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Once you have hired a team of talented sales reps, you will want to set them up for success. Everyone wins when your sales team is supported with the proper training and enablement tools.
Two terms that tend to be used interchangeably but have different definitions and implications for your sales team’s development are sales enablement and sales training. You will already know what training means, but wonder, “What is enablement?”
Training and enablement complement each other, but they serve different purposes. In this blog, we will define sales training, understand the concept of sales enablement, and explain how both contribute to sales readiness by improving skills.
What is Sales Training?
It comprises of:
- General sales training on selling best practices
- Product knowledge training
- Soft skills training on communication-based skills
- Organization-specific training on sales processes and playbooks
- CRM user training
Why do Organizations Invest In Sales Training?
A 2019 global McKinsey survey of approximately 1,200 respondents in various sales roles revealed that fast-growing companies were 80% more likely than slow-growing ones to see tangible commercial results from their sales training programs.
Sales training programs have a place in every organization and several benefits.
1. Boost revenue
According to Salesforce, 80% of top-performing sales teams describe their sales training process as outstanding or very good. Good sales training programs have a positive and direct impact on your sales.
Take Bluebeam Software as an example. They developed an online learning program for their resellers, structured into three levels of expertise. Among the 2,800 external salespeople who completed the training’s first level, each reseller doubled their average sales. Those who all three levels of training saw an impressive 400% growth in business.
2. Minimize busywork
Only 53% of sales professionals spend most of their day selling, and 47% don’t even report selling as their main activity, according to Pipedrive’s State of Sales Report 2020-2021.
That’s because prospecting, admin, and lead generation eat up most of their time. Hence, training your sales teams to automate such manual tasks with a CRM or having a better process in place for qualifying prospects will free up their day to spend time on tasks that are going to bring immediate and more value, which is selling.
3. Increase employee satisfaction
A 2020 study by ValueSelling Associates and Training Industry revealed that sales training extends beyond driving sales results. It also impacts the bottom line by boosting employee satisfaction, retention, company culture, motivation, and enterprise agility.
4. Adopt a buyer-first philosophy
The pandemic changed B2B customers at a much faster pace than sellers, hastening the adoption of the Buyer First approach. This strategy focuses on prioritizing the buyer by offering full transparency and helping them to make well-informed decisions.
This approach holds huge value. According to LinkedIn’s State of Sales 2021 report, 72% of top performers (sellers who exceeded their quota by 125%) consistently prioritize putting buyers first.
But the barriers to building a buyer-first organization are a lack of the right skills, limited commitment to training, and inadequate coaching.
The inverse is also true. A vigorous approach to sales training will make way for a buyer-first approach, leading to salespeople not only meeting their quotas but absolutely crushing them.
5. Build buyer trust
LinkedIn’s Sales Report has found that 89% of buyers do business with sales professionals who are trusted advisors.
According to Sales Insight Lab's Sales Data Study 2021, 51% of top performers identify themselves as experts in their field.
Given that buyers are inclined to purchase from experts whom they can trust, sellers should know their product inside out in order to avoid misrepresenting facts and presenting themselves as experts.
What is Sales Enablement?
But the success of a sales enablement strategy doesn’t depend solely on the granular details, which are very easy to replicate from one strategy to another. It depends on how clearly you define the scope and vision of sales enablement and how well you execute it.
What Makes Up an Effective Sales Enablement Strategy?
The foundation of a successful sales enablement strategy lies in having distinct yet interconnected components that support sales teams for success.
1. Content management
Content management focuses on creating, organizing, and distributing sales materials. This includes case studies, presentations, brochures, and product datasheets that will help your sales teams clearly communicate the value proposition of your products or services. Good content management ensures that your sales reps have easy access to the relevant and most up-to-date materials to respond quickly and accurately to customers.
To optimize content management, have a centralized archive where all sales materials can be stored and easily accessible. This archive should be easily searchable so your sales reps can find the exact content they need right when they need it. Regular updates of sales content are important to keep them aligned with your latest product offerings, customer success stories, and market trends.
2. Training and onboarding
Sales onboarding is important for training new sales reps with the skills and knowledge they need to be successfully sell. It also keeps existing sales staff up-to-date on the latest technologies and sales techniques. A complete sales training program covers sales processes, product knowledge, and usage of sales tools. Successful onboarding shortens the time it takes for new sales reps to become productive and increases their potential for early success.
Ongoing training is equally important, since it helps sales teams adapt to market changes and refine their sales techniques. A mix of interactive workshops, in-person training sessions, sales training exercises, and e-learning modules will cater to different learning styles and schedules to ensure that all sales team members get the opportunity to develop new skills and polish their existing skills.
3. Sales and marketing alignment
The alignment between sales and marketing teams is important for creating a cohesive sales strategy that drives revenue growth. This includes coordinated efforts in content creation, communication strategies, and lead generation to ensure that both teams work towards the same goals with a unified message. When marketing and sales teams are aligned, the quality of leads improve, sales cycles shorten, and conversion rates increases.
To achieve this, regular communication between teams is important. Joint planning sessions and collaborative content development will help bridge the gaps between marketing and sales. Using shared tools will improve visibility across teams for better tracking of customer interactions and leads.
4. Sales enablement tools
To implement a successful sales enablement strategy, it’s important to have access to sales tools, such as CRMs, analytics tools, sales enablement platforms, and content management solutions. These tools simplify sales processes, improve training and onboarding efforts, and provide insights into sales performance. Sales enablement tools automate routine tasks so that sales reps can spend more time interacting with customers and closing deals.
Select the appropriate stack of sales enablement tools. They should integrate with your current systems and should be able to scale as your business expands. Provide adequate training and support for these tools to ensure they are adopted and made full use of by your sales teams.
5. Performance measurement and analysis
Measuring and analyzing sales performance is important for understanding the success of your sales enablement strategy. KPIs like win rate, sales cycle length, and customer engagement levels offer insights into how well your sales teams use the resources and training they are provided with. This data helps identify areas of opportunities for improvement to optimize the sales enablement strategy over time.
Create a system for periodic performance evaluation and constructive feedback. Sales enablement tools provide analytics and reporting features that will track these metrics in real-time and give you a clear picture of sales performance.
Sales leaders will regularly reviewing this data and make informed decisions about adjustments to training programs, technology investments, and content updates, so that the sales enablement strategy remains aligned with responsive to the needs of their customers and sales team and the organization’s goals.
Sales Training vs. Sales Enablement: Functional Differences
While both sales enablement and sales training share the goal of improving sales performance, they differ significantly in scope and methodology:
Sales enablement has a broader focus. It provides tools, content, and strategies to support the sales team throughout the entire sales process. In contrast, sales training is more targeted, concentrating on improving particularly the sales skills and knowledge.
Sales enablement takes an integrated approach by combining training, content, and tools to improve sales interactions. Meanwhile, sales training centers on developing sales skills through structured training programs.
Sales Training Process
Below are 5 sales training process steps for your reference and consideration.
1. Provide Product Knowledge
The first step in the sales training process is to help your sales reps understand your products in detail and the benefits of each product.
What is your product's USP? Who are its target customers? What are the contraindications, etc.? Understanding product knowledge is the first factor in helping sales reps consult well and confidently when selling.
Apart from the basic information, you also need to provide adequate information about competitors' products when training sales reps and the advantages of your products compared to competitors, to name a few. All of these help them better advise and convince customers.
2. Inspire Work Culture
Working culture training helps establish a professional corporate image in the eyes of customers, thereby improving business efficiency and creating sustainable growth.
Enterprises should create cultural standards of behavior and encourage employees to perform with passion, thanks, honesty, apologies, help, and enthusiasm.
3. Boost Sales Skills
While building your sales training program, pay attention to boosting the sales skills of your sales reps. Your team of sales professionals should have the following skills:
4. Guide to Using Sales Tools
If your business already uses some sales tools, you should train your sales staff in the processes and operations. Instruct your sales reps on how to use sales tools to optimize their performance. Introducing technology software in everyday sales tasks will help them save time, and you can optimize resources.
5. Building An Environment for Sharing Experiences
Working groups bring employees together, providing a platform to share documents and sales experiences.
Team members can also host sales seminars, arrange offline meetings, conduct online internal training sessions, and more to boost business efficiency.
Sales Enablement Process: Enabling the Right Sales at the Right Time
A sales enablement team will create a structured sales engagement process for the sales team to follow to increase the likelihood of closing deals and ensure that the sales cycle runs more smoothly. A typical sales engagement process includes a series of stages, such as:
Stakeholder Responsibilities in Sales Training
As a Sales Training Manager, your primary responsibilities focus on creating, delivering, and evaluating training programs to improve sales team performance. These duties fall into three main categories: program development, training delivery, and performance evaluation.
1. Training Program Development
The Sales Training Manager is responsible for creating comprehensive training programs that address the needs of the sales team.
A sales training manager begins by assessing training requirements by conducting surveys and interviews with sales team members and management to identify skill gaps and areas for improvement, as well as analyzing sales performance data to find weaknesses and opportunities for growth. Based on these insights, comprehensive training curricula are developed, including modules for onboarding new hires and ongoing training for experienced sales team members. These programs are tailored to accommodate different learning styles and individual needs. The manager also creates a variety of training materials, such as detailed manuals, guides, and multimedia content like videos and interactive presentations, to create engaging learning experiences.
2. Training Delivery
The sales training manager is also responsible for delivering training programs to the sales team.
This involves conducting in-person training sessions, such as leading classroom-style workshops, facilitating role-playing exercises, and offering personalized coaching and feedback to the sales team. The manager also implements virtual training programs by using e-learning platforms, hosting webinars and online workshops, and designing virtual learning experiences. They also coordinate external training resources, including hiring guest speakers or trainers, managing relationships with third-party providers, and ensuring that these external resources align with the company’s goals and objectives.
3. Performance Evaluation and Improvement
The Sales Training Manager evaluates training programs' success and identifies improvement opportunities. This includes monitoring individual and team sales performance by tracking key performance indicators (KPIs), pinpointing areas for growth, and providing personalized coaching and feedback.
One-on-one mentoring sessions help the manager provide constructive input on sales calls and presentations, which will help team members overcome challenges and refine their approach. The manager implements performance improvement plans for underperforming staff by designing targeted training, setting measurable goals and timelines, and ensuring that employees get the skills and knowledge needed to succeed.
Stakeholder Responsibilities in Sales Enablement
While there isn’t a definitive list of deliverables for a sales enablement manager, here are some fundamental sales enablement efforts that outline the core of what they do.
1. Onboarding and sales training
Sales enablement managers work with HR and sales leaders to identify and recruit top talent. With an eye for promising characteristics in candidates; they reduce the need for sales managers to be involved in every stage of hiring. Once recruits are onboarded, the sales enablement manager designs training programs to immerse them in the company’s processes, market dynamics, and role-specific skills. Ongoing training programs focusing on areas like communication, negotiation, and time management are also coordinated to ensure the sales team stays sharp and adaptable to new methodologies without disrupting day-to-day operations.
2. Managing sales enablement content
This includes creating and organizing internal resources, such as sales playbooks, buyer personas, and scripts, to help the team perform their best consistently. They also oversee the development of customer-facing materials like case studies, demo videos, and testimonials to ensure alignment between sales and marketing teams for cohesive messaging. Public-facing content, such as website updates and responses to media opportunities, also falls under their purview, through which they help the organization maintain visibility and credibility without diverting sales teams from their core tasks.
3. Sales process definition and deployment
While the stages of selling, such as prospecting, qualifying, presenting, negotiating, closing, and nurturing, are well known, a sales enablement manager refines them. They may, for example, reduce the burden of prospecting by using tools or split lead qualification between marketing and sales to get high-quality leads. Once a process is defined, they guide its rollout and provide support as the salesforce adopts it.
4. Providing the right sales tools and technology
Sales enablement managers ensure access to resources like content management systems, customer relationship management (CRM) tools, and conversation intelligence software that supports note-taking, live coaching, and analytics. These tools, combined with market intelligence, help sales teams stay aligned with customer needs.
5. Performance analysis
Sales enablement managers monitor the success of training programs, content usage, and sales strategies through metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs). They analyze performance data to identify areas for improvement and ensure the enablement efforts deliver measurable ROI for the organization.
Pairing Sales Training and Sales Enablement - It Leads to Higher Win Rates
Our conversation around sales enablement vs sales training shouldn’t frame them as opposing forces.
Sales training is often an integral component of sales enablement. In the context of sales enablement, training is even more useful than in isolation.
Within a broader sales enablement strategy, sales training is not a one-size-fits-all solution applied indiscriminately to every sales department simply because it boosts performance. Instead, sales enablement teams thoroughly examine the sales organization to identify the specific training needs of sales reps, managers, and even executives.
Adopting a sales enablement approach provides a strong foundation for developing a customized sales training program.
Continuous support is important. Every new sales training initiative within the sales enablement framework should include a built-in strategy to solidify learning and ensure long-term impact.
To support this, the sales enablement team continuously monitors key metrics and KPIs to assess the training’s success, lasting impact, and potential need for additional training interventions.
Which One Is Right for You?
The choice isn’t "either-or." Sales enablement offers a comprehensive solution for building a resilient, future-ready sales infrastructure, while sales training suits those with already well-optimized systems needing skill refinement.
Integrating both ensures short-term success and long-term adaptability to form a foundation for sustained sales excellence.
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