How to Build Your Sales Enablement Strategy

Sales success these days is more than just “dialing for dollars.” Today, sales leaders need to be adept at building connections, collaborating with other team members, improving systems and processes, and always adding value. The best strategy to get you there? Sales enablement. 

This guide will help you get started with a sales enablement strategy, and empower you to be successful.

Today, you’ll learn all about Sales Enablement, including:

• What is Sales Enablement?
• How to Build Your Sales Enablement Strategy
• What is Conversational Sales Enablement?
• Tips for Supercharging Sales Enablement
• How Calldrip Helps

What is Sales Enablement?

So what is sales enablement? Sales enablement is a strategy to improve your sales team's performance, by providing them with the resources they need to close more deals. The goal of implementing sales enablement is to improve your processes, resources, and strategies to make sales more efficient. For sales enablement to be successful, your strategy needs to prioritize building trust quickly and serving customers effectively.

The overarching goals of sales enablement are to:

• Empower your sales team to close deals.
• Prioritize your sales team's efficiency and efficacy.

Sales leaders do this by understanding your buyers’ journey, identifying key decision moments, and creating the resources needed to advance the sale at those moments. In some cases, this sales enablement initiative may mean that you need to adjust your existing sales processes to more closely align with your customers’ needs.

In practical terms, that may mean providing resources like videos, interactive tools, articles, training, or content; all of these should make it easier to sell your product or service. We’ll cover more about the sales enablement resources you might want to consider in a later section.

“At Calldrip, we think about sales enablement as a way to strengthen relationships, which is the cornerstone of any healthy sales process.”

Forest Ward, VP of Sales at Calldrip

Remember, sales enablement enhances the efficacy of your sales team. It doesn’t seek to replace them. After all, people buy from people!

Want to learn more? Download the complete guide to sales enablement!

Key Sales Enablement Statistics

Why does sales enablement matter? There are plenty of benefits of sales enablement, including better relationships with leads and prospects, faster deal velocity, and happier customers. Said differently, sales enablement ensures that your sales team is empowered to provide a positive customer experience, every single time. 

Still not convinced?

• About 80% of American consumers say that friendly service, speed, knowledgeable help, and convenience are the most important elements of a positive customer experience. 

• Almost 90% of consumers report purchasing due to the overall sales experience, rather than price or functionality.

• Even if customers love your company or product, 59% say they will walk away after several bad experiences, 17% after just one bad experience. 

• Roughly ​​66% of customers expect companies to understand their needs and expectations.

The reality is that prospects buy from people and companies that they know, like and trust. Much of this human connection is built during the sales process. The efficacy of your sales team is directly related to their ability to connect with and serve your leads. Sales enablement makes that process seamless and scalable.

There’s another reason why sales enablement matters: your competitors are probably implementing it. In fact, sales enablement has seen a 343% increase in adoption over the last five years. And it’s working; more than 75% of companies using sales enablement strategies have seen their sales increase between 6% to 20%. The global sales enablement market is growing; in fact, it’s projected to surpass $3B by 2026. 

Given that sales enablement has such significant benefits, you don’t want to be left behind.

How to Get Started with Sales Enablement in 7 Steps

By now, you’re convinced that sales enablement is right for you. You just need to know how to get started building your sales enablement strategy. The steps to successful sales enablement includes:

• Step 1: Align with business goals.
• Step 2: Clear sales processes that align with a buyer’s journey.
• Step 3: Quality sales training that empowers your team to be as successful as possible throughout the sales process.
• Step 4: High-value sales resources to share with prospects at key moments during their journey. This includes meaningful internal resources to support every member of your sales team’s performance.
• Step 5: A clear, easy-to-use system for collecting and managing these sales resources. 
• Step 6: Performance tracking and measurement to evaluate sales performance qualitatively and quantitatively.
• Step 7: Active, iterative sales coaching to support the progress of the entire sales team. 

Step 1: Align with Business Goals 

Ensure your sales enablement strategy seamlessly integrates with your overall business objectives. Define clear goals, measurable KPIs, and a timeline for achievement. Is it maximizing revenue, exceeding customer satisfaction, or penetrating new markets? Align your enablement efforts with these strategic priorities.

Step 2: Build Your Buyer Journey Map

This map should reflect the internal and external reality of your sales. This exercise should make it easy for you to define a clear sales process, which is key to any successful sales enablement strategy.

Your sales enablement strategy needs to be built upon an in-depth understanding of your ideal customer and their buyer’s journey. This is the foundation of any sales enablement strategy. Your marketing and sales team will need to collaborate to build an ideal customer persona and a buyer journey map, if you don’t have one already. This will help ensure that your sales enablement strategy is aligned with your buyer’s wishes, wants, and needs.

As you create your buyer journey, pay particular attention to:

• Existing sources of lead generation. About 50% of businesses say inbound marketing strategies, such as forms, are their primary source of leads. If that’s true for you, the buyer journey will look different than a business who generates most of their leads at a conference.
• Key moments or conversations that can make or break the sale. If you’re not sure what they are (and even if you are), it’s helpful to speak to current clients and closed-lost opportunities to learn more about what happened.
• Critical path actions that must be taken by the prospect and/or your sales representatives.
• Moments where your internal sales team needs to reference materials or company information to progress the sale. For example, where does your sales team look for prices to build quotes and proposals?
• Any moments where resources are being shared with prospective clients, and what those resources are. This could be a brochure, a demo video, or even the proposal itself.

This map should reflect the internal and external reality of your sales. This exercise should make it easy for you to define a clear sales process, which is key to any successful sales enablement strategy.

Step 3: Prioritize and Design Content

Now, it’s time to actually create or enhance the resources you’ve identified in your customer journey mapping and sales training program creation.

We recommend creating a list of the resources you think would be beneficial to your sales team. Then, evaluate whether you already have a resource or would need to create one. Don’t forget to consider assets that are being used in one-off cases, or address some (but not all) of a need.

It can be difficult to prioritize the most important content, but again, the sales team’s current processes can be a signal. Ask your sales team what tools, resources, or documents they’ve created for themselves. These valuable tools have proven their importance, and are likely to be a high-impact starting point. 

When you identify a need, prioritize evergreen and adaptable materials like templates, presentations, and interactive tools. 

Then, organize this content into a content library tailored to your buyer personas and sales stages. Don't forget ongoing blog posts, industry insights, and customer success stories. There are now AI content tools that allow you to quickly search your library and find the right resource in a flash.

Finally, ensure that your market team reviews all existing resources to make sure they’re integrated and on-brand.

Step 4: Evaluate and Improve Sales Training

Now that you have a clear understanding of your buyer journey, you’re in a position to develop a sales training program that reflects that. Equip your team with the skills and knowledge to execute your sales strategy flawlessly. 

During the process, chances are you’ll identify new resources and assets that can support the sales process. Make a note of these, and discuss them with your marketing team. 

Design training programs that address critical areas like communication, objection handling, and data analysis. Implement ongoing coaching sessions for personalized feedback and continuous improvement. (More on that later!)

As you build your training program, leverage your top salespeople’s unique insights and knowledge to include in your training program. Ask your best customers what sales techniques made the most impact during the buyer process.

Step 5: Embrace Technology as a Catalyst.

To supercharge your sales enablement strategy, you’ll need to start thinking about how you can leverage efficiencies. In many cases, the more efficient your team is at fielding inquiries and moving the sale forward, the more successful they will be. 

It’s time to ensure that your sales process is as efficient as possible. For many, this means automation and technology.

Every repeatable process you can automate is time you free up for your sales team to handle those critical, customer-focused human connections. Many sales enablement software solutions - including Calldrip - include marketing and sales automation. This automation helps simplify those redundant moments in your sales process. 

For example, a big part of the sales journey is your process for responding to leads. How and when your sales representatives make that first follow-up contact has a major impact on the sale. Tools like Calldrip’s rapid lead response exist that can automate the follow up phone call and text, automatically leave a voicemail message if the lead doesn’t pick up, automatically ask customers for reviews - and so much more. 

You'll also need an easy, seamless system to organize your sales resources and support your entire sales enablement program. This could look as simple as a shared drive or folder system, or as complex as a dedicated software.

Calldrip’s all-in-one conversational sales enablement solution can help with many of these automated tasks, as well as more advanced aspects of sales enablement, like coaching and call tracking and monitoring.

Whichever tool you use, make sure it streamlines processes and empowers your team. Utilize systems to manage customer interactions, leverage automation tools to enhance workflow efficiency, and embrace data analytics platforms to gain actionable insights. 

Technology is your sales engine's turbocharger – use it wisely.

Step 6: Foster Cross-Departmental Collaboration and Feedback with Sales Coaching

Break down silos and encourage knowledge sharing across departments. Implement feedback loops where sales insights inform content creation, marketing strategies align with sales goals, and technology decisions prioritize user needs. Collaboration fuels innovation and leads to a holistic, sustainable sales enablement culture.

Studies show successful coaching can improve conversion rates by as much as 29%, and companies that focus on coaching can expect a massive 353% return on their investment.

Not sure where to start with sales coaching? Here are a few resources that can help:

• [Blog] 9 Statistics that Prove the Power of Sales Coaching
• Explore Professional Sales Coaching
• [Blog] 5 Call Coaching Best Practices for Sales Managers

Sales coaching is an essential part of any performance-focused sales effort. With all the insights you've gained, you should be in a perfect position to execute an effective sales coaching strategy.

Sales coaching software like Calldrip can help you effectively and consistently coach and train your sales team. Our award-winning sales coaching software includes customized KPIs, coaching scorecards, and purpose-built playbooks. The scorecards measure your team's performance based on sales enablement strategies and will identify coaching opportunities for your team. 

Step 7: Monitor and Iterate

Remember, sales enablement is a continuous journey, not a static destination. It's critical to monitor performance so that you know what's working - and what's not.  Regularly track progress against your KPIs, analyze team performance, and gather feedback from both sales reps and customers. This data-driven approach allows you to refine your strategy, optimize resources, and continuously improve your sales engine's efficiency and effectiveness.

We recommend evaluating both qualitative and quantitative data. Metrics might include things like "calls connected," "appointments booked," or "customer satisfaction." 

Monitoring calls also allows you to measure sales team performance, and pinpoint training and coaching opportunities.

You can also monitor performance via customer feedback. Calldrip also makes it easy to automatically collect customer reviews via call and text and automatically publish them to Google, which will help with coaching and staying close to your customer's voice.

Your conversational sales and sales enablement strategies will be even more effective with the support of a great sales automation software tool. 

By following these steps, you can transform your sales enablement blueprint into a living, breathing force that empowers your team, drives customer satisfaction, and propels your organization towards sustained success.

Remember, successful implementation of sales enablement strategy is a marathon, not a sprint – consistent effort, unwavering commitment, and a culture of continuous improvement are the keys to unlocking the full potential of this powerful strategy.

What is Conversational Sales Enablement?

As leaders in the sales technology space, we’re constantly evaluating the leading sales strategies, and considering how to make them even better.

Conversational Sales Enablement is one of those strategies.

Conversational sales enablement is a strategy that empowers your sales team to have a high-value conversation at the perfect moment, while navigating questions and doubts with ease. Designed by our sales and marketing team, Conversational Sales Enablement blends relationship building techniques with technology to streamline the sale.

If sales enablement is about providing your sales team with the right resources, conversational sales enablement is about how your team puts those resources in practice in actual conversations. Conversational sales enablement embraces the foundations of sales enablement, and takes them further.

4 Cornerstones of Conversational Sales Enablement

There are four cornerstones of a successful conversational sales enablement strategy:

1. Prioritize speed of response. The best time to communicate with a prospect is at their peak moment of interest: when they engage with you. Your conversational sales enablement strategy empowers your sales team to have a high-value conversation at that moment. The odds of qualifying a lead are 21 times higher if you call within 5 minutes of the lead’s inquiry versus 30. After one hour, the odds of qualifying a lead are negligible. Your team needs to be ready to connect with the prospect when they make contact.
2. Meet your prospects where they are. Put your leads first, and be available on the channels that are convenient for them. Conversational Sales Enablement isn’t just phone calls - though those are important - but also about business text messaging, live chat, automated lead follow-up, and more. To do this effectively, you’ll need to leverage technology so your team can communicate via phone call, text, web chat, and other channels as they evolve. 
3. Embrace the human element. Prioritize building strong, honest human connections with prospects, at scale, because people buy from people. Conversational sales enablement isn’t about automated emails or voicemails, though those have a place. It’s about making sure that your team takes every opportunity to strengthen an authentic, human connection with prospects. That’s why sales coaching is more centered in a conversational sales enablement strategy.
4. Empower your sales team. Ensure that your team has the resources, coaching, technology, and processes they need to perform at their best. That means building strong listening and communication skills, via phone and beyond. Research shows that, with complex purchases, consumers want to talk to a salesperson. At Calldrip, we say that “every sale starts with a conversation.”

Conversational sales enablement relies on a variety of tactics:

• Sales automation, including rapid lead response, click-to-call automation, auto attendant and call routing.
• Call tracking and monitoring.
• Sales coaching.
• Multi-channel communication, including call, text and web chat.
• Conversation analytics and data integration.

Each of these tactics delivers great customer service and helps build an authentic, convenient relationship with leads and prospects.

Your conversational sales enablement strategy exists to enhance your greatest sales asset: your sales team. You'll never replace the salesperson. People buy from people!

If you’re interested in learning more about conversational sales enablement, this in-depth guide is for you. Learn more about Conversational Sales Enablement in this quick two-pager; download it for free here.

Calldrip's Sales Enablement solution is unique, because we provide a hassle-free, all in-one-approach that supports conversational sales every step of the way. Plus, with our mobile app, your sales representatives can be successful from anywhere, with a tool they're already using constantly: the phone in their pocket. Calldrip can help you level up your customer experience - and your sales.

How to Supercharge Your Sales Enablement Strategy

The goal of sales enablement is to empower your sales team to effectively connect with prospects and close them into customers. Everything about sales enablement is designed to build trust. But how can you do that effectively at scale? The truth is, it's hard.

To supercharge your sales enablement strategy, you’ll need to start thinking about how you can leverage efficiencies. In many cases, the more efficient your team is at fielding inquiries and moving the sale forward, the more successful they will be.

Marketing and sales automation software can help to supercharge those redundant moments in your sales process. For example, a big part of the sales journey is your process for responding to leads. How and when your sales representatives make that first follow-up contact has a major impact on the sale.

Sales software exists that can automate the follow up phone call and text, automatically leave a voicemail message if the lead doesn’t pick up, automatically ask customers for reviews - and so much more. Every repeatable process you can automate is time you free up for your sales team to handle those critical, customer-focused human connections.

Calldrip’s all-in-one conversational sales enablement solution can help with many of these automated tasks, as well as more advanced aspects of sales enablement, like coaching and call tracking and monitoring. Here's an overview of the sales tools included in the Calldrip software, and how they work:

• Respond is an automated lead response solution automatically generates a phone call and/or text message from your salesperson to a prospect immediately after the prospect submits an inquiry.
• Engage is a text chat widget that converts qualified prospects to a phone call or SMS text chat - automatically. Engage ensures that you connect with your prospects via a conversation at their precise moment of interest.
• Monitor is an AI-powered conversational monitoring tool measuring conversations in real time. Call summaries, transcripts, keyword detection and sentiment analysis support sales performance and coaching.
• Track clearly identifies phone call sources and metrics, so you can see which channels and lead sources are converting the best. This is a good proxy metric to understand which Conversational Sales channel and lead sources are most valuable to your business.
• Review makes it easy for prospects and customers to leave quick, conversational reviews on the top review platforms, including Google.
• Coach is a sales coaching software that helps ensure every conversation is top-notch. It includes call recording reviews done by both real people and AI technology.

Calldrip's Sales Enablement software is unique, because we provide a hassle-free, all in-one-approach that supports conversational sales every step of the way. Our software provides the tech tools you need to develop and implement your sales enablement strategies today. Plus, with our mobile app, your sales representatives can be successful from anywhere, with a tool they're already using constantly: the phone in their pocket. Calldrip can help you level up your customer experience - and your sales.

Even better, setup is quick and easy. You’ll be paired with a customer success professional who is dedicated to your account. If you ever have challenges or questions, they’re available to help.

Claim your free demo, and let's get started.