Hello, everyone! A listener, Ron, sent me a question.
He asked me, “Hey, my company doesn’t have a sales enablement group. Do we need one?” Well, Ron, that’s a great question.
The need for sales enablement really depends on your sales team and who is doing what to support sales. Chances are, I would say that you already have sales enablement type of functions in your company, but it’s really not called sales enablement. Does that make sense? Probably it’s part of sales, operations, it’s part of marketing or it’s part of the product marketing team. They are jobs being done, but it’s just not necessarily calling it sales enablement.
For example, most of the sales enablement is about training sales on how to sell and to know the products or even onboard them when they start. Someone or a group of people are probably already doing that. Right? In some cases, marketers are working very closely with inside sales to supply them messaging, sales collateral, a sales deck, or email templates to enable the sales team. Maybe you have marketing people pretty much stay on top of that and doing a certain function or portion of a sales enablement job, but they are not part of the sales team.
Part of sales is about making sure that sales have necessary sales tools and the processes so they can do their jobs.
And that can also be part of a sales enablement or sales operations job. Possibly somebody is already working on sales tools and sales process sourcing and also implementation.
I suggest that you check who is doing what and how the sales team is supported to determine if you need a sales enablement group. As I said, sales enablement is defined differently by different companies. Also, many companies have sales supports being done by different internal groups. Right? Kind of like a virtual team: marketing is working on collateral finance, maybe helping on sales forecast, HR is working on sales incentive. They are all doing their job to support sales.
You need to identify the gaps that the sales need help and then determine who should do it.
If you can get other stakeholders to do it, great. If not, do you need to hire someone or build a team? And that’s pretty much a headcount and budget discussion with the management.
So I hope I answer your question, Ron. Do you have a sales enablement team in your company? And what do they do? Share that with me.
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See you there. Have a great week.
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Sales Enablement: Where to Start as a Marketer?
What can Pam Didner do for you?
Being in the corporate world for 20+ years and having held various positions from accounting and supply chain management, and marketing to sales enablement, she knows how corporations work. She can make you and your team a rock star by identifying areas to shine and do better. She does that through private coaching, keynote speaking, workshop training, and hands-on consulting. Contact her or find her on LinkedIn and Twitter. A quick note: Check out her new 90-Day Revenue Reboot, if you are struggling with marketing.
