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The Sales Enablement Manager to improve the overall performance of your sales team
Sales Enablement is a growing discipline. While the function is fully embodied in the United States and the United Kingdom, it is beginning to catch up and gain momentum in France. To help you better understand this new profession, we propose an article on Sales Enablement, the Sales Enablement Manager profession and the role it plays in improving your sales performance.
What is Sales Enablement?
Sales Enablement aims to provide real-time sales and marketing alignment, to significantly improve the company's sales performance and to create a new sales experience during appointments.
The Sales Enablement application supports the salesperson throughout the sales cycle:
- Before the meeting: the application allows the sales representative to accelerate and improve the preparation of meetings by quickly identifying the most effective marketing content needed to personalize the sales approach.
- During the meeting: whether in person or remotely, the application allows the sales representative to modernize his approach and to be more relevant in his argumentation as well as in the answers he gives to the buyer's questions.
- After the meeting: the application allows the creation of the visit report to be automated directly in the CRM and to provide precise information on the meeting. The time spent by the salesperson on administrative tasks is thus greatly reduced, so he/she can devote more time to sales-related actions.
The Sales Enablement tool goes far beyond the operational support of the salesperson! It also allows the marketing & sales management to collect precise information related to the meeting: Which offers were presented? What is the sales path followed by the sales person? What content did the salesperson share with the buyer? All the data collected allows the management to make the right decisions, to continuously improve the company's sales performance and therefore to generate more revenue.
Présentée dès le processus de recrutement, l’application de Sales Enablement renforce votre attractivité auprès des commerciaux. Elle modernise l’image de l’entreprise et facilite la projection du commercial dans le cadre de sa future activité. Elle permet aussi de mieux intégrer le commercial, d’accompagner et d’accélérer sa montée en compétence. Le développement des connaissances de la force de vente est primordial dans l’amélioration de votre performance commerciale. Grâce à l’exposition quotidienne aux contenus de formation, « les offres/services sont mieux maîtrisées par les commerciaux, mieux comprises par les acheteurs, et les ventes augmentent. » témoigne Vianney Leveugle, Directeur Marketing & Commercial à GEODIS Distribution & Express.
Tous les services sont gagnants avec l’utilisation d’une application de Sales Enablement. Que vous soyez une Direction Marketing, une Direction Commerciale ou une Direction des Ressources Humaines, vous accompagnez votre force de vente vers l’excellence. D’ailleurs, les enjeux du Sales Enablement étant importants, une nouvelle fonction a naturellement vu le jour : celle du Sales Enablement Manager ! On vous en dit plus dans la suite de cet article.
Le Sales Enablement Manager : au coeur de la digitalisation de votre organisation commerciale
Le Sales Enablement Manager est le liant entre les Directions Marketing, Commerciale et Ressources Humaines qui facilite l’atteinte des objectifs. Dans l’entreprise, il se positionne naturellement à l’intersection des équipes sales & marketing et a pour missions principales de gérer la performance des équipes commerciales, les aligner sur les objectifs de l’entreprise et mesurer leur rendement. Il est de sa responsabilité de déployer et d’animer les programmes, les outils et les initiatives qui vont répondre aux enjeux des directions tout en facilitant le travail des commerciaux dans leur quotidien. Il doit s’assurer du bon alignement entre les équipes sales & marketing et faire en sorte que la force de vente dispose de tous les éléments nécessaires (contenu, outil, technologie, formation) pour que sa performance soit améliorée. En fonction des organisations, ses missions s’articulent autour des axes suivants :
1) Align sales & marketing teams
The Sales Enablement Manager is the link between the sales and marketing teams. He helps both teams work better together and perform with the tools & processes. He also ensures that all team content is optimized, consistent and easily accessible, which streamlines and improves the entire sales process.
2) Improve the sales force technology stack
The Sales Enablement Manager is looking for tools that improve the salesperson's performance on a daily basis. If he wants to facilitate the collection of customer data in the CRM, he must provide his sales team with a Sales Enablement application. This is the case with Salesapps, which automates the creation of visit reports directly in the CRM.
3) Help transform the marketing content made available to sales reps into sales content
The Sales Enablement Manager ensures that marketing content is designed for sales, organizes it so that sales teams can easily use it and personalize their approach with the buyer in an appointment. He/she is confronted with various issues that hinder the development of the teams' performance: How to increase the use of marketing content by sales teams? How to make content accessible all the time? What content should be created so that the salesperson is more effective in meetings?
4) To contribute to the smooth running of commercial events
Within the framework of the launch of an offer/service, the Sales Enablement manager ensures that attention is paid to certain content. To do this, the Salesapps application has a notification system (highlighting specific content) and a gamification engine to stimulate sales force engagement. It also facilitates feedback from the field and highlights content during company highlights.
5) Analyser la performance de la force de vente
Le Sales Enablement Manager accompagne le développement des revenus de l’entreprise en aidant la direction à mieux piloter son activité. Par exemple, il évalue et mesure l’efficacité des opérations liées à la vente, il suit et analyse la performance des contenus de formation et utilise les KPIs pour identifier des points d’améliorations.
6) Facilitating the integration and training of newcomers sales reps
The Sales Enablement Manager supervises all training programs. He or she is involved in the integration of new sales reps employees, and ensures that they are brought up to speed quickly and efficiently. He or she also supports the marketing team in the creation of training content for the sales force.
A day's work may involve strategic sales reps workshops, planning a new sales training program, creating content for a product launch, discussing a new campaign with marketing, analyzing the latest KPIs to define areas for development, running a training session with sales reps, planning the sales launch or evaluating the use of a new sales support tool such as Salesapps.
Le Sales Enablement Manager : une fonction en devenir en France
Le Sales Enablement est une discipline qui reste en retard en France par manque de connaissance et de ownership sur le sujet. Si la fonction de Sales Enablement Manager est fortement développée aux États-Unis et au Royaume-Uni, elle est encore quasiment inexistante en France. Il y a bien des fonctions proches mais qui ne couvrent par l’intégralité de la discipline: Responsable Outils d’Analyse & d’Aide à la vente, Responsable Méthodes & Outils, Responsable de l’Animation Commerciale ou encore Responsable de la Performance Commerciale.
A delay confirmed by LinkedIn Sales Navigator by searching for functions including the term "Sales Enablement". The result (USA = 8242 | UK = 979 | Canada = 646 | France = 194) confirms how far we have to go before catching up with the US.
It has to be said that Sales Enablement is not necessarily the easiest term to grasp. In fact, it's still called Sales Enablement in France, even though we talk about sales assistance, sales performance improvement and sales force digitalization. Originally, Sales Enablement was essentially born with tools and apps designed for nomadic sales populations equipped with tablets. With the arrival of Windows 10, these solutions have not only been able to be deployed on laptop environments (hybrid or otherwise), but also on fixed PCs. "The level of hardware equipment greatly hindered the development of Sales Enablement in its early days" points out Stéphane Renger, CEO at Salesapps.
Sales Enablement is growing fast, and the role of Sales Enablement Manager will have to develop in France to boost sales performance. Today, the challenges are clearly identified by marketing and sales departments. In fact, sales people have very high expectations of these digital tools: 77% of sales reps believe that sales techniques need to be modernized (Uptoo-Opinionway).
