Businesses have entered a new era of selling. Between dealing with extended buying committees and convincing executives to spend their minimal budgets, sales cycles are slowing and reps are struggling to close deals. So, how do you win against these obstacles?
A recent study we commissioned from a leading B2B research firm, surveying 120 global sales leaders, found an average 16% increase in win rate with one thing in common—sales enablement. By leveraging enablement to build a high-performing sales team, drive efficiency with the right tech stack, and employ an effective strategy, you can achieve consistent sales outcomes.
Here are data-driven tips to come out of this challenging sales environment on top.
Invest in Your People to Develop and Retain Top Talent
Empowered sales teams drive stronger results. So, how do you enable your sellers to succeed? Ensure your reps see an investment in developing and retaining your top talent—one of the leading values that enablement brings to your organization. According to the research, half of sales leaders indicate their budgets for people will increase in the next fiscal year. Developing your salespeople allows you to build and retain a team of confident, high-performing sellers.
TIP: Invest in your salespeople through effective sales readiness programs. Onboarding helps reduce ramp time so your reps become productive faster, and consistent training and coaching refines sellers’ skills over time to improve performance. In fact, sales leaders report their sales enablement programs helped achieve a 17% faster rep ramp time and a 15% increase in rep quota attainment over the last year.
Accelerate Sales Outcomes With a Consolidated Tech Stack
Don’t make your reps waste valuable time navigating between tools. Storing everything your reps need in one location helps them find the information they need faster, giving them back more time to sell. A consolidated approach also allows for lower overall technology costs by reducing the number of tools in your sales tech stack.
TIP: Curate your tech stack to enable integrations, surface insights, and consolidate tools, so you can streamline your sales efforts and accelerate productivity. With a unified platform to equip, train, and coach reps and surface actionable insights, you can connect your enablement investments to revenue outcomes. In fact, more than half of CROs report a 5x return on investment from their sales enablement platform.
Leverage Enablement to Deliver Consistent Business Results
To drive behavior change, you first need to outline a plan of action. With a sales enablement strategy in place, you can define what good looks like for your enablement programs to impact results. In fact, 11 out of 12 sales leaders believe that a company’s sales enablement strategy is a key factor in driving results, and 12 out of 12 leaders believe that success in enablement isn’t probable with just a tool but no strategy. An effective strategy transforms your patchwork of programs into rigorous enablement that increases rep productivity.
TIP: Sales leaders understand the role enablement plays in achieving consistent revenue growth, as 80% view the sales enablement practice as a must have for their business. To ensure enablement influences priority business outcomes, sales leaders can champion your enablement strategy with the rest of the organization.
Operationalize Sales Productivity to Drive Predictable Revenue
Winning today requires a sales force that is empowered to excel and equipped with the tools to improve performance. Paired with an effective enablement strategy outlining the formula to succeed, your sellers can close deals more consistently. By championing what good looks like in sales enablement, you can accelerate rep productivity and boost your business results.
Learn how leading CROs are winning in today’s sales environment in the new report, The CRO Outlook on Enablement.
If you’re a Highspot customer, unlock more enablement insights like these by joining our exclusive customer community, Highspot Spark Community!
This blog post is part of Highspot’s new research-backed blog series, Highspot Insights. With the help of our research teams, we provide data-driven best practices for sales enablement. If you have a topic you’d like to learn more about, please let us know. We’d love to hear from you.
