Sales enablement best practices have become a major focus of discussion and conversation at the Sales 3.0 Conferences in the past few years.
Trends in Sales Enablement
I haven’t been surprised to see a rise in the number of Sales 3.0 speakers who discuss topics related to enablement. Here are just a few trends to be aware of:
- Last year, the CSO Insights Sales Operations Optimization Study revealed 59.2% of companies have now established a formal sales enablement person, program, or function, compared to just 19.2% in 2013.
- In its fourth annual research study on the topic of enablement, CSO Insights also showed aligning your sales enablement plan with your business strategy provides teams a 19.2% higher win rate.
- Companies spend a combined $66 billion yearly on sales training and sales enablement.
Do You Have the Right Sales Leadership Mindset?
This shift is happening because we’re living in an exciting era of digital transformation.
A successful digital transformation is not just about investing in new tools. Success requires more than budget—it requires the right leadership mindset.
Sales leaders must commit to transformation on an ongoing basis. You have to make it part of your business DNA. If you don’t, you’ll get left behind.
Adopting new tools and processes can be a scary proposition, both for leaders and the team. But technology is not a fight against humanity. Technology is not about replacing salespeople.
Technology is designed to serve humanity, and good tools should enhance and enable salespeople to always perform at their very best.
Sales is all about collaboration, and sales enablement addresses that fact head-on. We need to integrate technology tools so that our world becomes more peaceful, our companies more successful, and our lives more meaningful.
Two Key Questions for All Sales Leaders
Sales success is about making connections in both digital and face-to-face environments. With that in mind, I encourage all sales leaders to ask themselves two key questions.
- How do your salespeople connect with your own customers and your customer’s customer?
- What tools do you give them to make those connections fulfilling, purposeful, and mutually valuable?
This is what sales enablement is all about. This topic is only going to grow in importance. It’s why Selling Power has created a new annual listing of top sales enablement vendors. Good sales enablement practices and tools will help guide your strategic leadership decisions this year and beyond.
Check out where the Sales 3.0 Conference will be in 2020 (Orlando, Florida; Toronto, Canada; and Las Vegas, Nevada). Join us and get a front row seat for conversations and insight about sales enablement. Our speakers and attendees will help you create a better, stronger, faster, more profitable sales organization.
Gerhard Gschwandtner is founder of Selling Power magazine, which is a media sponsor of the Sales 3.0 Conference. He also leads VIP Peak Performance Mindset retreats for sales leaders.
