Trust Enablement

Improving Sales Performance with Enablement Recruiting, Consulting, Outsourcing, Coaching, and Insights on Strategies, Tactics, and Tools

4 Tips for Getting Onboard with Enablement!

“I see trees of green, red roses too

I see them bloom, for me and you

And I think to myself, what a wonderful world”

 

4 Tips for Getting Onboard with Enablement!Every Sales Enablers’ dream is to walk into an organization to find out every department and executive knows undoubtedly, how to partner with Sales Enablement.

Errrr…..

Let’s get to reality. All too often, enablement teams are coming in with content blazing, finely tuned presentation skills, and the processes ready to scale at large, only to quickly realize, most internal teams, including department heads, are still struggling with how to partner with Sales Enablement.

Enablement maturity takes time, it takes commitment from internal stakeholders, and it takes a true team to carry out what is necessary for the sales enablement ecosystem to flourish.

How does your organization compare? There are a few telling signs of a dysfunctional sales enablement system.

  • Does the sales enablement team always seem late with content?
  • Does the sales team frequently miss the momentum created by marketing campaigns?
  • Does enablement seem to be off on their own island?
  • Do you see a lack of adoption around marketing materials, sales content, even sales tools?
  • Do you know what projects sales enablement is working on, on any given day? (A “no” here indicates dysfunction)

If you said “Yes” to at least two of these, you have a dysfunctional sales enablement system.

Fear not my courageous leaders! This sales enabler is going to give you a few tips on how to start knocking down those silos, increasing adoption of sales tools/content, and making sure your sellers and the enablement team are besties!

Tip #1- Hulk Smash Those Silos – STAT!

Silos are the kryptonite to your sales enablement superheroes! This needs to come from the top down. Marketing, Operations, Product, Sales, Sales/Revenue Enablement need to know what each other had for lunch! Ok – maybe not that much info, but you get my point.

If this isn’t happening, key-in on the kinks in the chain. Do they need a tactful explanation of the vision and strategy of the organization’s enablement team? Perhaps they have too much on their plate; as an enabler, how can you help bridge the gap?

As a marketing, ops, or sales leader, ask yourself why you are resistant to this shift? If you aren’t resistant but are not doing anything to help bridge the gap, then you are culpable. Get in there and make some waves. Help to improve the 2-way communication. Schedule time with your team to discuss what enablement is and what they can expect. Give enablement the support and forum they need.

Enablers – take the bull by the horns. Identify the root issue, tactfully have a conversation with the resistant team member(s) regardless of the reason, and execute the plan to unclog the bottleneck.

Tip #2 – Share, Share, Share, and Share Some More!

This is something actionable to help break down the silos. In my experience, something that I like to do is have a separate sales enablement calendar and share this with all stakeholders, including the sales teams. On this calendar, I have all of my projects i.e. training sessions, workshops, marketing campaign drops, demo certifications, new hires onboarding, etc.

Sharing this calendar helps to keep the entire team up to date on what they can expect to receive, whether it’s a desk drop, a workshop, or if their demo re-certification is coming up.

Another actionable thing you can do is to create a project tracker. A tracker I like to use contains the title of the project, a short description, status of project i.e. not started, in-progress, completed, and overdue, priority level of project, deliverables, dependencies, first draft due date, final due date, link to the document, and any important notes. This tracker is shared with all relevant leaders.

In addition to the tracker, I have a tab that documents all projects I have completed and another tab that shows what is in my project pipeline.

Finally, I like to send out a weekly executive summary containing Sales Enablement projects completed and what can be expected the following week. I also like to send out data around how certain sequences/templates in Outreach are performing, call recording tool data with call score improvements, competency improvements/lacking, and other areas of opportunity for additional coaching.

This summary will go to all relevant leaders.