Sales enablement can be a powerful strategy for driving your reps’ productivity, streamlining your company’s sales process, as well as ultimately increasing revenue. The great thing is, the many benefits associated with a solid sales enablement function are backed up by hard data. Let’s review some important statistics around sales enablement, and glean helpful insights from the information we find.
The Pervasiveness of Sales Enablement
The stats:
- Sales enablement adoption has increased by 343% over the last 5 years or so.
- Google searches for “sales enablement” continue to increase by over 51% year over year.
- Over 77% of companies with a sales team exceeding 500 people have a dedicated sales enablement process in place.
The Takeaway?
There has never been more interest in sales enablement. An unprecedented number of companies are jumping on the sales enablement “bandwagon” to avoid getting left behind.
Onboarding and Training
The stats:
- 65% of employees believe that the quality of their training strongly correlates with their engagement.
- It takes 10 months (or longer) for a new sales rep to achieve “full” productivity. However, organizations with a strong onboarding process help new reps reach this level about two months more quickly than businesses without one.
- 42% of sales reps don’t feel like they have adequate information before reaching out to a prospect.
- 84% of sales training is forgotten within the first 3 months of employment.
- Effective coaching of reps can improve the sales team’s win rate by almost 30%.
- The top 20% of reps account for 53.6% of total company revenue.
The Takeaway?
Your onboarding and training program has to be a priority in order to achieve successful sales enablement. Your company’s tech stack, workflows, as well as platforms, are all important. However, the only way to obtain optimal results from your efforts is to invest heavily in continuous learning and development. When your reps have the necessary skills to nurture leads and close sales, they’ll have an even greater positive impact on your bottom line than ever before.
Sales Enablement Content
The stats:
- 9 out of every 10 B2B sellers don’t use sales material. They find it irrelevant, out of date, and hard to customize for the prospect’s unique needs.
- 65% of sales reps can’t locate meaningful content to share with their prospects. Making this complaint the most common one among American sales teams.
- Sales and marketing misalignment (including misalignment around content creation and distribution) results in a loss of $1 trillion each year in wasted efforts and decreased productivity.
The Takeaway?
There is a pressing need for valuable and engaging content for prospects across a range of industries. When marketing departments are out of touch with the realities that their sales teams face every day, the result is usually irrelevant, unhelpful content that does nothing to move the prospect through the pipeline. On the other hand, sales reps that don’t know where to find valuable content, or how to use it properly, may lose a higher percentage of “winnable” sales.
Any effective sales enablement strategy must include clear guidelines on content creation, distribution, as well as usage. And ensure that sales reps “on the front lines” are providing constructive feedback on content performance.
Sales and Marketing Alignment
The stats:
- 76% of content marketers forget about sales enablement in their marketing efforts.
- Sales and marketing alignment can contribute to a 67% increase in closed deals.
The Takeaway?
Misalignment between sales and marketing is one of the most common disconnects in the business world today. However, when these two departments are pursuing the same goals, and are part of a constructive “feedback loop,” they can support each other throughout all stages of the buyer’s journey. This is a key component of effective sales enablement.
Customer Experience
The stats:
- According to research from the Miller Heiman Group, only 32% of buyers feel like sellers exceed their expectations.
- A study by Salesforce found that 80% of customers feel that the experience a company provides is just as important as its products and services. Moreover, over two-thirds of customers (67%) are willing to pay more for a great experience.
- 67% of North American consumers say that their standard for what constitutes a “good experience” is higher than ever before.
The Takeaway?
A key element of sales enablement is empowering reps to provide a personalized, exceptional experience for customers. As the above stats indicate, a brand’s reputation for delivering best-in-class experiences can even influence how much a prospect is willing to pay for a certain product or service. Therefore, customer experience is not just a focus area for your customer support department — it should be a priority for your sales team, too.
Sales Enablement Results
The stats:
- In a 2018 report from CSO Insights, the percentage of salespeople achieving their quota in organizations that invested in sales enablement increased by 10.6%, with an overall improvement of 22.7%.
- Businesses with a dedicated sales enablement function achieve a 49% win rate on forecasted deals — almost 7% higher than their competitors without a sales enablement process (42.5%).
- As a result of sales enablement, 76% of business organizations have seen an increase in sales between 6% and 20%.
- Sales enablement correlates with a 31% improvement in positive adjustments to sales messaging and a 15% improvement in performance among low-performing sales reps.
The Takeaway?
While sales enablement is no “magic pill” that will eliminate all of your pain points and bottlenecks, it will provide you with a competitive edge compared to other businesses in your sector. Furthermore, a strong sales enablement process will help your reps perform better, streamlining your marketing message, and ultimately help your team close more sales.
As you can see, the verdict is in: Investing in sales enablement is one of the best things you can do to grow your business.
Read more: What Does a Sales Enablement Specialist Do?
This article was written for Business 2 Community by Rick Kranz.
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