Businesses constantly seek ways to boost revenue and improve their sales enablement programs, yet often overlook learning and development (L&D) as a mechanism to do so. Companies that invest in training are 57 percent more effective at sales than their competitors. With the right tools in sales professionals’ wheelhouses, businesses benefit from increased efficiency and, more importantly, revenue growth.
By investing in L&D programs, businesses also invest in existing employees. Considering the cost of replacing an individual employee can range from one-half to two times the employee’s annual salary, it is much more lucrative for organizations to adopt training programs for their existing teams versus hiring and onboarding new members.
The implementation of L&D is not always a cut-and-dry process. First, businesses must identify the right tools to increase individual productivity and team effectiveness while also reflecting and playing into the organization’s overall culture. Once the tools are chosen, revenue leaders must get buy-in from leadership to hit the ground running. To help navigate the nuances of implementation, below are some of the top considerations needed to create a successful enablement program.
Step 1: Adopt the Tools Needed to Succeed
The first crucial step to implementing a successful training program is to explore which tools a business needs to effectively manage a sales team, track their progress, and measure their success. Tools such as learning management systems can benefit businesses by providing accessible training for employees with a built-in system to measure success, allowing business leaders to ensure they are getting the best ROI on L&D programs.
- Learning management system (LMS): An LMS can help businesses elevate overall sales performance, identify skills gaps, and track individual progress for team members. The right LMS for sales enablement should offer sales-focused, modern training tools to boost learner engagement and AI capabilities that allow you to test your sales teams on their elevator pitches, product knowledge, and overall sales skills.
The ideal LMS should also empower managers to provide more tailored coaching and mentorship through robust reporting and on-demand insights into learning performance metrics (grades, completions, overdue assignments, etc). In addition, seeking out an LMS that offers microlearning, small segments of learning in relatively short periods, allows L&D to be more accessible in a busy work environment and improves recall of previous learnings.
- Customer relationship management (CRM) software: CRM software can help businesses manage customer data, track sales and marketing opportunities, and automate customer, sales, and marketing processes. When choosing an LMS, organizations should ensure that both their CRM and LMS software are compatible with each other, making the sales process more seamless and efficient. Another benefit is the opportunity to meet employees where they are by providing learning in the flow of work.
- Content management systems (CMS): A CMS can help an organization create and manage sales content. Similarly, a CMS may not be necessary if a business’s adopted LMS includes content-authoring tools or a library of off-the-shelf courses. With a content authoring tool incorporated into your LMS, businesses can create custom sales onboarding modules tailored to their specific needs.
- Data analytics and reporting tools: Data analytics and reporting tools can help track sales performance and measure the success of sales enablement efforts so sales leaders can gather insights to help improve the program. Many organizations use reporting tools outside of their LMS to record sales metrics; however, with an LMS that integrates into existing sales software, organizations can better track learning and sales metrics in one easy-to-access, centralized location.
Step 2: Get Leadership Buy-in For Sales Enablement Strategies
Revenue leaders often lack all the information they need to invest strategically in the right training program. For sales training, leaders need to create an L&D strategy and utilize an LMS and content that best aligns with their organization’s growth goals rather than just the goals of the sales department.
Knowing leadership buy-in is critical to the success and widespread adoption of a sales enablement strategy; L&D teams need to know how and what to educate their leaders on to help them understand and ultimately invest.
- Show them the data. Revenue leaders are numbers-driven, so it’s important to present data that reflects the potential benefits of sales training and enablement. This could include data on increased sales, customer satisfaction, or productivity.
- Get their input. Involve revenue leaders in the planning and implementation of your sales enablement strategies. Leaders with a responsibility and vested interest in the implementation process are more likely to support the endeavor.
- Make it easy for them. Revenue leaders have competing priorities. Make it easy for them to support your sales enablement initiatives by providing regular updates on progress, leveraging gamification, or creating tools and resources that they can easily access on their own.
- Celebrate their successes. When your sales enablement strategies are successful, be sure to celebrate those wins publicly. This will help sales professionals and partner re-sellers feel appreciated while giving revenue leaders more reason to continue investing in the program.
Sales is an ever-evolving field; staying ahead of the curve requires continuous learning. By investing in the proper tools and building a strategic sales enablement program with buy-in from leadership, businesses can support existing employees’ growth and encourage retention. With an L&D program in place, businesses provide sales teams with the resources they need to be successful, ultimately boosting sales and supporting the business’s revenue goals.
