Silos naturally occur within enterprise environments. As enterprise companies can have hundreds (or even thousands) of employees spread across several offices around the world, effective communication can be a struggle－creating misalignment between teams and messages that get lost in translation and negatively impacting sales productivity and revenue.
These gaps are felt even more when an enterprise organization chooses to implement a new strategy or technology, such as a sales enablement platform. In this post, we’ll walk you through the process of aligning leadership and various departments, including sales operations and marketing, across your organization to ensure your sales enablement process is smooth sailing from the start, with all stakeholders on board.
Enterprise Sales Enablement is Essential
Sales and marketing alignment is critical to the success of any company, even more so for large enterprises, yet few companies are promoting this partnership to the degree in which it should be promoted. The lapses in communication result in inefficiencies that are felt both internally, and by the buyers sales reps are trying to impress and convert.
Marketing can only work with the information they have, and with minimal insight from sales representatives, they create content and tools that may not be relevant to what buyers need. Additionally, sellers may not even know the content and tools exist or in what context they should be leveraged. Therefore, much of it goes unused in the sales process.
Sales enablement software provides a centralized tool for sales operations and marketing to collaborate on content. Reps are also able to complete training and evaluate their performance to improve, and sales managers can track their teams’ activity for continued training and learning.
While you may understand that enterprise sales enablement is critical, the decision makers within your organization won’t necessarily feel the same.
.
Proving the Value of Enterprise Sales Enablement
C-level executives and other leadership must be in unified agreement to successfully launch your sales enablement strategy. In order to push them to do so, focus on this strategy from the perspective of larger sales operations goals, and how every individual participating in the program will contribute to organizational success. You can also include them in the decision-making process; they may be more agreeable if they have some involvement.
Work with marketing and sales managers who champion the idea of sales enablement to give it even more levity when bringing it to the attention of higher-ups.
Remember that as an advocate for sales enablement, you might find yourself constantly needing to make a business case for the platform. Find small wins using analytics and revenue goals and present them regularly to show progress; recognition is the first step in demonstrating the power of sales enablement.
A Team Effort
Lastly, you’ll need the buy-in from the end users of your enterprise sales enablement program－members of the sales and marketing teams. With leadership on your side, getting the sales force excited should be a bit easier, but remember that people get stuck in their ways and can be hesitant when adopting new tools. Communicating the potential increase in revenue (and money in their pocket) they can achieve through sales enablement practices including training, coaching, and more compelling and customer-centric content through collaboration with marketing, you’ll likely notice sellers’ ears perking up.
For the marketing team, the value comes from the opportunity they will have to work more closely with sellers during the sales cycle. With improved collaboration, the marketing team is better equipped to develop sales enablement content reps will actually use, that speak to both the rep’s needs as well as buyers’. Additionally, they can analyze content performance to confirm success of their work.
Enterprise sales enablement only works when all participants are committed. Implementing a sales enablement solution within an enterprise sales organization may seem like a tall order, but taking a step-by-step strategy and starting from the top will reveal its value and potential gains for every person involved. Need more tips for alignment? Download our report, “Roadmap to Sales + Marketing Alignment.”
