Trust Enablement

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

The LEARN Enablement Framework

What is the LEARN Enablement Framework?

The LEARN Enablement FrameworkThe LEARN Enablement Framework is the Trust Enablement approach to Enablement success. This model acts as a filter for all work we do.

We have initially gone in-depth on the Launch portion and will continue to flesh out the other areas over time.

Here is a very brief summary of each element of the model, all of which is fleshed out further below.

  • LAUNCH
    • The first 90 – 120 days of launching or relaunching your Enablement program.
  • ECOSYSTEM
    • The processes, frameworks, and software solutions used to deliver on your targets.
  • ANALYSIS
    • Measurement and analysis.
  • REFINING
    • Continuous improvement and maturing.
  • NORM
    • The status quo, day-to-day life of Enablement

First.

What components exist for each area?

Each piece of the LEARN Model includes the following components.

  • Maturity Model
  • Explanation of WHY you want to move to the next level of maturity in terms of key business outcomes.
  • Strategies to move from one level of maturity to the next. These strategies include:
    • Collaboration and Communication requirements
    • The project, change, and risk management
    • Change management
    • Training and Reinforcement Needs
    • Considerations in various geographies and industries.
  • Key KPIs (Leading and Lagging) as you move through the model.
  • People and organizational needs
  • Coaching needs
  • Training needs

We will further flesh out these components in time.

The Enablement Maturity Framework (EMF)

The robustness and maturity of an organization’s approach to Enablement are directly related to its ability to deliver positive, measurable outcomes.

The good news is that we can quickly assess organizational maturity, steps to improvement prescribed, and results will follow.

Important Point:  Most organizations operate at varying levels of maturity for the multiple components of Enablement. For this reason, we have constructed the model to be used to measure each area independently – allowing for a more accurate view of your organization and more targeted improvement.

The Enablement Maturity Index (EMI)

The Enablement Maturity Framework uses these standard indices for ALL measurement areas to ease understanding.

  • Absent – This Enablement area is entirely missing.
  • Limited – Efforts are primarily random.
  • Basic – Work is prioritized based upon potential impact, but limited measurement exists.
  • Informative – Reporting of program outcomes taking place, but not actionable.
  • Insightful – Programs tied to business outcomes, clarity in prioritization based upon expected ROI.
  • Transformational – Efforts are predictive, very targeted usage of the capability to impact individual, team, or business, as required to achieve stated business goals.

We will use the maturity index to measure and improve:

  • All components of LEARN.
  • All Enablement tactics.
  • All Enablement products and solutions.

The LEARN Model in Detail

At the time of this writing, we have only fleshed out the Launch component of LEARN.

Launching

When launching or relaunching your Enablement program, you will need to consider your current level of maturity (Absent if newly launching) and what level of maturity you seek to achieve with your efforts.

We still need to update our guide on Launching to incorporate the maturity index.  

Let’s review launching from the perspective of EMI.

Absent

When you have no Enablement program, you are at this stage.

What questions can you ask to determine if you are at this level?
  • Do we have anyone helping our sales team by creating Content or providing training?
What are the risks of remaining at this level?
  • Too much time hunting for Content, building decks, doing admin, not enough time actively selling.
  • This study from InsideSales.com reported sales reps only spend 37% of their time on revenue-generating activities.
What are the benefits of moving up from this level?

According to G2:

  • Sales enablement’s presence correlates with a 31% improvement in supporting changes in sales messaging and a 15% improvement in improving low-performing salespeople.
  • Organizations with sales enablement achieve a 49% win rate on forecasted deals, compared to 42.5%.
How do you move from this level to the next one?

Assign, at minimum, a part-time resource to:

  • Work directly with sales managers to deliver on tasks keeping sellers away from actively selling (such as content creation).
  • With sales managers and reps, identify gaps in knowledge and provide basic training to the teams to close these gaps.

Limited

An ad hoc approach to training, coaching, and Content is in place.

There is no attempt to measure any outcomes.

The Enablement program has poor adoption.

However, people who work with the Enablement team are mainly happy to get the additional support and see it as a time-saver for Content or a time-waster for training.

An executive champion may not yet be identified and in place.

What questions can you ask to determine if you are at this level?
  • Do we have anyone helping our sales team by creating Content or providing training?
  • Is this work being prioritized based upon business goals or ad hoc requests?
  • Are any measurements in place in terms of cost vs. benefit or simply even who uses these services?
What are the risks of remaining at this level?
  • Too much time hunting for Content, building decks, doing admin, not enough time actively selling.
  • This study from InsideSales.com reported sales reps only spend 37% of their time on revenue-generating activities.
  • You are not maximizing your investment to achieve stated business or team goals.
What are the benefits of moving up from this level?

According to the last State of Sales Enablement Report from CSO Insights in 2019, ad hoc approaches to Sales Enablement can lead to decreased team performance. If you are investing at this level, you may not positively impact your business.

How do you move from this level to the next one?

Hire, or shift an existing team member into, a full-time Enablement position.

  • Identify and partner with an executive leader who can open doors for you across the organization.
  • Create a sales enablement charter to guide your work.

Basic

The Enablement leader has completed an initial listening tour to understand business and individual needs. This leader has a solid executive champion helping them open doors, but the sponsor may not see the Enablement leader as a partner — but see them as a tool in their toolbelt for achieving their goals.

A charter exists to communicate and align on Enablement’s services, work prioritization, and how outcomes are measured.

Measurement remains on the immature side, focusing primarily on leading indicators such as content and training consumption.

What questions can you ask to determine if you are at this level?
  • Do we have anyone helping our sales team by creating Content or providing training?
  • Is this work being prioritized based upon business goals or ad hoc requests?
  • Are any measurements in place regarding cost vs. benefit or even who uses these services?
  • Do we have a defined executive champion?
  • Do we have an agreed-upon sales enablement charter that we built in collaboration across the organization?
What are the risks of remaining at this level?
  • You do not yet know how Enablement impacts your ability to achieve your business goals.
  • While scaling is possible, due to the last point, scaling runs the risk of being ineffective, or at least inefficient spend in resources, tools, and processes.
What are the benefits of moving up from this level?
  • You are developing a broad understanding of the impact of Enablement on your stated business goals.
  • Based upon this understanding and your ability to effectively onboard and assign new Enablement staff, you can effectively scale your Enablement efforts.
How do you move from this level to the next one?

Hire at least one additional Enablement teammate to free up the Enablement leader to:

  • Baseline performance in targeted areas before launching new programs and at the end of the expected ROI time frames. Are you seeing positive progress against those metrics?
  • Create a program to Enable the Enablers to effectively onboard and deliver ongoing training to Enablement staff to improve continuously.

Informative 

The Enablement leader has completed an initial listening tour to understand business and individual needs. This leader has an executive champion helping them open doors, but the sponsor may not see the Enablement leader as a partner but as a tool in their toolbelt for achieving their goals.

A charter exists to communicate and align services, work prioritization, and measurement.

Measurement has matured to identify lagging indicators and tangible business outcomes from existing enablement programs.  

However, the impact of individual programs remains unknown, and you cannot factor potential ROI into the prioritization process to determine the next best step to take by the Enablement team.

A program exists to Enable new Enablement team members; not just the customer-facing teammates accounted for in the charter.

Note: Read our comphrehensive guide to business metrics.

What questions can you ask to determine if you are at this level?
  • Do we have anyone helping our sales team by creating Content or providing training?
  • Is this work being prioritized based upon business goals or ad hoc requests?
  • Are any measurements in place in terms of cost vs. benefit or simply even who uses these services? 
  • Can we determine at the end of each quarter, or at least bi-annually, the overall business impact of Enablement programs?
  • Do we have a defined executive champion?
  • Do we have an agreed-upon sales enablement charter built in collaboration across the organization?
  • Can we scale Enablement effectively via onboarding and ongoing training programs for our new Enablement hires?
What are the risks of remaining at this level?
  • While you know the overall ROI of Enablement, you are still unclear about the ROI of specific programs, making prioritization of activities more difficult.
What are the benefits of moving up from this level?
  • Clear understanding of all Enablement-driven outcomes.
How do you move from this level to the next one?
  • Baseline performance in targeted areas before launching new programs and at the end of each program’s expected ROI time frames. Are you seeing positive progress against those metrics?

Insightful 

The Enablement leader has completed an initial listening tour to understand business and individual needs. This leader has a solid executive champion helping them open doors who views Enablement as a partnership in the success of the revenue organization.

A charter exists to communicate and align services, work prioritization, and measurement.

Measurement has matured to identify lagging indicators and tangible business outcomes from existing enablement programs.  

The impact of individual programs is understood, and potential ROI is factored into the prioritization process to determine the Enablement team’s next best step.

A program exists to Enable new Enablement team members; not just the customer-facing teammates accounted for in the charter.

You are now at the highest level of maturity for the Launching phase; Insightful and Transformational are identical.

Ecosystem

We will build out this information soon.

Analysis

We will build out this information soon.

Refining

We will build out this information soon.

Norm

We will build out this information soon.

General Enablement Tactics

Enablement Areas Evaluated

As with the above, we will build out the tactics in more detail as we move forward.

We have not yet finished fleshing out each area as of this writing.

General Enablement

We will build out this information soon.

Content Curation, Creation, Delivery

We will build out this information soon.

Training

We will build out this information soon.

Coaching

We will build out this information soon.

Leadership

We will build out this information soon.

People and Organization

We will build out this information soon.