While nearly six in 10 (58 percent) of organizations have a sales enablement presence, only 21 percent include customer success in their strategy—and just 10 percent extend support to marketing teams, reveals new research from revenue enablement platform Mediafly and SaaS benchmark firm RevOps Squared.
As companies face increasing pressure to retain customers and grow in this challenging economic environment, there is a significant opportunity to expand enablement to complete revenue teams, improving customer experience across every touchpoint, from research to onboarding, support to expansion, the researchers assert.
These findings are part of the 2022 Future of Revenue Enablement study, a survey of more than 300 B2B enterprises designed to uncover best practices in Sales Enablement across processes, tools, management and measurement.
Key findings:
Sales enablement is present in a majority of companies, yet most lack the tools to scale
Fifty-eight percent of survey respondents have a sales enablement function, yet only 19 percent support the program with sales enablement technology, limiting their ability to scale training and coach large teams.
Nearly half (48 percent) of sales reps fall short of quota expectations
This gap stems from many factors, including a lack of data-driven enablement, ineffective training, inconsistent measurement and poor talent intelligence to align roles with behaviors.
Faster ramp time leads to higher average contract values, yet nearly one-third of companies do not measure ramp time
According to the report, 29 percent of companies fail to measure new hire ramp to productivity. However, the study showed a direct correlation between ramp time and average contract value, with companies selling solutions over $1 million ramping AEs faster than those selling lower-cost solutions.
Innovative companies are transitioning from traditional sales enablement to full-scale revenue enablement
While enablement historically focused only on sales, companies are broadening the support to their complete revenue teams. The study shows that of those with a formal revenue enablement program, 23 percent enable customer success, 18 percent presales, and 15 percent marketers, among other revenue functions. Additionally, 25 percent of companies have enablement reporting to the Chief Revenue Officer.
Value-based selling (VBS) is a high priority for B2B teams
Sixty-five percent of companies reported having some form of VBS, with 33 percent deploying ROI calculators to provide a point of entry for conversations with economic buyers and influencers.
Opportunities for growth
Opt for full-scale revenue enablement over traditional sales enablement
As many companies struggle to justify the efficacy of various programs, including sales enablement, to their key stakeholders, aligning go-to-market teams across the customer journey, integrating siloed data, and consolidating revenue tech stacks via a full-scale revenue enablement program provides the entire commercial organization with the tools, technologies and processes necessary to meet growth goals.
Prioritize sales coaching
In the absence of sales enablement, sales training becomes the primary responsibility of the sales function 33 percent of the time, HR 15 percent of the time, and operations 13 percent of the time. Yet, training and coaching with intention yield the highest ROI. Revenue enablement platforms improve sales coaching with:
- Real-time, contextual coaching from conversation intelligence
- AI-powered, adaptive learning
- Advanced blended learning capabilities
- Post-call coaching and prescriptive next steps
Deploy execution-focused sales technology
Survey respondents ranked CRM as the top sales enablement tool across all cohorts, highlighting the prioritization of basic account, contact, and activity tracking. Meanwhile, survey responses showed a lesser dependence on guided selling (11 percent), conversation intelligence (22 percent) and sales enablement platforms (19 percent) proven to help sellers move the needle. Guided selling capabilities, in particular, allow organizations to automate sales best practices across the customer lifecycle.
Measure and optimize your revenue enablement program
Effective sales enablement can significantly increase quota achievement rates with guided selling and coaching feedback leveraged to optimize stage-by-stage conversion rates. Yet, only 27 percent of companies deploy guided selling, and just 14 percent of companies use stage-by-stage conversion rates as sales enablement requirement signals.
“The top three impacts of Sales Enablement include sales cycle time, quota achievement and win rates,” said Carson Conant, founder and CEO of Mediafly, in a news release. “Yet 42 percent of companies don’t have a sales enablement program. And companies deploying traditional sales enablement are missing the boat. Our research suggests that more companies would benefit from embracing a sales enablement platform as a tool to drive sales and as a resource for training commercial teams and reinforcing best practices to improve performance. This full-scale Revenue Enablement, with specialized coaching, value selling and the right tech and insights across the revenue journey is necessary to succeed in today’s market.”
