Sales teams need a cohesive strategy that ensures the right tools and training are at their disposal.

Consistency is key to achieving regular sales, steady revenue growth, and dependable sales team cohesion. A good sales enablement strategy provides this consistency. 

Sales enablement helps to unify your sales teams on messaging, technique, technology, and goals. 

In this article, we’ll talk about what sales enablement is and how you can develop a unified approach to sales enablement that will lead your sales team to success.

What is sales enablement?

Sales enablement enables your sales reps to work more effectively. It’s a strategy that ensures your sales teams have the right tools, training, resources, and guidance from the moment they’re onboarded.

A sales team is made up of individuals with different skill levels, methods, and judgment. So how do you provide an environment where all of these individuals are working toward a common goal? 

You can give them sales enablement tools and business communication tools and send them on their way, but that approach can lead to disparity and confusion.

However, true sales enablement benefits every part of your business, from the obvious to the less-so-obvious. Sales teams are supported and provided for, and other departments work to improve sales. 

From marketing to account reconciliation (If you need to brush up on the specifics of account reconciliation, check out the “What is account reconciliation?” guide), everyone becomes a stakeholder.

A unified approach to sales enablement creates a consistent, repeatable strategy for onboarding, training, and equipping sales teams to be the best they can be. 

It’s your approach to providing sales teams with an environment they can thrive in.

The benefits of sales enablement

Sales enablement supports your businesses in a few different ways.

Improving sales teams’ productivity 

The major benefit of sales enablement is the ability to create a repeatable, scalable, adaptable strategy to support sales reps.

This includes:

  • Onboarding more efficiently to decrease seller ramp time
  • Getting the right tools into the right hands immediately
  • Ongoing training and development in tools and techniques 
  • Ongoing guidance and support from sales enablement specialists
  • The space to adapt strategies to stay ahead in the market

All of this helps sales reps spend less time looking for answers and more time generating sales.

You’re giving them every tool they need before they even need it, ensuring they have the knowledge and confidence to effectively interact with customers.

Aligning go-to-market teams

As any business leader knows, sales go beyond just sales departments. Sales enablement creates better cooperation between leadership, sales, marketing, product, and support teams through aligning goals and sharing data.

Increasing revenue

Sales enablement is sometimes referred to as revenue enablement—and for good reason. 

According to Baseforge’s 2024-2025 Sales Enablement report, the majority of sales leaders surveyed agreed that sales enablement increased sales performance.

Image sourced from baseforge.co

It makes sense. An increase in productivity, removing friction from sales processes, and better interdepartmental alignment can help you hit revenue targets.

How to create a unified approach to sales enablement

Here are the steps to creating your sales enablement strategy:

Emphasize cross-departmental cohesion

While sales enablement is about giving your sales teams the right support, it also helps to align other business departments and eliminate silos between revenue teams.

  • Leadership: Gaining both business and sales leaders’ buy-in is vital to getting the resources to fuel your sales enablement strategy.
  • Marketing teams: Sales teams use content to pitch, and marketing teams create that content. Better collaboration and communication means marketing means teams sharing results, allowing marketing teams to focus on creating the most effective content and sales teams to focus on selling. 
  • Product teams: Product teams research and develop products so that they know why products work and why customers need them. This knowledge can help sales teams refine their sales pitches.
  • IT: Your IT department is responsible for researching, procuring, and maintaining your business’ tech stack. This technology supports sales reps, and better cross-departmental cohesion gives them more power to communicate the tools and features they need. In turn, the IT department knows how to support sales teams more effectively. 
  • Customer support and success: Support teams deal with customers after a sale, so communicating positive and negative feedback to sales teams can help them improve sales strategies.
  • Sales enablement teams: A dedicated team or even just a sales enablement manager will help drive your strategy.

Cohesion is important, as things like stakeholder buy-in and unified goals will only streamline your sales process.

Create data-driven goals and metrics to measure them

Defining goals gets everyone moving in a common direction. Creating metrics to measure those goals gives your teams the data necessary to monitor their successes and failures.

According to 2024 research by the Sales Enablement Collective, the number one problem business leaders have is measuring the impact of sales enablement.

    Image sourced from salesenablementcollective.com

Here are some tips and examples to help you get started:

Sales metrics

Sales metrics that you can analyze include:

  • Revenue targets
  • Revenue growth
  • Average deal size
  • The length of your sales cycle
  • Customer lifetime value
  • Number of repeat customers
  • Customer churn
  • Upselling and cross-selling success

If your goal is to improve customer retention, you could measure repeat sales, upselling and cross-selling numbers, churn, and lifetime value. 

Then if you’re struggling in this area, you can create sales rep training materials that have an emphasis on things like the buyer journey, buyer personas, and buyer interaction.

Performance metrics

Performance metrics that you can analyze include:

  • Sales rep ramp time
  • Employee retention/churn
  • Employee satisfaction

These metrics show how your sales enablement strategy directly reflects employee performance. So, for example, if your ramp time is still above average, you can focus your sales enablement efforts on streamlining employee onboarding.

Tech metrics

Tech metrics that you can analyze include: 

  • Usage
  • Issues
  • Time taken to complete tasks
  • Satisfaction

A good sales tech stack is integral to supporting your sales reps, so avoidance of certain sales software or an abundance of issues with a feature can indicate a problem. You can then focus on better training in software usage or look for a more streamlined tech stack.

Metrics prove the worth of your sales enablement efforts to stakeholders. They’re actionable numbers by which to measure your success and spot areas in need of improvement. 

Use the right tools

Getting the right sales enablement tools and training sales reps on how to use them is an important part of your strategy.

Too many tools, however, are a detriment. Luckily, software providers understand this, and many have developed programs that combine important enablement features.

Look for:

  • Revenue enablement software: a sales enablement platform that combines sales, customer relationship management, revenue tracking, and even AI-powered features
  • Collaborative platforms: a centralized platform that allows team communication, sharing, document editing, visual aids, design features, etc.
  • Training platforms: video meetings, courses, webinars, communication, note-taking, and a content management system that stores a searchable repository of sales knowledge
  • Coaching tools: includes live coaching from managers as well as real-time AI coaching for on-the-go customer interactions
  • Integrations: platforms that integrate with the software you already use 

Provide ongoing support

Sales enablement is an ongoing process. Your sales reps require continuous support, guidance, training, and tools to become consistent sales powerhouses. 

This can take the form of: 

  • Regular training seminars 
  • One-to-one support from mentors 
  • Rigorous education about new technological tools 
  • Business resource groups that allow sales reps to build a supportive community
  • A central repository of knowledge that’s both searchable and easy to access

There are also modern solutions for in-depth sales rep support. Many sales enablement platforms include real-time coaching powered by AI. Language learning models can monitor sales calls and offer real-time advice about what to say next. 

They can monitor tone and language as well as summarize key parts of the conversation.

Achieving growth through sales enablement

Sales enablement is about creating a repeatable, scalable, and adaptable strategy that enables sales reps to succeed. 

To sum up, sales enablement requires:

  • All stakeholders to be on board and working toward a common goal
  • The resources to provide your sales teams with the right tools, support, and training right from onboarding
  • A thorough, standardized onboarding process for new sales reps
  • A mix of technological and personal resources that support sales reps
  • A set of actionable metrics to monitor the progress of your sales enablement strategy
  • Ongoing training and development in technology and techniques
  • Ongoing support for sales staff

From onboarding onward, sales enablement creates the perfect environment for your sales teams to thrive. 

A mix of technological, developmental, and personal support arms your sales reps with confidence and information. Knowing these support structures are in place can help sales teams become more productive, empowered, and effective.

FAQs about sales enablement

What are the goals of sales enablement?

Sales enablement goals include improving sales productivity, increasing revenue growth, and aligning go-to-market teams. 

What is a sales enablement specialist?

A sales enablement specialist or sales enablement team can help you develop your sales enablement strategy. They’re experts in aligning departments, developing goals, managing projects, measuring metrics, and understanding what sales teams need to thrive.

What is the difference between sales enablement and marketing?

Sales enablement focuses on the tools and support sales reps need to make more sales. Marketing teams provide some of those tools, such as the content sales reps use to connect with customers. The two are aligned, but they require different areas of expertise.  

Originally published Jun 05, 2025