What Revenue Leaders Want From Enablement Teams

In our first-ever virtual summit, WorkRamp LEARN, we heard from industry experts in customer education, revenue enablement, learning and development (L&D), and human resources (HR).

Revenue enablement is increasingly becoming a strategic function, and enablement leaders deserve a seat at the executive table where they can have maximum impact.

During their panel, What Revenue Leaders Really Want From Their Enablement Teams, Nina Bankar, Vice President of Customer Success and Support at Calm, and Matt Green, Chief Revenue Officer at Sales Assembly, shared how they encourage enablement teams to partner with revenue in an organization.

Sales enablement teams who report to revenue leaders have 18 percent higher win rates than those who report to HR. And those who report to the Chief Revenue Officer have significantly higher win rates than those that do not. The partnership between enablement and revenue is essential to an organization’s success. 

How should enablement and revenue partner with each other?

Over half of all organizations have some kind of enablement function, and in the 2021 State of Sales Enablement report, 53 percent of respondents planned to increase their sales enablement budgets. 

Matt and Nina share that enablement and revenue must work together, especially in high-growth companies that need to acquire and retain customers.

“At the end of the day, revenue has a big target to hit week after week, quarter after quarter, year after year,” Matt says. “Enablement is essentially the fuel of the revenue engine. Enablement teams build the programs that the revenue teams run with, so I would consider the revenue team to be enablement’s primary stakeholders.”

Enablement teams build programs to ensure the go-to-market function is successful, directly impacting the revenue team’s goals.  

Read More: 8 steps to Build Your Sales Enablement Strategy

How can enablement teams align with sales and customer retention?

The enablement team can bring consistency to the sales and post-sales process, giving revenue clear performance indicators to measure.

Enablement also works to keep everyone aligned. The enablement team needs to ensure customers are up-to-date with how the product works and how it’s evolving and create strategies for approaching renewal and expansion conversations. 

“I think it’s really important for the enablement team to align to the sales and post-sales teams’ goals and then figure out what programs, processes, and training are needed to ensure that they’re successful and then roll them out to the masses.”

 

-Nina Bankar

Read More: Revenue Enablement: Balancing Strategy and Execution to Drive Results

What are some examples of revenue leaders partnering with enablement?

Matt and Nina have worked on projects where revenue and enablement worked together closely.

Matt discussed building competency models for learners in cooperation with sales enablement teams. Nina shared that she has run expansion campaigns for several companies and that enablement teams were essential in helping her understand where there was room to drive more value and expand the customer base. She worked with enablement to determine the tools and assets the go-to-market team needed and then brought in sales reps to see it through.

In both cases, revenue enablement teams brought critical information to the conversation, showing they deserve a seat at the table. 

Read More: Data-Driven Sales Enablement: Track, Measure, Improve

How does enablement influence employee well-being?

Nina shares that, working at Calm, employee well-being is very close to her heart. 

“I think an enablement function is in the best position to have their ears to the ground and understand employee sentiment and how people are feeling with how they are being kept up to speed on product and market developments, and having the knowledge and information they need to be successful in their roles,” she says. “The enablement function can help executives and leadership within a company understand how people are feeling and cater enablement materials to those feelings.”

In addition, Matt noted that it’s essential to understand enablement’s job.

“People tend to think that the job of an enablement team is to create and facilitate content, and that’s not their job,” he says. “The enablement team’s job is to facilitate behavioral change. And the only way that learners will be able to change their behavior is if they feel as though they’re operating in an environment that’s safe and conducive to that type of change. So it’s beholden on enablement leaders to focus on creating that safe environment where learners can adapt and even change their direction in many cases.”

When revenue and enablement teams work together, it can positively impact your bottom line and employee well-being.

Watch on-demand replays from WorkRamp LEARN for more actionable tips and expert insights.