In a competitive sales environment, it’s more important than ever to have a well-trained and enabled sales team. Sales enablement is the process of providing sales reps with the knowledge, skills, and resources they need to be successful. This includes everything from training on products and services to providing access to sales tools and resources.
When planning sales enablement, it’s important to consider the current competencies of your sales team. What are their strengths? What areas do they need to develop? Once you have a good understanding of your team’s current capabilities, you can start to plan for the future. What sales competencies will be important in the next year? In five years?
Here are some best practices for planning sales enablement and training:
- Start with a clear understanding of your business goals. What do you want to achieve with your sales team? Once you know your goals, you can start to develop a sales enablement plan that will help you achieve them.
- Identify the key sales competencies that are important for your team. This will vary depending on your industry and the type of products or services you sell. However, some common sales competencies include:
- Product knowledge
- Prospecting and lead generation
- Sales closing
- Customer relationship management (CRM)
- Develop a training program that addresses the gaps in your team’s competencies. The training program should be tailored to the specific needs of your team. It should also be engaging and interactive so that your reps can learn and retain the information.
- Provide ongoing coaching and support to your sales reps. Once your reps have completed the training program, they will need ongoing coaching and support to help them apply what they have learned. This coaching can be provided by sales managers, sales enablement professionals, or even senior sales reps.
- Measure the results of your sales enablement program. It’s important to track the results of your sales enablement program so that you can see what’s working and what’s not. This will help you make adjustments to the program as needed.
Here are some additional tips for planning sales enablement and training:
- Involve your sales team in the planning process. This will help ensure that the program is relevant to their needs and that they are more likely to buy into it.
- Use a variety of training methods. This will help keep your reps engaged and make the training more effective.
- Make the training accessible and convenient. This means offering it online or in a self-paced format.
- Track the results of the training. This will help you determine which areas are most in need of improvement and make adjustments to the program as needed.
