As a Principal Strategic Consultant at Seismic, I’ve had the pleasure of working with a variety of customers at different stages of their enablement journey. Before I start with any client, I always ask if their company is unlocking value from sales enablement or if they are struggling to scale success.
The answer to this question is important because, when done right, enablement can reap long-term benefits. Research shows a direct correlation between sales enablement and revenue. The Aberdeen Strategy and Research Group found that companies focused on investing in a sales enablement tool achieved a 32% higher team sales quota, with 24% more individual sales reps achieving quota.
When applied correctly, an effective enablement strategy results in meaningful revenue, increased buyer and employee engagement, and enhanced buyer experience. If you don’t have a strategy to scale and optimize your efforts, you’re already falling behind your competition.
When scaling your enablement efforts, here are some best practices to keep in mind:
Decide how you’re going to measure the progress of your key initiatives
No matter where you are in your enablement maturity journey, you need to understand your baseline and how to track progress. This can be done through stakeholder surveys, goal setting, and KPI evaluation.
When done right, enablement can drive long-term, strategic business change. As indicated in Generation Enablement Report: Driving Strategic Change with the Power of AI, 87% of respondents stated that their enablement leaders prioritized defining a long-term enablement strategy.
Consistent stewardship of their strategy is typical of high-performing organizations. According to our research, 43% of go-to-market (GTM) professionals noted that their enablement teams have monthly strategy and planning sessions.
Identify stakeholders and get sponsorship
Make sure you have a key influencer at the executive level who can sponsor and articulate the value of enablement. More and more practitioners are collaborating with their leadership, as 43% of enablement practitioners routinely meet with their go-to-market leadership, while another 35% have monthly meetings with their C-Suite. This level of visibility ensures that enablement leaders can build consensus at the highest levels of the business for their initiatives.
This level of stakeholder alignment can help mitigate unexpected blockers and clearly define ownership and responsibilities. For example, one of my clients scheduled quarterly leadership meetings with stakeholders in sales, marketing, revenue ops, and enablement to outline their progress on initiatives and share regular reporting and recommendations.
Identify technology that enables transformation and solves a variety of needs
As you begin to scale your enablement program, it’s critical to build around a key technology that’s highly valued by sales and marketing teams. Your tech stack is more important than you know – especially to the sales and customer-facing roles your team supports.
In another report, 59% of GTM professionals stated that they wouldn’t work for a company that doesn’t invest in enablement tools. That’s why it’s important to proactively review your tech stack to ensure sellers have access to the right tools. One of our customers recommended involving procurement earlier in the vetting process. Getting their input at this phase helps identify any similar technology under review or potential blockers to implementation before going too far.
Plan to expand your sales enablement budget
Gartner predicts sales enablement budgets will increase 50% by 2027, and the proliferation of AI enablement tools will only bolster this acceleration. In fact, 92% of GTM professionals say that advancements in AI are influencing their company’s increasing investment in enablement tech going into 2025.
Cost, however, is a major factor in selecting and maintaining a successful sales enablement program. Continued and thoughtful investment in these systems and processes will be paramount in maintaining their effectiveness.
Ensure dedicated support or build a bigger team
It helps to have dedicated departmental resources aligned exclusively to supporting enablement. Organizing the function in this manner treats enablement as a mission-critical priority and helps customers achieve their goals.
Here are additional best practices for teams of all sizes and varying levels of resources:
Team of One
- Know your limits and set clear expectations.
- Evaluate end-to-end enablement processes and prioritize use cases that are most impactful for your delivery teams.
- Look around the organization for shared resources you can leverage.
- Define your scope and the technologies you have the capacity to own.
- Limited enablement resources bring added workload and the need to deliver for many people. Try to be flexible to change.
- Document your capacity and build a case for expanding your team!
Team of Few
- Establish a clear intake request process to become more proactive to emerging needs.
- Meet regularly with your team to delegate tasks and check progress on initiatives.
- Shine a light on the impact of enablement efforts with company leadership.
- Track the success of business outcomes through meaningful KPIs and report regularly to leaders about why they matter.
- Build a business case to show growth and expansion of the team designed around how you see the future, strategically — not how others tell you it should look.
Team of Many
- Use your size to get involved in multiple areas of the business. A large enablement team can initiate cross-departmental transformation.
- Connect your team’s work to specific revenue initiatives.
- Stay organized and use a detailed project planning process to keep everyone efficient. Break tasks into clear workstreams.
- Develop levels of specialization within your team and create subject matter experts.
- Never lose a startup mindset. Stay open to innovative ideas on how to improve, and don’t get bogged down with antiquated processes just because “it’s the way we’ve always done things.”
Scaling your sales enablement program doesn’t just benefit you by delivering more enablement. When applied correctly, scaling will allow you to target more use cases to improve how your company delivers products and services to market.
As we conclude, keep in mind these words of wisdom from a Seismic customer:
- Enablement is a journey, not a destination. You will need to iterate and change your plans as you grow and scale.
- Select your business outcomes and use cases for sales enablement wisely and always cater to the seller’s experience. They will become your best advocates – or worst opponents – when it comes to adoption.
- Be accountable to measure what matters for your business. Report on those metrics early and often, and make informed, data-driven recommendations based on those insights.
If your organization needs recommendations on how to scale your enablement efforts, reach out to your account team at Seismic today – our Strategic Advisory consultants are here to help.
You can also download the Generation Enablement Report: Driving Strategic Change with the Power of AI here!
