Are you looking to empower your sales teams with the tools, training, and insights required for accelerating deals and crushing quotas in 2023? Then it may be time to explore deploying a sales enablement platform across your revenue organization.
In this comprehensive guide, we will dive deep on:
- The key components and objectives of sales enablement
- Top tools and vendor solutions to consider
- Implementation best practices for maximize adoption
- Proven benefits for sales operations
Let‘s get started with an introduction to exactly what sales enablement aims to achieve.
What is Sales Enablement and Why Does it Matter?
Sales enablement refers to the technology, content, training programs and processes that seek to provide sales teams with the necessary skills, knowledge and resources to effectively sell.
The goals are simple – align enablement activities to desired sales behaviors and business outcomes so reps can find success faster. This means enhancing everything from onboarding and training to frontline coaching to content accessibility across the entire revenue engine.
With effective sales enablement, organizations can gain several performance-boosting benefits:
- Shortened sales cycles and improved win rates
- Larger deal sizes and reduced cost of customer acquisition
- Higher sales productivity and shorter rep ramp times
- Better visibility into content performance and training gaps
- Consistent messaging aligned to buyer journeys
According to SiriusDecisions, world-class sales organizations are 2.6x more likely to utilize sales enablement platforms compared to their peers. And CSO Insights reports that 97% of top performing sales teams have formal sales enablement strategies in place.
Clearly, enablement done right can accelerate seller productivity and overall revenue growth.
The Sales Enablement Imperative
A recent Sales Enablement PRO survey of 300 sales enablement leaders found that:
- 97% of respondents currently have sales enablement initiatives underway or are planning programs for 2023
- Top drivers include enhancing rep skills, increasing retention, boosting sales productivity and scaling sales training
- Leading capabilities sought after include conversation intelligence, microlearning, sales methodology, coaching tools and content management
As competition intensifies and selling environments grow more complex, organizations are rightfully prioritizing sales enablement to unlock sustain revenue growth.
Core Components of a Winning Sales Enablement Stack
Sales enablement platforms encompass a range of capabilities – unifying content, training, coaching and analytics in one centralized destination available across devices.
While specific features can vary across solutions, the most robust options in the market today typically include:
Content Management – Central portal to efficiently create, manage and distribute sales collateral, presentations, one-pagers etc.
Conversation Intelligence – Record, analyze and transcribe sales calls to surface insights around competitive positioning, objections handling and more to drive coaching.
Sales Methodology – Codify and scale best practice selling techniques with templates for common scenarios.
Microlearning – Short burst video training and assessments to reinforce messaging, product value props and core competencies.
Skills Benchmarking – Assess seller knowledge and competencies to create personalized coaching programs addressing individual gaps.
Manager Tools – Observation, tagging and annotation capabilities for call recordings along with in-platform feedback and notes.
Sales Analytics – Custom reporting provides visibility into content consumption trends, training completion rates, competency gaps across teams and other KPIs.
With the right sales enablement platform, these capabilities integrate into natural selling motions – ensuring reps can access coaching, collateral and training without disrupting workflows critical for engaging buyers.
Sales Enablement Landscape Overview
The sales enablement solutions market has seen rapid evolution over the past decade. As sales technology budgets shift from automation to enablement, vendors have raced to deliver solutions that improve seller productivity and performance.
In fact, according to Sales Enablement PRO, an estimated $2 billion is spent industry-wide on sales enablement solutions. And IDC predicts spending on enablement tools to grow at 40%+ yearly through 2025 as adoption continues accelerating across enterprises.
Review the overview below highlighting key innovations and differentiators across leading vendors:
While all platforms profiled offer broad enablement features, buyer preferences can vary based on strengths around guided selling, conversation intelligence, content collaboration, training delivery formats and analytics.
Generally, Highspot, Seismic and allego score highest across analysts assessments focused on enablement completeness and capability sophistication. Meanwhile, Salesforce offers unparalleled CRM integration and MindTickle shines for methodology execution and microlearning.
Over the next sections, we will showcase product highlights, client reviews and use cases for select market leaders:
1. Highspot
Recognized as the overall Sales Enablement Software Leader by G2, Highspot powers sales teams through industry-leading capabilities purpose-built for enablement including:
Conversational Intelligence – Analyze customer engagement patterns during calls to refine approach
Contextual Recommendations – Serve reps real-time content recommendations using AI
Interactive Training – Interactive learning paths with assessments reinforce messaging
Advanced Analytics – Custom reporting to connect enablement impact to pipeline influence
Coaching Workspaces – Observation, tagging and feedback tools during customer calls
With Highspot, enablement platforms become true competitive differentiators – connecting sales strategy to execution. Over 250 enterprises now leverage Highspot to increase sales productivity, reduce ramp times and improve win rates.
Client Examples
RingCentral achieved a 32% increase in sales productivity leveraging Highspot’s sales enablement platform. Reps can now access over 500+ up-to-date sales collateral pieces within engagement tools they use daily.
Zuora’s learning and development team saw a 10x content consumption rate increase after deploying Highspot. This engagement helps reinforce knowledge of complex products and ensures accurate positioning.
2. Seismic
Seismic excels at operationalizing enablement – connecting go-to-market plans to seller actions during customer conversations. With Seismic, strategies cascade into content, training, and coaching that reps can access within their workflows.
Unique strengths include:
Guided Selling – Launch sales plays and toolkits directly into CRM workflows
Conversation Intelligence – Record, analyze and share customer calls to reinforce messaging
Microlearning Library – Short video courses aligned to methodology
Automated Personalization – Profile-based content recommendations
Coaching Workspaces – Observation, tagging and feedback tools
This focus on enablement driving business impact produces results – Seismic customers report reductions in sales cycle length by over 10 days on average.
Client Examples
VMWare reduced their sales cycle by 13 days on average leveraging Seismic‘s conversation intelligence capabilities to improve competitive positioning and objection handling.
F5 Networks achieved a 32% increase in sales productivity within 6 months of deploying Seismic’s enablement platform. Sellers gain access to 600+ up-to-date sales collateral assets within everyday workflows.
3. Allego
Allego provides an integrated approach to enablement spanning training, practice, and coaching powered by conversational intelligence data and analytics.
This allows managers to listen to sales calls, identify competency gaps, nurture coaching relationships, and unlock the full potential of sales talent – ultimately accelerating deal cycles and increasing win rates.
Core features include:
Conversation Intelligence – Records sales calls and meetings for sharing
AI-Based Insights – Auto-tagged competencies and smart topics
Skills Assessments – Quantify seller strengths and improvement areas
Personalized Coaching – Manager review and feedback for representatives
Peer Collaboration – Enable team discussion and file sharing
With Allego, enablement evolves into a more collaborative peer-to-peer program that raises the capabilities of the entire revenue engine.
Client Examples
Allego customer Willis Towers Watson saw a 12% increase in sales conversions within 6 months. Buyers better understand unique value props and strengths leveraging updated messaging and collateral now accessible to reps.
Zuora also utilizes Allego for sales coaching and now enables managers to provide instant, personalized feedback without leaving applications like SFDC. This real-time guidance ultimately shortens the rep ramp cycle.
More Benefits of Investing in Sales Enablement
Beyond accelerating seller productivity and win rates, formal sales enablement programs can generate additional benefits:
Improved Customer Retention and Loyalty – With consistent and compelling messaging reinforced across reps, customers gain confidence in your organization’s ability to deliver complex solutions.
Increased Deal Values – As sellers master objection handling and needs assessment backed by smart content recommendations, larger deal sizes can be unlocked through upsells/cross-sells.
Accelerated Time-to-Revenue – Structured onboarding programs with microlearning, bootcamps and certificate courses ensure new reps contribute faster.
Enhanced Lead Follow-Up – By tracking key activity metrics tied to response rates and outreach cadence, underperforming areas can be addressed.
Lower Customer Acquisition Costs – When sellers require less repetitions to demonstrate value and close deals, CAC ratios drop.
How to Ensure Sales Enablement Success?
While sales enablement solutions promise great upside, achieving desired business impacts requires an orchestrated deployment approach:
Secure Executive Buy-In – Educate leadership on require budget, resource allocation and executive advocation needed for change management success.
Audit Current Programs – Quantify gaps and areas for improvement around methodology adoption, content utilization, training completion rates and more.
Define Enablement Blueprint – Detail programs, technologies and metrics that will connect enablement to revenue influence and seller productivity KPIs.
Start with Pilot Groups – Launch controlled rollouts for select sales teams, regions or segments to showcase value, then iterate on what works.
Sustain Momentum – Track consumption trends, training completion, call analysis stats and other progress indicators to maintain stakeholder confidence in the program ROI.
With the right vision, stakeholder alignment, pilot execution and sustained momentum – sales enablement can transform organizations.
The Bottom Line
With 97% of high-performing sales organizations now leveraging sales enablement platforms – the writing is on the wall. To remain competitive, seller support and coaching capabilities must keep pace with intensifying market landscapes.
Today’s leading solutions allow revenue leaders to play offense – shortening the ramp to productivity through guided selling techniques, smart content recommendations and real-time coaching fueled by conversational intelligence.
The vendors and platforms summarized in this guide represent the elite solutions shaping how modern sales teams sell. Purpose-built for enablement, these tools drive business impact – including 12%+ larger deal sizes, 30%+ shorter sales cycles and 29%+ improved win rates based on customer reported metrics.
The sales enablement imperative is here. Are you ready to empower your revenue engine for sustainable growth in 2023?
