Sales enablement consulting helps fill skill gaps in companies, allowing businesses to transform their sales in new and exciting ways. These professionals can work with sales teams on a regular basis or as a one-off job.
These professionals help teams by:
- Ensuring they’re on the same page
- Utilizing the right tools for the job
- Providing access to the right resources
Struggling sales teams that do not close deals at the rate that they should be able to will benefit greatly from the expertise of a sales enablement consultant. They can help you drive more sales to your business through custom action plans. If you’ve considered a fractional sales manager or bringing in someone with sales process consulting expertise in the past, an alternative option may be a sales enablement consultant.
Sales Enablement Consulting Offerings
A sales enablement consultant can offer custom solutions tailored to your business’s needs. Consulting focuses on areas where your company can benefit the most from the help of one of these professionals.
Some of the offerings that are available include:
Analysis
Consultants without knowledge of your internal operations often begin with analysis functions. The level of assessment may vary, but it will often include:
- Sales system and culture assessment: A full analysis of a sales team’s culture and systems in place. The consultant will spend time learning the key areas of the sales system that are holding teams back from increasing sales and revenue.
- Benchmarking: Analytics and benchmarking show a factual representation of sales and how your team performs. The data collected by the sales enablement consultant will shed light on win rates, where they stand and how your team performs compared to industry expectations.
- Interviews: Primary stakeholders may be interviewed to get deeper insight into the team’s operations and areas where bottlenecks exist. These interviews are often conducted with customer success teams, sales managers, sales reps, account managers and senior leaders.
- Surveying: Sales team surveys help consultants better understand a team’s knowledge about new or existing products, where the team member believes processes can be improved upon and more.
All of these analysis tasks lead up to the professional:
- Interpreting the data collected
- Making recommendations based on the data
Sales enablement consulting helps teams achieve a 49%-win rate compared to a 42.5%-win rate on forecasted deals.
Creation
Creation plays a major role in sales enablement, allowing teams to run more efficiently, boosting sales and controlling costs. The creation processes may include help with:
- Sales process: Creation of the entire sales process may be performed, along with ensuring this process aligns with the buyer’s journey.
- Talent optimization: Your sales teams must optimize their talents to improve effectiveness. New talent optimization programs may be developed to ensure all team members are working as efficiently as possible.
- Cost containment: Rising costs can negatively impact deals because they become less profitable for businesses. Consultants can work through cost containment and optimize it where necessary.
- Sales compensation: Proper compensation drives better talent to businesses. The consultant can work through figures and benchmarks to ensure that salespeople and managers are being compensated adequately.
- Playbook, sales kits and more: Salespeople must have a central resource that allows them to access one-pagers, the latest deck and new information. The consultant can create this “hub or brain” for the sales team to refer to when trying to close more deals.
A go-to-market strategy may also be created or revised during creation. It’s pertinent to understand that sales enablement consulting may include all of these tasks or single ones based on the company’s unique needs.
Content creation and ensuring that this content is available to the right members of a team on platforms they use can change the course of sales. Arguably even more important is the consultant’s ability to help VPs and other leaders organize content and procedures in a meaningful way.
The consultant can also extend further and assist with strategy implementation.
Implementation
Implementing a sales enablement function is the next logical step for a consultant. Implementation may include:
- Adoption strategy implementation to ensure that everyone follows new procedures, processes, training, playbooks and anything else the sales enablement manager puts in place.
- Salespeople and teams can be upskilled to meet the new demands of a strategy.
- Coaching may be offered to ensure that everyone is following new strategies and performance metrics are being met.
- A briefing of executives and keynote speaking may also be provided.
If your sales team cannot keep pace with its competitors, sales enablement consulting will help streamline internal processes and functions to improve team efficiency. Consultants will provide teams with the resources they need to close more deals and keep your company competitive.
Sales Enablement vs Revenue Enablement
Revenue enablement and sales enablement are not the same things, although they can both help businesses achieve better outcomes. The main difference between the two is:
Sales Enablement
The role of a sales enablement manager is to ensure that sales teams run optimally with the help of:
- The content they need about products, prospects and more
- Tools that help them streamline operations
- Information necessary for closing deals and engaging with prospects
KPIs for sales enablement revolve around:
- Win rate
- Deal size
- Length of the sales cycle
If your goal is to maximize sales performance, sales enablement consulting can help you reach your objectives. Revenue enablement does play a major role in business outcomes and may be another avenue to consider.
Revenue Enablement
Revenue enablement takes a broader view of the customer journey and works to optimize the customer experience. The approach of a revenue enabler is holistic and ensures all respective teams can meet their objectives.
The KPIs in revenue enablement center around:
- Customer lifetime value
- Customer acquisition cost
- Retention rates
If your goal is to improve business outcomes, revenue enablement is better suited to your needs than sales enablement.
Sales Enablement Consulting Roles
When it comes to sales job titles, sales enablement consultants can fit in many roles, including but not limited to:
- VP of sales enablement: A VP of sales enablement will determine enablement priorities with all stakeholders. The VP is responsible for communicating the strategy and key KPI with stakeholders. The VP will also be the middleman among all relevant teams to ensure they’re working together to meet sales goals.
- Director of sales enablement: Directors take on major roles in the organization, ensuring teams are ready and maintain high performance. These professionals focus heavily on account-based selling approaches, help sales teams remain within budget and ensure that content is on time and organized.
- Sales enablement manager: These professionals assist with sales enablement programs by working with leaders on the development, execution and optimization of programs.
- Sales enablement coordinator: A coordinator assists larger teams with day-to-day details on programs. Managers will step in to provide performance monitoring and more integral tasks.
Working with a sales enablement consultant can help solve many problems in sales.
Problems Sales Enablement Consulting Can Solve
Organizations turn to sales enablement consulting to help them overcome challenges and inefficiencies that are preventing them from reaching their goals in the same way they may turn to someone to help with B2B sales consulting.
Sales enablement consulting can solve a number of problems for organizations, including:
Inconsistent Sales Training
Inconsistencies in sales training can lead to inefficiencies and inconsistent results. A sales enablement consultant can help implement processes for sales reps to follow and even assist with training programs to ensure that everyone is moving in the same direction.
Sales Inefficiencies
One of the biggest challenges that sales reps face is that they don’t have enough information when making calls. They spend a great deal of time searching for content, which takes time away from selling.
Sales enablement consulting can help address these inefficiencies by helping organizations implement programs that give sales reps access to content in one location.
What to Look for in Sales Enablement Consulting Firm
When choosing a sales enablement consulting firm, there are several things that need to be considered. It’s important to vet each firm carefully to ensure they can provide the level of service and results that you desire.
Here are some of the most important things to look for:
Experience
What level of experience does the firm have? More importantly, what types of companies do they work with? Do they have experience in your industry?
An inexperienced firm may not have the knowledge or tools to help you achieve your goals. Something like asking what is the best sales enablement tool for my needs could stump an inexperienced sales enablement consultant.
Track Record of Success
Experience is just one piece of the puzzle when choosing a consulting firm. You must also consider their track record of success.
One firm may have less experience than another but may have achieved better results for its clients. An impressive track record may trump experience.
Ability to Bring Teams Together
In order for sales enablement programs to succeed, everyone must be on board and on the same page.
Consulting firms that have an innate ability to bring teams together will have a much easier time implementing sales enablement programs successfully because everyone is motivated and sees the value in working together.
When to Hire a Sales Enablement Consultant
It’s easy to see the value that sales enablement consultants provide, but how do you know when it’s time to hire one?
Here are some signs that it’s time to hire a consultant:
Your Sales Department Lacks Strategy
Sales reps often struggle to achieve more wins simply because they don’t have enough information before a call, and they don’t have a strategy.
A sales enablement consultant can help teams develop and implement that much-needed strategy so that they can approach each interaction with confidence.
Sales and Marketing Aren’t Aligned
In a perfect world, sales and marketing teams would work closely to achieve more wins and drive growth. But many companies find that these two departments are at odds or struggle with communication.
If your marketing and sales departments can’t agree on something as simple as the definition of a lead, then it may be time to hire a sales consultant.
A sales enablement consultant can bring some clarity to both departments and ensure everyone is on the same page.
You Need a Fresh Perspective
If you’re struggling to achieve your goals and your sales reps are following their own individual processes, a sales enablement consultant can bring a fresh perspective.
A consultant will assess your current sales processes to help you address inefficiencies and other issues that may be preventing you from reaching your objectives.
Your Sales Teams are Spending Too Much Time Searching
If your sales staff is spending too much time searching for content or recreating one-pagers over and over again, you may benefit from hiring a sales enablement consultant.
When sales reps spend all of their time looking for content, they are spending less time doing what they do best – selling.
A sales enablement consultant will review your content tools and help you implement a system that creates a centralized location for your sales reps to grab their content.
Benefits of Sales Enablement Consulting
The advantages of sales enablement consulting are many and far-reaching, from improved sales efficiency to upselling and cross-selling opportunities.
Improved Sales Efficiency
One of the greatest advantages of sales enablement consulting is improved efficiency on a more technical level.
Data from sales enablement can also be integrated into DAM and CRM systems, eliminating the need for manual software updates. But sales teams also get access to the tools and resources they need to succeed.
The end result is that your sales reps can spend more time selling and connecting with prospects to achieve more wins.
Upselling and Cross-selling Opportunities
With the help of a sales enablement consultant, you can uncover more opportunities for cross-selling, upselling and even re-selling to your existing customers.
The sales enablement process creates cleaner workflows and clear processes and strategies for sales teams to follow.
A consultant can not only help you identify upselling and cross-selling opportunities, but also ensure your sales team has a process or strategy to follow to boost conversions.
Sales and Marketing Alignment
Sales and marketing teams that work closely achieve 41% more growth in reaching their quotas. These have processes that overlap and interconnect, but they often lack the coordination and collaboration to maximize their opportunities to drive growth.
A sales enablement consultant can help you develop a sales enablement program that gets both marketing and sales on the same team. These programs require the complete participation and integration of processes from both departments.
Your consultant can give teams from both departments the right tools and protocols to achieve alignment. A sales enablement platform, for example, will serve as a centralized location for sales and marketing teams to view the latest sale data and other content that will support their processes.
Smarter Buyer Interactions
Sales enablement consulting can help you achieve smarter buyer interactions that drive better results. As prospects move through the funnel, their needs will change.
- Those who are just getting familiar with your products or services will be looking for information – blogs, infographics, etc.
- Prospects who are reaching the end of the funnel will be looking for social proof or case studies.
Sales enablement helps you manage all of these touchpoints, personalize the buyer’s journey and ensure your sales reps are approaching each conversation with foresight.
A consultant can hand you the blueprint for developing and implementing a sales enablement program that will help you achieve these goals.
Final Thoughts On Sales Enablement Consultants
Sales enablement consulting can give sales reps direction and processes to follow to achieve more wins and spend more time selling. It’s one of the newer niches of sales consulting providers. Finding the right consulting firm is key to reaching your goals. Experienced firms and individuals with a track record of success and an aptitude for uniting teams will help you achieve better outcomes.
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