What is Sales Enablement?

What are sales enablement systems and how do they help companies achieve even greater sales efficiency.

In recent years, many areas of business have been digitizing. This is best seen in sales departments, where, about 25 years ago, many activities were carried out traditionally with the use of cards, documents, faxes, and later also Excel.

Currently, major sales departments work on CRM (customer relationship management) or SFA (sales force automation) systems, which help them scale sales.

For several years now a new group of IT systems has been emerging and revolutionizing the development of one of the most neglected (and underrated) areas in sales departments, the competences of salespeople.

So what exactly is Sales Enablement?

Sales enablement is a process that uses modern online platforms to provide sales teams with the resources necessary to close an increasing number of sales opportunities. These resources may include: tools, training materials, educational and knowledge materials, marketing materials or product information which allow you to increase the effectiveness of selling products or services.

The implementation of SE systems brings the greatest benefits when close cooperation is established between marketing teams, sales forces (including external ones based on distributors and partner networks) and more often than not, HR Departments.

Effective cooperation between marketing and sales.

Marketing provides sales teams with various materials that support the sales process. Often these are product trainings, videos, presentations, or sales scripts supporting interactions with potential customers. Unfortunately, research shows that as much as 67% of materials created by marketing teams are not used by sellers! This is a huge waste of resources!

Thanks to SE systems, marketing can create and share new materials with sales representatives, but also check product knowledge and awareness of promotions among traders. In turn, sales departments no longer have to dig through e-mails and shared drives in search of a complete set of materials for customers, but have everything organized in one space.

In which areas does sales enablement support sales teams?

However, SE platforms mean not only more effective cooperation with the marketing department, but also a number of additional benefits resulting from the systematic improvement of skills and competences as well as analyzing data on the current knowledge of salespeople. Here are some examples of projects and initiatives that sales enablement platforms help:

In some organizations, sales development responsibilities fall on sales managers. In others, these responsibilities may be performed by the HR department in conjunction with people responsible for products in marketing teams.

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Software supporting the transfer of product knowledge

When you equip your sales team with the right resources, materials, and tools, they will be able to sell more effectively and efficiently. Thanks to this, your company will be able to record further increases and acquire new customers. Therefore, it is worth ensuring that your sales and marketing teams (and more often than not, the HR team) maintain open communication and use appropriate software that allows them to share the content, materials, technology, and knowledge they need to reach more potential customers and turn them into paying customers.

It should be remembered that sales enablement systems are not general LMS (learning management system) solutions or e-learning platforms, for which HR departments are mainly responsible. Sales Enablement are specialized systems built with one goal in mind – increasing sales results through the development of commercial competences and supporting salespeople in their contact with customers. Of course, many of them have elements already known from e-learning, but SE platforms rather fit into the group of software related to CRM or SFA.

The global market of Sales Enablement solutions has definitely been growing dynamically in recent years. The SE market in the US is estimated at $ 381.9 million in 2020. China will reach a market size of $ 776.8 million by 2027, with a CAGR of 18.9% from 2020 to 2027. Japan and Canada are projected to grow 17.2% and 17.1% between 2020-2027. In Poland, local solutions are also available, and one of them is SalesOn.pl, which is already used by several hundred companies and several thousand salespeople.

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