Did you know that sales enablement adoption has skyrocketed by an astonishing ~300% over the past five years?
What started as a niche practice has now become a standard operating procedure for sales organizations worldwide.
However, even with its widespread use, there are still common misconceptions about sales enablement that persist within the sales community.
It’s no secret that misconceptions can be detrimental to any business, but particularly in sales enablement, they can be a major roadblock to achieving growth and increasing revenue.
In fact, according to a recent study, companies that fail to grasp the full potential of sales enablement can miss out on up to 15% of potential revenue growth.
With sales enablement, you can harness data-driven insights to gain a competitive edge and empower your sales team with the tools they need to succeed.
Do not let misconceptions hold you back – watch your sales soar by debunking these 5 Myths about Sales Enablement.
Myth #1: Sales Enablement and Sales Training Are the Same
Sales enablement is not — or, to be more precise, is not just — about training.
What it excels at extends well beyond the onboarding process: consistently delivering the tools and assistance salespeople need, where they need it, and whenever they need it.
Sales enablement is also not limited to supporting sales training events.
As the bar for salespeople continues to rise, B2B marketing and sales management must update their enablement efforts.
Event-based sales enablement falls short of meeting the needs of all stakeholders. This method is not only time-consuming and costly but also lacks analytics.
Myth #2: Sales Enablement is only used for big projects
Sales enablement is often perceived as a massive undertaking, leading many companies to only focus on big initiatives such as product updates and new launches that happen a few times a year.
However, this is a misconception, as effective sales enablement can provide ongoing access to knowledge and skills that reps can use during their interactions with prospects.
Data shows that companies with robust sales enablement programs have a 15.3% higher win rate and a 21.3% increase in quota attainment.
By investing in continuous sales enablement, companies can ensure their reps are equipped with the necessary knowledge and skills to drive sales success consistently.
Myth #3: Organizations need a dedicated team for sales Enablement
Although a dedicated sales enablement team can help facilitate enablement efforts, it is not a necessity.
A shared responsibility approach between marketing, sales, and other departments can be just as effective in building a comprehensive enablement program.
By leveraging subject matter experts, enablement advocates, and champions within the organization, companies can create an enablement program that supports ongoing learning and development for their sales representatives.
As long as everyone is on the same page and knows what needs to be done, you have the basis for making progress.
Myth #4: Sellers are reluctant to use new tools
Many businesses assume that sales teams are unwilling to utilize a new technology and prefer to operate across the disparate systems with which they are currently familiar.
However, on the contrary, research shows that sellers not only seek but appreciate — technologies that simplify their work. They aren’t looking for fancy features but rather a tool that’s easy to navigate and use.
Still, to further increase the adoption of Sales enablement, we suggest you:
- Create an initial strategy that allows you to iterate and change over time instead of attempting to achieve everything at once.
- Explicitly outline the desired outcomes, advantages, and next steps for the sales team.
- Allow sellers to access enablement whenever it is convenient for them.
Myth #5: You can’t measure the impact of Sales Enablement
Many sales enablement programs fail because companies either don’t evaluate or do not know how to evaluate the impact of their efforts over time.
Companies invest a significant amount of time and money in an enablement platform, add their training materials to it, and then hand it over to their salespeople to utilize. But it’s all pointless until and unless you don’t stop to analyze your efforts.
According to CSO Insights, companies that measure sales enablement ROI see a 32.7% higher win rate compared to those that do not.
The right sales enablement tool will give you a 360-degree perspective on seller activity and outcomes at the macro and micro levels that tie back to your business goals and justify your investment.
The performance of the sales enablement efforts should be tracked and reported as a whole in order to identify areas for improvement and garner support for future initiatives.
Sales intelligence platforms such as Draup track millions of data points and provide specific insights about decision-makers. This allows sales reps to tap into these insights and use them as access points within target accounts. By identifying key decision-makers and the desired business functions, reps can close deals more rapidly and move on to the next prospect.
