What is Sales Enablement?

Sales has evolved, and in this new landscape, buyers are taking control of the narrative, dictating when, how, and why they make purchases. This shift places mounting pressure on organizations to stay relevant. Product teams are now tasked with delivering enticing, cutting-edge products to meet evolving buyer demands. Marketing teams strive to control the messaging and narrative surrounding the product, creating a connection with buyers to influence their decisions. Meanwhile, sales teams are exploring every avenue to capture buyer attention and articulate the compelling reasons to make a purchase.

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However, when the silos between product, marketing, and sales are exposed, the need for a bridge becomes evident. That bridge is Sales Enablement. Serving as the liaison between these functional areas, Sales Enablement plays a crucial role. Sales Enablement distills the technical details provided by Product Managers, enhances them with the branding and messaging framework from the Marketing team, and delivers cohesive resources to the sales team. These resources not only echo the needs of the customer, as communicated firsthand by the sales team, but also provide coaching to ensure a consistent message about the product and the value it brings to clients, regardless of which team member the buyer interacts with.

From My Perspective:

The term Sales Enablement gained significant traction around 2016, likely originating from business leaders expressing the need for specific support in sales initiatives. Product and marketing teams, facing resource constraints, struggled to fulfill these demands. It was around this time that I assumed my first formal Sales Enablement role, wearing both a marketing and training hat. In a training capacity, I supported Product Managers in delivering internal training on our product solutions, emphasizing why buyers should care and the value they receive by choosing our organization.

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From a marketing perspective, I translated these training themes into sales collateral such as pitch decks, one-pagers, white papers, and client-facing webinars. The goal was clear: align the content used in client interactions with the content used in sales training. To enhance external-facing content further, I collaborated across product, marketing, and sales to develop ad-hoc internal coaching materials. These served as "cliffs notes" for sales executives, offering an overview of product solutions, highlighting differentiators, and providing guidance for handling objections or navigating discussions about implementation.

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Always at the center of focus though was the voice of the sales team. Sales was an integral part of keeping materials fresh and relevant to addressing how our product solutions could address the headwinds that our prospects and clients were facing. The result of bringing the synergy of product, marketing, and sales together were sales pursuit teams that were well-informed and consistently delivered "one-voice" to audiences about our organization and the solutions we offered. Prospects and clients resonated with this which led to measurable increases in the number of deals closed as well as the value of each deal for the organization.

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Photo by David Ireland on Unsplash