15 Leaders Share How They Define Sales Enablement

When it comes to the bottom-line sales numbers across industries at large, it doesn’t really matter how many followers you get on social media platforms or if some of those same people liked your latest digital advertising campaign trending on your feed or your catchy TikTok dance moves on video.

What matters to any business leader is the number of conversion rates that transfer over to help close a deal. This is what keeps you in tune with loyal and prospective customers for the short and long term. Below, 15 Forbes Business Development Council members describe what sales enablement means to them and how to keep teams engaged with the buyers.

1. Understanding Your Target Base

Sales enablement means understanding your target customer deeply and specifically. This knowledge will help arm your sales executives with the context, fact base and customer-centric thinking they need to accelerate engagement and time to close. – Claire Alexander, Capterra

2. Preparing A Streamlined Sales Process

It is a vital aspect of proper development in a sales team. Sales enablement prepares sales representatives to conduct a streamlined sales process and, in turn, achieve the most effective results for the whole team. – Peter Risko, Fresh Start Capital, Inc

3. Providing The Right Business Tools

Sales enablement empowers and supports my sales team through business tools such as research materials, industry information, market intelligence, re-skilling, upskilling and appropriate guidance to close deals. – Folasade Femi-Lawal, FirstBank of Nigeria Ltd

4. Building And Maintaining Customer-Facing Excellence

It is a system and a process for building and maintaining the customer-facing excellence of every seller in every interaction, whether live or written. When provided by an organization invested in ideal sales behavior, it becomes a function and its outcome. – Gopkiran Rao, Mindtickle

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5. Using Technology To Automate, Accelerate And Amplify Sales

Sales enablement supports, enables and equips the sales team with the right information, knowledge and skills to be successful. It includes tech enablement to automate, accelerate and amplify the sales reps’ effectiveness. In addition, it provides the skills and mindset to improve efficiency and how the team engages with the market and target buyers. – Julie Thomas, ValueSelling Associates

6. Combining Talent With The Proper Training And Resources

It gives your sales team the best opportunity for success by combining their talents with proper training, content and information that is based on client needs, access to the tools and analyses to deliver results. – Pete First, BrightStar Care

7. Orchestrating Collaborative Efforts To Create Noteworthy Client Journeys

Sales enablement is a strategic support structure for customer-facing teams aligned to the buyer and customer journey. It consists of three pillars: content, which includes the training, coaching and process, the tools, which are enforced by the foundation of leadership, and strategy. Enablement orchestrates all collaborative efforts and empowers sales teams to create noteworthy buyer and customer experiences. – Britta Lorenz, PDAgroup GmbH

8. Cultivating Knowledge And Authenticity Among Brand Ambassadors

Sales enablement means coaching sales acumen. Some salespeople seem to be born with natural confidence, whereas others take time to build theirs, but good judgment and decision-making in navigating a deal come from experience and guidance. It’s also about ensuring salespeople have a good level of knowledge about the product and the company so they are trusted and authentic ambassadors of your brand. – Ben Elder, Meta Platforms, Inc.

9. Knowing How To Present Offerings In The Best Manner

It is about the go-to-market teams that know what to do, what to say and what to show based on the customer-facing situation they have. This drives seller productivity, company revenue and overall sales and marketing efficiency. – Toby Carrington, Seismic

10. Equipping Teams With Need Insights

It is key to equip your sales team with the right insight—when it’s needed and where it’s needed—delivered through their choice of medium via digitization. For example, artificial intelligence has been front and center in my decision-making process. We plan daily store visits and prioritize customer intelligence, which includes likes, dislikes and event recommendations to sell—keeping history and current competitive intelligence results in mind. – Gaurav Zibbu, Tredence Inc.

11. Prioritizing The Fundamental Basics

Sales enablement is the foundation on which salespeople can learn to conduct a more effective sales process and achieve better results. It allows for reps to get back to the basics. Many sales teams have gotten away from the fundamentals and the basics of good selling. So, sales enablement can help them facilitate the creation of content and clarity. – Brian Nourani, Wrike

12. Empowering Wins Through Multi-Collateral Resources

Does your sales team have what they need to drive demand across all funnel stages and the buyer’s journey? If yes, they are well enabled. A combination of videos, brochures or collaterals that will lead to a closing win is what defines sales enablement. It starts with a marketing team that helps create these materials. – Sayantan Dasgupta, Gramener

13. Creating Engaging Consumer Content

Sales enablement is all about helping your sellers get in front of your customers at their time and place of choice with the right content that is contextual to their needs. In a world consisting of hyper-informed buyers and a market that is driven by innumerable consumer choices in a remote selling environment, it’s imperative to get the content right as part of the enablement process. – Sudeep Sarkar, Revature LLC

14. Fostering A Leadership Mentality Across The Organization

It begins with creating a culture that fosters knowledge transferability. Build both a peer-to-peer and top-down leadership mentality in the organization that focuses on coaching, open communication with respect to different experiences, diverse voices and data sets and experimentation will lead to empowerment within the organization. This enhances a deeper connection to the company and its clients. – Ernesto Pineda, Twenty Five Ventures

15. Keeping Up With Buyer Expectations

Removing friction for buyers is the tip of the iceberg when it comes to sales enablement. By focusing relentlessly on buyer journeys, you can understand how to augment sales with digital and automated tools that align with modern-day buyer expectations and help sellers stay hyper focused on high-value touchpoints and activities. – Serrah Linares, Change Healthcare