An effective sales enablement strategy is guaranteed to increase customer acquisitions and boost conversion rates. But, like any strategy, sales enablement isn’t static. It needs to grow with the industry and your business.
It’s for this reason that you need to conduct regular sales enablement assessments. Use your assessment to objectively examine your sales enablement approach, pinpoint where it needs improvement, and adjust your growth strategy.
The Purpose of a Sales Enablement Assessment
Sales enablement is all about giving sales reps the tools and resources they need to master the SaaS sales cycle. However, time and trends change what SaaS customers want. Modern innovations and changing algorithms change the software landscape almost daily.
Your sales enablement strategy needs to adjust to these changes.
A sales enablement assessment assesses how effective your sales enablement strategy is. It compares it with historical sales enablement data and competitor data. It tells you if your sales enablement strategy is effective and competitive.
Considering that 84% of sales reps meet their quotas after employers integrate a sales enablement strategy, it is critical to get your sales enablement strategy right.
By regularly completing sales enablement assessments, you can adjust your sales enablement methods and improve your output.
Key Components of a Sales Enablement Assessment
A sales enablement assessment can be broken into three major questions:
- How is your sales enablement strategy performing in the present?
- Where does the sales enablement strategy need improvement?
- What are your sales enablement goals?
These key components are the pillars of your assessment and should always be in the back of your mind when doing your report.
Conducting a Sales Enablement Assessment
Let’s examine these pillars in depth and guide you through your sales enablement assessment.
Understanding the Current State of Your Sales Enablement Efforts
Sales enablement is all about optimization. It’s why so many SaaS companies integrate sales enablement into their business model. But even if you do have a sales enablement strategy, unless it’s actively contributing to increased performance and revenue, it’s still in need of improvement.
To figure out where you need to adjust your sales enablement strategy, you first need to understand the current state of your sales enablement efforts.
Ask yourself:
- What training and coaching is the company providing?
- What sales tools do we provide?
- How do we encourage internal collaboration?
- Do sales reps have access to all the resources they need?
- What content are you creating and how much?
This is also the time to survey your sales reps:
- Do they feel confident in the sales process?
- Are the current materials and resources objectively improving the sales experience?
- Does the buyers’ journey feel controlled and consistent?
- Where is the available sales enablement strategy lacking, in their opinion?
These are just a few questions, but they can help you identify how you’re currently encouraging effective sales enablement in your company.
Identifying Gaps and Areas for Improvement
If all goes well, the above questions provide clarity on your current sales enablement strategy. However, the hard work starts now.
The above step was a short overview, a general health score. With the next step, you’ll identify gaps and areas for improvement in your sales enablement strategy.
Again, you’ll be asking yourself, management, and your sales reps a lot of questions. We also encourage you to send surveys to customers. Just keep them concise. Sales enablement software and other analytics could also come in handy.
The goal now is to take your general overview and pinpoint the exact spots where your sales enablement strategy needs improvement.
Sales Enablement Assets
Sales enablement assets include software like customer relationship management (CRM) software and content management software. Depending on your SaaS niche, you might also use specific tech to complete sales. This also counts as sales enablement assets.
These assets, when used effectively, have a higher return on interest (ROI) because they bring in more sales.
The answers to these questions will help you better understand the role your sales enablement assets play.
- Does the sales and marketing team use the sales enablement tools provided to them?
- Which tools are used most and which least?
- How do the different use cases compare with individual sales performance?
- How do the asset expenses and sales revenue compare with before sales enablement implementation? Did the tools improve revenue?
- Are tool tutorials successful or do employees struggle using the sales enablement resources?
Again, these are broad examples of questions you can ask.
When conducting your surveys, be more specific by mentioning software names, specific tool features, and so on. We’d also suggest using a one through ten scoring system to condense large bulks of the data.
Sales Process and Buyer’s Journey
Next, examine the sales journey to determine its effectiveness and, more importantly, its pitfalls. To find the answers to these questions, incorporate these sentiments into questions in your survey:
- Are your sales reps and marketing team aligned on the sales process and the buyer’s journey?
- Where has the sales process changed since your last assessment?
- Do your teams have the tools and resources to navigate different parts of the sales process and buyer journey?
- Where is the sales pipeline losing the most prospects?
- Are sales reps providing consistent results? If not, why not? If they are, how can you replicate the results?
Sales Training, Skills, and Techniques
A key aspect of sales enablement is effective training and coaching. Examining your approach is critical with a sales enablement assessment.
- Do your sales reps and marketing team have a clear customer persona? Do they understand the pain points they are trying to sell software for?
- How effective are your sales reps at improvising a script without losing the core theme?
- Does the training provide accurate and in-depth tutorials for sales reps on the software?
- Do employees improve after dedicated coaching?
- Are certain sales enablement techniques turning prospects away during the sales process? Which techniques are they?
- How do you effectively measure sales training effectiveness?
- How do you effectively measure sales reps’ skills, techniques, and consistency?
- Is there a part of the training program that trainees consistently fail?
Sales Performance
Lastly, examine the overall performance of your sales team. Has your sales enablement strategy helped them achieve their goals?
- How do the revenue and customer acquisitions compare with the previous year?
- Did you meet your goals or fall short? If so, by how much?
- Did you adjust the sales enablement strategy from the previous period?
- How long does it take before sales reps are selling completely independently after training?
- Are your sales reps performing on a similar level, with similar goals and processes?
Setting Benchmarks for Future Progress
Collect all the data you gathered from the above questions and start strategizing your new sales enablement plan. You don’t need to change everything. Instead, use the data to identify where you need to improve and adjust accordingly.
Once you’ve got your strategy in place, make note of your current position and determine your future benchmarks. What numbers would you like to achieve with your new sales enablement strategy?
Set your benchmarks, create actionable goals to meet those benchmarks, and continue assessing your sales enablement process in the future.
Sales enablement continuously evolves. Don’t try to confine it. Instead, grow with it and your customers until you’re consistently producing your desired results.
Conclusion
A sales enablement strategy is necessary to tap into your full business potential. But sales enablement isn’t static and requires constant attention.
Use this guide to complete your first sales enablement assessment. Determine where you stand in your sales enablement strategy, what isn’t working, and how you’d like to improve it.
One surefire way to improve your sales enablement approach is to partner with Saleo. Saleo is the best live demo environment for creating interactive and engaging sales demos that consistently convert. Request your demo today!
