How to Build a Sales Enablement Team

Every business wants to have an amazing sales team. More businesses than ever are adopting sales enablement technologies into their sales strategy. If you want to truly empower your sales team, you want to combine these two ideas. A great sales team supported by sales enablement can make a significant impact on your business. But how do you build a successful sales enablement team? In this blog, we’ll give you seven important steps you should take to build a highly effective sales enablement team.

 1. Define North Star Metrics and Set Goals

First and foremost, your goals and north star metrics should be clearly outlined for your team. Your sales reps need a jumping-off point if they want to be highly effective and successful. When you clearly define what you expect from your team, they’ll have a better understanding of what they need to do to achieve their individual and team-based targets. You also want to set goals for sales management. 

Here are some goals for both reps and management that you might consider.

• Win rate: Find out how often your sales team members are closing on their opportunities. If someone’s win rate is lower than the rest of the team’s, you can see where they’re having trouble. If the team win rate is dropping, you can see where in the sales cycle the team is faltering.
• Retention: Sales managers want to bring on good team members, but they also need to retain them. Your managers should strive to have a high retention rate.
• Development of talent: No talent is perfect right off the bat. Natural skill is great, but selling the specific product or service of your business is learned. Sales managers should endeavor to provide the best training and development experience possible.
• Organization diversity: Bringing in a wide range of perspectives can help you develop a unique and more nuanced sales strategy.

This is just a quick example of some goals you can set when building a sales enablement team. Make sure to tailor your goals to the needs of your business.

 2. Develop Strategy and Establish Performance Tracking

Establish a sales strategy and then develop and optimize it as you go. You should also implement performance tracking to help guide your strategy and encourage your team. 

It’s important to keep in mind that you should involve your entire go-to-market team when you’re developing your sales strategy. Opening the floor up for suggestions and opportunities will help you create the best possible version of your sales strategy. It also makes sure that everyone feels like they’re a part of the process and that they’re making important contributions to the overall success of the team.

 3. Prepare Training and Coaching Processes

Make sure your training and coaching processes are prepared and well developed. This means making sure your existing marketing and training materials are all centrally located and easily accessible for anyone to use them. You should also ensure your content doesn’t stagnate. Continually update your training content to best represent your current processes and sales cycles.

In addition to providing training and coaching materials from management, you should also enable peer-to-peer collaboration and learning. Peer-to-peer learning shows what your best performers are doing and teaches those practices to your new reps and to other team members. You always want the best practices to rise to the top, so make sure you’re fostering this kind of collaborative environment and open communication.

 4. Hire Effectively for the Right Positions

Make sure your sales team is strong and well rounded by hiring effectively for the right positions. Choose the right people for leadership and senior positions, find motivated and eager learners for new reps and make sure that your team is diverse and enthusiastic. By hiring the right team members, you’ll have the best possible chance for success. Having training measures and sales enablement technology in place can be incredibly valuable, but nothing beats having a top-notch team of individuals who are ready to sell.

 5. Equip Your Team With the Best Sales Enablement Solutions

Once you have your best team in place, make sure to give them the tools that can make them even better. Sales enablement solutions will give them a variety of resources and tools that allow them to make more sales, learn from their wins and mistakes and perform better overall.

Sales enablement solutions help track performance, report on that performance, generate leads and show your team what the best performers are doing. They help managers perfect their training, onboarding and coaching materials too. Sales enablement solutions can be a benefit to every aspect of your team. Make sure you’re putting these tools in the hands of your team if you want them to win consistently. 

 6. Analyze Sales Data and Document Winning Strategies 

With sales enablement software implemented, it will be easier than ever to analyze your sales data and document your winning strategies. These platforms can compile and report on your historical and real-time sales data. This helps you see what’s working and what isn’t. It shows you what your top sellers are doing to close the deal. With this kind of in-depth analysis, you can optimize your sales pipeline and ensure that you’re teaching your sales team the best ways to sell your product.

 7. Succeed, Iterate, Perfect

Implementing all of these practices to develop a successful sales team will inevitably lead to more wins. As you achieve this success, make sure you’re not resting on your laurels. Success gives you room to iterate on your methods and perfect them, launching your sales team into the stratosphere.

Also, when you give your team the tools they need to win, they’re going to be able to contribute ideas of their own to perfect your sales pipeline. Building a successful sales enablement team provides more benefits than simply higher revenue and busting through sales goals. It leads to long-term, highly successful team members who are going to make your business better now and into the future.

You Can Do It All With Flockjay

If you want to equip a successful sales enablement team quickly, you need the right platform. Flockjay can help you do it all with our sales elevation platform. Flockjay uses peer-to-peer learning and collaboration tools to build better sales teams. If you’re interested in learning more and trying Flockjay for your team, get in touch with us today.

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