By 2025, 75% of the most successful companies will deploy a revenue operations model (Gartner), better known as “RevOps”. This comprehensive approach optimizes strategy, processes, workflow, data analysis and technology. Moving to a broader Enablement strategy is needed to align Sales and Marketing, but also Customer Success and all departments involved in Go-to-Market efforts. According to Gartner, this shift will push companies to rethink the scope of their Sales Enablement strategy.
Expanding the scope of Sales Enablement to maximize revenue growth
As its name suggests, Sales Enablement is intended for the Sales department and its micro-environment. However, it has gradually evolved into a “Seller Enablement” function, exclusively addressing the salesperson as an individual. This so-called nuclear approach, which focuses on the Sales core, now needs to be extended to empower all teams involved in revenue generation operations.
With the RevOps approach, salespeople won’t be the sole focus of training, coaching, content, technology and revenue generation processes. Go-to-Market teams, or even the entire workforce, will now be involved. They must be brought together with the shared goal of revenue generation. The adoption of a RevOps model should therefore be combined with a shift from Sales Enablement to Growth Enablement. This is the best way to put all teams in the best position to activate the company’s full growth potential.
Shifting to Growth Enablement to boost conversion
Doug Bushée, Senior Director Analyst at Gartner Sales, spoke on the topic at the Gartner CSO & Sales Leader Conference: “CEOs and chief sales officers recognize that functional silos handing off clients from one function to the other, and using different technologies, people and processes, are a barrier to revenue growth. As a result, progressive organizations are beginning to align sales, marketing and customer success technology, data and KPIs to provide an end to end view of the revenue-generating engine. The shift to a more end-to-end revenue operations view means enablement leaders should provide enablement support not only to the frontline sales force, but to other revenue generation roles found in marketing, sales and customer success.”
Expanding the scope of Sales Enablement therefore optimizes onboarding, training, coaching and support for all revenue generation teams with the following advantages:
- Disseminating best practices beyond the Sales department;
- Boosting the conversion rate;
- A better understanding of buyers’ expectations thanks to the synergy of the combined knowledge of all Go-to-Market teams.
Ultimately, this broader approach generalizes the benefits of Sales Enablement to all teams involved in revenue generation: sales management, marketing management, human resources and executives.
People, Process and Technology: the triad of Growth Enablement
The 3 pillars of Growth Enablement can be modeled as a pyramid with a base, a center and a top (or apex).
- People are at the foundation of the pyramid. They are at the heart of the interactions. They bring skills, know-how, analytical capacity, creativity and a sense of empathy. They inspire confidence in customers and prospects, they reassure, question, adapt, learn and think. While B2B involves transactions between entities, decisions are always made by people. They also represent the company, drive the processes and use technology.
- Processes are at the center of the Growth Enablement pyramid. Processes are the way your employees operate on a daily basis. They are formalized and repeatable. They involve the same sequence of tasks and produce more or less the same results, regardless of who is driving them. In Sales for example, each generated lead goes through a predefined process to make it flow through the funnel. The Growth Enablement mindset allows you to break down the processes to identify barriers, frictions and weaknesses. Beware: some companies use technology to “fix” an inherently flawed process. This approach will simply allow a bad process to be faster without correcting the core dysfunction. This is why processes and technology are two different components in the Growth Enablement pyramid.
- Technology is at the apex of the pyramid. It optimizes the processes and supports the strategy, not the other way around. Some companies make the mistake of implementing technology before strategy and building processes and teams around a tool. Technology should be seen as a multiplier that allows you to go faster and gain in productivity (making data speak, discussing with website visitors via a Chatbot, recommending content to create, etc.). In the end, with the best technological stack, people will be able to get rid of repetitive tasks to concentrate on higher value-added ones.
Touch & Sell, the French leader in Growth Enablement
After pioneering Sales Enablement in France, Touch & Sell is now the French leader in Growth Enablement. We are committed to helping our clients progress by aligning People, Processes and Technology:
- We give your teams every means of success: training, coaching, content and technology;
- We provide you with a 360° visibility on all your processes by dissecting each interaction;
- We focus on human relationships to create value and grow your business.
The Touch & Sell approach of Growth Enablement results into concrete results with an excellent ROI:
- 95% of salespeople adopted our Growth Enablement platform within the first month of use;
- A 20% surge in revenue within the first 6 months;
- Employee onboarding becomes twice as fast;
- A year’s worth of man-days saved on document search.
