How do You Measure Sales Enablement?

Many organizations have a hard time defining Sales Enablement.  Which makes it nearly impossible to determine success.  But if you invest in Sales Enablement, you should be able to measure it. 

How is this done? 

Let’s start with the definition of Sales Enablement: 

Right Content > Right Time > Right Person > To Progress a Sales Opportunity 

And to go a level deeper.  Sales Enablement is about increasing the effectiveness of your Sales team.  Not increasing the efficiency.  That’s an important distinction.  Here is why:

• Effectiveness is about making your Sales team BETTER at their jobs.
  • Example: Closing a higher percentage of deals in the pipeline.  ‘Johnny’ historically had a close rate of 25%.  Then, after a Sales Process training, the close rate increased to 33%.  That’s a tangible and measurable impact.  ‘Johnny’ became better at closing deals.
• Efficiency is about making it EASIER for the Sales team to do their jobs.
  • Example: Increasing selling time by removing wasteful tasks.  It took ‘Johnny’ 2 hours to put a quote together.  But Sales Ops implements a new CPQ (Configure Price Quote) solution.  This decreased the time to quote to 20 minutes.  That’s a VAST improvement.  But that doesn’t make Johnny any better as his job.  It gives him more time to sell.  Or essentially, makes part of his job easier. 

Both efficiency and effectiveness are important. You want your Sales people to improve at their job.  You also want to make their jobs easier or increase their selling time.  The key is that you know the difference.  And that you are measuring both efficiency and effectiveness.  The important distinction is that the Sales Enablement leader should be measured on effectiveness. 

Our annual Research Report has an entire section dedicated to Sales Enablement.  The report speaks to the importance of measuring the effectiveness of your Sales initiatives.  You can’t solve the problem if you can’t measure it.  Download the report now.  It’s well worth your time.

What Should You Be Measuring? 

Measuring effectiveness is highly contextual to the organization and its initiatives.  There are two types of measurements – leading and lagging. Each plays a role in measuring the effectiveness.  

Let’s dive into each.

The above examples are just a starting point to measure your effectiveness.  But they give you a feel of the types of metrics you should be tracking.  

Why track both leading and lagging indicators?  The answer is straight forward.  If your leading indicators are pointing to failure, you can then course correct.  Determine what the source of the problem is.  And fix it.  Your lagging indicators will tell you if you have succeeded or failed in your initiative.  It’s that simple.  Did you meet your goal or not?  

No matter the initiatives, defining and measuring indicators is essential.  How else would you know if your initiative is a success or failure?  

The same is true for Sales Enablement.  You first need to define your goal of the initiative.  Then you need to track both leading and lagging indicators.  This will determine success or failure.  

Sales Enablement is a need, not a ‘nice to have’ in today’s selling environments.  Prove its value to the organization by measuring the initiatives.  Ensure you are tracking to success.  Download our annual Research Report to help you do this.