What Is Outcome-Based Sales Enablement?

Sales enablement has done wonders to help companies reach their full sales potential. Think about your own organization and how enablement strategies have paved the way for positive change. As a sales leader, you know how the right solution can significantly enhance the buyer-customer experience.

While traditional sales enablement is not going anywhere, a new approach is starting to make waves. We’re talking about outcome-based sales enablement.

What is outcome-based sales enablement? Simply put, it’s flipping the concept of enablement and sales readiness on its head. Instead of focusing on the output of your team’s efforts and pushing them to meet specific goals, you’re developing strategies with sales results and revenue outcomes from the start. It’s an approach that uses outcomes as a jumping-off point to achieve the ultimate result: helping customers achieve their objectives.

How Do Reps Benefit From Outcome-Based Sales Enablement?

Using business outcomes to drive enablement agendas can serve your sales team in many ways. It helps them succeed better than any basic training program or general selling strategy. How? It’s all in the definition.

The thing that stands out about outcome-based enablement is that it shifts the perspective. With conventional enablement tactics, the outputs become the end goal. You measure how many leads a sales rep generates, how many deals they close, how much revenue they bring in, etc. It’s less about a means to an end and more about reaching those positive outcomes. That can be helpful, but meeting those desired outputs becomes the main priority. Your team sets its sights on getting X number of sales instead of focusing on what it takes to get there.

By approaching the sales process from the opposite side of the equation, you can encourage your team to understand how they can help customers achieve their goals. It’s about helping your salespeople gain more insight into how they can serve a buyer’s needs, leading to a more efficient and effective sales process.

Outcome-based sales enablement is also an excellent tool for proving the success of your strategies. Only outcome-based enablement solutions show how your team’s efforts and training endeavors impact the metrics leaders care about the most.

Examples of Outcome-Based Enablement in Action

This enablement concept sounds complex, but it’s easier to implement than you think. Let’s look at some examples of how outcome-based sales enablement works in the real world.

Personalized Readiness Paths for Each Sales Rep

One of the best things about outcome-based enablement is that you can create individualized paths for every rep on your team. No longer are you setting generic guidelines and hoping that your salesforce follows. Standard enablement programs can help put your people on the right track, but personalized support is always the better approach.

With this strategy, there’s the opportunity to embed sales milestones. Set individual goals that every rep can strive to make. Use their specific performance data to create a custom readiness path that caters to their capabilities. This approach results in more advanced training that can optimize performance across the board.

Data-Driven Performance Analytics Tied to Core Revenue KPIs 

Don’t assume that your enablement strategies are working. Use analytics to know for sure. Analyze your team’s performance and dive in to see how individual reps are doing on their distinct readiness paths. This is more than just a random string of numbers that don’t make sense. With outcome-based enablement, you can tie analytics to core revenue KPIs.

That includes sales cycle lengths, customer lifetime value, upsell rates, lead-to-opportunity ratios, and more. Track the impact of your enablement, make fine-tuned adjustments to maximize results, and use the data to prove the efficiency of your enablement programs.

Identify Ideal Sales Interactions and Replicate as Best Practices 

Use your enablement insights to identify impactful interactions that lead to winning moments. Because performance data connects to core revenue KPIs, spotting those moments as they come is a cinch. Never lose another opportunity to teach your team. Use those wins to create best practices everyone can replicate.

Far too often, successes go unnoticed. All you see is the revenue bump. Rarely do you get to see what steps led to that positive outcome. But with outcome-based enablement, you finally can. Understand how your salesperson navigated the sales situation and use that insight to create new training programs that make a difference.

Identify, Reward, and Cultivate Top-Performing Reps  

Do more than turn wins into best practices. Reward your team for their hard work! Praising and recognizing positive selling moments is the best way to empower your reps to continue succeeding. It inspires them to push harder and surpass their last victory.

Outcome-based sales enablement allows you to create milestones. You can automate achievements, correlate program performance, and see what your reps did to experience their significant triumphs. Tie the sales experience to your most critical metrics, and your team has the insight to replicate them time and time again. Cultivate your top sellers, push every salesperson to reach their full potential, and see what difference a winning team can make to your company’s bottom line.

Demonstrate Unequivocal ROI for Sales Enablement 

As a sales leader, you can see the difference enablement strategies can make. To you, the investment in your team is an obvious benefit. But to higher-up executives who don’t know what's happening on the sales floor? It’s a harder sell.

Kick those hesitations to the curb and provide unequivocal proof of the value your sales enablement process offers. Prove its ROI with data that executives understand. Speak their language and leave no doubt that enablement works. Correlate program performance to business-critical KPIs with outcome-based sales enablement. Connect the dots and show company leaders exactly how enablement strategies make a difference.

Iterate Sales Enablement Resources to Perfection

Don’t rest on your laurels! Enablement is not a one-and-done effort. Its value can only grow as outcomes improve. Use outcome-based sales enablement to enhance resources repeatedly. Make fine adjustments with every success. The changes may seem minute, but they eventually add up to establish best practices that continue to deliver.

Push your efforts to perfection and watch your sales team reap the rewards. Instead of having one or two top sellers, you can have an entire group of superstars who drive revenue farther than you or your executive leaders ever thought possible.

Give Your Team the Tools for Optimal Sales Enablement 

Outcome-based enablement is the ticket to sales excellence. Focusing on sales results and what it took to get there is a fantastic approach that can lead to long-term success for your sales team. It’s about proving enablement ROI, creating custom readiness paths for every sales rep, and tying their performance to business KPIs that matter. When done right, an outcome-based strategy can be a game-changer.

Take your sales enablement strategies to new heights with Flockjay! Flockjay equips your team with everything they need to succeed. From top-notch training programs to real-time sales content that leaves a lasting impact on customers, Flockjay delivers!

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