Sales enablement has grown dramatically over the past few years. In 2013 less than 20% of companies dedicated resources specifically for sales enablement. But only a few short years later, close to 60% of companies were focused on this vital business function. This is one of the most remarkable sales enablement statistics, and CSO Insights expects this figure to continue to grow rapidly.
Can you see yourself or your team in any of these sales enablement statistics?
Sales and Marketing Alignment
- Your sales reps know it… do you? About 73% of sales teams say cross-functional collaboration is very important to their overall sales process.
- In their State of Inbound Report for 2018, HubSpot found that teams with Service Level Agreements (SLAs) between Sales and Marketing see a much higher ROI from inbound leads.
- It doesn’t matter how good your marketing content is, if your reps don’t know how to use it. Content Marketing Institute and LinkedIn found 80% of marketers in companies with good sales and marketing alignment show sellers both how and when to use content. Predictive content and coaching can go a long way towards improving sales and marketing alignment.
- The most significant reason that companies fail to achieve sales and marketing alignment? When sales and marketing teams disagree on the primary target market, InsideView found they can easily go off the rails. This is the reason sales content management is so valuable. When reps can easily find the right content on buyer personas at the right time in the sales cycle, their performance goes up.
- High-performing companies are more than twice as effective as all others at measuring the impact of sales & marketing efforts on revenue. If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it, and you won’t improve.
- Quota attainment is correlated with investment in sales enablement. SiriusDecisions found that 28% of companies employ seven or more full-time sales enablement staff. This figure rises to 43% for top-performing organizations.
- Improving sales content management is one thing, but what’s the ultimate benefit of sales and marketing alignment? When sales and marketing teams are aligned, Marketo discovered leads are 67% more likely to become clients. And the right sales enablement plan can make it happen.
Sales Onboarding and Training
- As much as 20% of staff turnover happens within the first 45 days of employment. If you want your reps to thrive, you need to improve your sales onboarding program.
- Every sales leader has a picture of their ideal new hire in mind. But that’s only one piece of the puzzle. Strong sales onboarding programs can get your reps up to speed nearly two months faster than ad hoc plans.
- The average ramp time for Sales Development Representatives is just over 3 months, but their average tenure is only 17 months. On a similar note, Account Executives take an average of 4.5 months to ramp up, but they’ll only be with their current team for 30 months. How long is your sales cycle? What would happen if you could decrease your team’s time to first dollar?
- McKinsey found leading organizations are twice as likely to customize training by sales role. Nearly half of these top-performing companies make significant investments in training. Compare this with only 25% of underachievers.
Sales Efficiency and Productivity
- Over the past few years, the portion of companies achieving their sales enablement goals has barely budged, increasing from 31% to 34%. Real change takes a knowledge of sales enablement best practices, strong leadership, and a commitment to execution.
- And that’s exactly what CSO Insights discovered in a separate report. Organizations that increased their investment in sales manager enablement saw 11% improvement in win rates compared to those who skimped on this critical business function. Sales enablement can help everyone on your team, but only if it gets executive buy-in and a commitment to change.
- Research from InsideSales.com shows that Sales Reps only spend 37% of their time on revenue-generating activities. But what’s even worse, is that reps still spend 10% of their time in spreadsheets.
- In their recent survey of sales operations executives, CSO Insights found something intriguing. Only 25% of respondents agreed that a CRM system improves the productivity of their sales team. Meanwhile, only 47% of study participants reported a CRM adoption rate of greater than 90%. Yet when teams use sales enablement tools to deliver relevant content within the seller’s workflow, they can increase sales productivity and performance.
- On average, 58% of the deals in your pipeline will stall. Why? Reps are unable to add valuable content tailored to each sales stage. What would happen if you could move even 5% of these from Stuck to Closed/Won? What content do you need to make this happen?
- Compared to companies that rely on an ad hoc approach to sales training, organizations that align their coaching with their enablement framework see a 27.9% improvement in their win rate.
- High-performing sales teams are more than twice as likely as underachievers to use guided selling.
Summary
When you consider sales cycle, ramp time, pipeline velocity, and targeted content, it can all feel a bit overwhelming. But remember that great teams unite all of these factors and more into a holistic sales enablement strategy. If you’re already on this path, keep striving and you’ll exceed expectations. If you’re a sales enablement novice, the best time to begin is right now.
