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Recently, I was chatting with a colleague in sales, who said, “when I first started in sales, we didn’t have sales enablement.” It’s true, sales enablement – a technique for increasing sales and driving more revenue – is something that more and more technology companies have adopted (and started calling by name) in the last five to 10 years. Not coincidentally, the term “sales enablement” rose to greater prominence as an increasing number of vendors started classifying themselves as sales enablement providers. The popularity growth in recent years is fairly obvious with a quick glance at Google trends for the phrase “sales enablement.”
For most B2B technology companies today, sales enablement is a key component of their success. Research shows that companies with sales enablement see 15% higher win rates than those without.
Here’s why you shouldn’t ignore sales enablement, and the impact of today’s newest AI sales enablement tools.
Sales enablement training literally means all those things that sales employees need so that they can make sales, and involves supplying your sales team with the resources they need to be effective.
That means sales coaching sessions, sales decks with details about your solution, customer-facing content for sellers to share with leads at every stage, tools to keep track of interactions with prospects, etc.
Sales enablement is typically a joint effort of both the marketing and sales departments. Sometimes it rests under marketing, sometimes under sales, and sometimes enterprises have a dedicated sales enablement department.
Sales enablement is all about helping sales reps to complete sales more efficiently. The ultimate goal for every sales enablement strategy is to empower sellers to successfully communicate your solution to your target audience, in a way that drives revenue. This requires meeting a number of smaller goals along the way, mainly that sellers fully master the value proposition for the solution they’re selling, and understand the needs, pain points, and objections of your target audience.
There’s only a finite number of natural sellers in this world. If you rely on them only to drive your sales, at some point you’ll end up without enough sales employees to start and then close deals.
When you put an effective sales enablement strategy in place, you’ll improve sales processes, enhance productivity for sales teams, and empower sellers to overcome objections and awkwardness to smash their quotas.
Implementing an effective sales enablement brings a number of advantages. You’ll be able to:
Sales enablement training and resources help all your sales teams to succeed in nurturing leads and making sales, so that you can scale up your enterprise without a worry.
Sales enablement teams help to produce customer-facing content that moves leads through the funnel, instead of isolated pieces. They make sure your content and sales representatives all communicate the same, consistent company story, brand image and value proposition. With sales enablement, you can feel confident that every sales employee shares the same messaging, even new hires, and even when your messaging changes.
Not everyone who shows some interest in your solution is going to end up converting. You want sales employees to invest their time and energy into the ones with the highest chances of success, and not to waste time on prospects with little chance of a sale. Sales enablement can use lead scoring to distinguish the most promising leads, so your sales teams can close more deals in the same timeframe.
Pro tip! Use lead scoring to prioritize the leads that are most likely to convert, so that sales teams can close more deals, more quickly.
Pro tip!
Sooner or later, every company needs to change their sales pitch. You might have added new features or a new product or service line, revamped your brand messaging and value proposition, or expanded into new markets. Sales enablement helps roll out the new story and approach to all your sales employees, and gives you a way to verify that they’ve mastered it.
Sales enablement teams gather sales data and use sales analytics to spot blockages in the sales funnel and identify what exactly isn’t working in the customer purchase journey. For example, analytics might reveal that leads are mostly falling away after reaching the demo stage. Sales enablement teams can then investigate more deeply to find out why this is happening and remove the obstacle.
Pro tip! Use your sales enablement software to identify points of friction in the customer journey and find out why deals are falling through.
Use your sales enablement software to identify points of friction in the customer journey and find out why deals are falling through.
It’s important to define the differences between sales enablement on the one hand, and sales training and coaching on the other. They both share the same goal of enabling sales reps to complete sales more effectively and ultimately increasing the number of closed deals. But they take different approaches to this goal.
Sales enablement training focuses on providing the sales team with the tools, content, and resources they need to effectively engage with prospects and customers. This can include lead scores, customer insights, data analytics, and sales collateral.
Meanwhile, sales training and coaching concentrates on helping sellers develop the skills they need to communicate clearly with leads and forge a relationship that leads to closed deals. Sales enablement and sales training and coaching complement each other to form a comprehensive sales strategy.
Pro tip! Implement both sales enablement and sales training and coaching to build a comprehensive sales strategy that drives more revenue. .
Implement both sales enablement and sales training and coaching to build a comprehensive sales strategy that drives more revenue. .
When you introduce a sales enablement program to your organization, it’s best to approach it in a structured manner. You’ll need to:
When you set up a sales enablement strategy, it’s important to build in ways to track its success so that you can see what’s working well and improve the areas that are less effective. The main way to do this is through identifying key performance indicators (KPIs) like conversion rates, sales cycle length, quota attainment, and content usage. This allows you to see which aspects need to be refined and verify that your sales enablement strategy meets the changing needs of your sales team, your target audience, and the market.
Change is always difficult, so you are likely to encounter a number of challenges when you introduce sales enablement for your organization. But if you anticipate them in advance, you’ll be able to successfully overcome them.
One common issue is finding the right sales enablement tools and technologies, along with ensuring that your sales team uses them consistently and effectively. You’ll also need to make sure that your enablement content is up-to-date and relevant, which requires ongoing effort and coordination. Finally, it’s crucial to align your sales and marketing teams so that they work together, sharing goals, data, and insights.
AI is enhancing sales enablement in a number of ways. The simplest and best-known is automation, with new AI tools automating routine tasks like discovery email sequences, sending follow-up emails, and scheduling for sales calls and demos. This helps sales employees to use their time more effectively, and removes friction from the customer experience.
AI and machine learning (ML) also boost analytics, delivering better and deeper insights into the target market and improving segmentation. ML can help with the content creation process, too, suggesting topics that leads would find interesting and predicting upcoming market trends.
The newest application of AI for sales improves sales enablement training and coaching for sales employees. An AI-powered sales training software like Second Nature provides salespeople with a realistic simulation for them to practice their sales conversations, delivers consistent feedback, and it never loses patience or runs out of time.
Second Nature harnesses artificial intelligence (AI) to remove friction from sales enablement. It offers AI avatars for sales reps to practice sales conversations whenever they like with knowledgeable partners, and receive timely, targeted feedback that improves their transactional selling skills.
The user-friendly editor makes it easy to generate new sales content, while the engaging interface enables you to roll out new messaging across your entire sales team even when they work remotely. With interactive training experiences and reliable evaluations, you can verify that every seller has mastered your value proposition and understood the key pain points for your target audience.
Sales enablement plays a key role in driving sales, revenue, and profitability for enterprises in every vertical. It can help you to scale your sales team, keep your messaging consistent and relevant, raise the percentage of successful deals, and remove pipeline blockages.
And by adopting AI-driven sales enablement tools, you will see even more dramatic results. It’s time to recognize that AI-powered sales enablement is a must-have, not a luxury.
Are you a sales enablement professional? We’d love to chat with you, and feature your “day in the life” in our blog! Get in touch today!
What role does technology play in sales enablement?
Technology plays a pivotal role in sales enablement by automating routine tasks, keeping sales content organized, and delivering vital data and insights in real time. Tools like sales enablement platforms, CRM systems, and analytics ensure that salespeople have the resources they need at their fingertips to facilitate better sales outcomes.
What is sales enablement software?
Sales enablement software is a suite of digital tools that powers effective sales enablement. It centralizes sales content, automates administrative tasks, and integrates with CRM systems to provide real-time insights and performance metrics. The software helps sales teams to access and utilize relevant resources, track customer interactions, and personalize their approach to meet buyer needs, ultimately driving productivity and improving sales outcomes.
How is AI enhancing sales enablement?
Artificial intelligence (AI) is enhancing sales enablement in a number of ways. It collects and crunches vast amounts of data to deliver accurate insights into customer expectations, and pushes relevant information to the right sales rep at the right time. With AI, it’s easy to personalize sales content and provide leads with the resources they need to share with buyers. AI can also automate routine tasks like data entry and scheduling, so that sales reps can focus on other activities and vital data is always organized and up to date.
How can companies get started with AI-driven sales enablement?
The best way to get started with AI-driven sales enablement is to assess key areas in your sales process that can benefit from AI, such as lead scoring, customer segmentation, and sales forecasting. Then you can select easy to use AI-powered tools and platforms that integrate well with your existing CRM and sales enablement systems. Finally, train sales teams to use your new AI tools and set up a feedback loop to monitor and optimize their performance.
How can sales enablement make selling more efficient?
Sales enablement makes selling more efficient by providing sales teams with streamlined access to the right resources, tools, and information at each stage of the sales process. It improves productivity for sellers by giving them resources to share with buyers, and increases closed deals by directing sales reps to the leads who are most likely to convert.
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