strategy that meets your objectives and drives revenue.
All too often, enablement managers design programs reactively, based on an ad-hoc requests sales leaders toss their way. It inevitably ends up being random acts of enablement, rather than a deliberate sales enablement strategy.
Who doesn't like scavenger hunts? We'll do you one better: what if the next scavenger hunt could help you save significant resources and play a vital role in your sales enablement process?
That might sound a bit extreme.
But that's exactly what a content scavenger hunt can do.
Sales enablement is the process of building a comprehensive program designed to provide your sales team with the content and tools they need to close more deals. From training materials and product information, to highly effective email templates, competitor battlecards, and much more, content is an important part of the process to help your team drive more revenue.
But it’s bonkers expensive and takes ages to build. On average, marketers spend about 26% of their budget on content.
So a big part of being an effective enabler is learning to use what you’ve got. And a scavenger hunt can help you surface existing content across your organization, enabling you to leverage it into better sales training and optimization.
That's right: no new content required. Instead, follow these 4 steps to run an effective content scavenger hunt that can lead to almost immediate ROI.
In order to effectively implement digital enablement, it's imperative to get all the essential stakeholders on board. Without buy-in throughout your organization, it will be difficult to roll out your digital enablement strategy. But obtaining the necessary support can seem like a daunting task when you need to convince a diverse group of people, each with their own viewpoints and objections. With the right preparations, however, you can convey the benefits of your position and secure the support you need.
When it comes to training your sales reps to be successful in the digital, agile, modern world, it might seem like there are a lot of different kinds of tools to help them do that.
As you might have noticed, podcasts are sort of a thing. And you also might have noticed, there’s an awful lot of chaff in that wheat.
So we did the hard work for you and rounded up the 22 best sales podcasts we could find. These podcasts vary from pure tactics and the latest trends, to management expertise and insightful tips backed by years of experience.
Get ready to smash that subscribe button 22 times in a row.
There was a clear trend of remote working even before COVID. Global Workplace Analytics reported in 2019 that in the last decade and a half, the remote working population has grown 11% faster than the rest of the workforce. This also applies to sales companies and teams, where in the US, about half of all sellers are now on inside sales teams.
It’s QBR season again. Normally this would mean getting all of your sales reps and sales leadership into one room for 8 hours (sometimes for more than one day) to recap the previous quarter and plan strategies for the next one.
But this year, things have been different. Due to COVID, many teams will be running virtual sales QBRs.
Sales QBRs don’t have a great reputation even at the best of times. They are not always known to make waves, and many leaders and SDRs often view them as an obligatory exercise that comes with the job, like the occasional dinner with your in-laws. This will make your virtual sales QBR all the more challenging.
