Sales enrollment, a separate system in the company.

You are already doing sales enrollment!

Let's say you meet 10 salespeople, each representing a company operating in this niche that is sales enrollment. You ask them to give you a brief overview of what they do and why they do it. After this little dozen appointments, you can be sure to have 10 different explanations at hand, all valid. Unfortunately, none of them will give you insight into what sales enrollment really is.

Sales enancement describes all the mechanisms that a company can activate to improve the performance of its sales organization. As soon as a sales director, manager or sales representative focuses on a series of initiatives aimed at increasing the income for which they are responsible, they practice sales enancement, consciously or unconsciously.

Salespeople, under pressure to achieve goals, are constantly motivated by the desire to do better. Sales enancement is therefore a dynamic that arises naturally within the company. It is an organic process that takes place at various levels within the business structure. For example, even sales departments that assign territories and objectives to their representatives, giving them complete freedom as to the choice of execution, are seeing enabling processes emerge within them. They then exist informally, at the level of the individual, who is constantly looking for ways to improve his own performances or those of his teams.

It is already the first good news! Without knowing it, sales enrollment has already taken shape in your organization. The objective of a formalized strategy lies in the identification, implementation and dissemination of these initiatives at the level of the commercial department.

A popular method for defining a sales enancement strategy is to list the positive impacts: aligning marketing and sales, identifying “best practices”, developing a sales process in line with the customer buying journey, etc.

However, these various consequences are more a matter of commercial activation than of enablers. The latter acts prior to the activation process. Practicing sales enabling means offering fertile ground so that each innovation aimed at commercial excellence can take root permanently in the operating methods of a sales force.

Our definition of sales enrollment

After taking care to define what sales enrollment is, regardless of any IT considerations, we propose a definition based on three points.

First, we can say that a company practices sales enability when there are mechanisms to study, analyze and learn from customer interactions.

Then, the company integrates sales enployment as an integral component of its strategy when each innovation aimed at commercial excellence is, on the one hand, the corollary of observations from the field, and on the other hand, subject to a methodical evaluation based on the use of data.

Last but not least, sales enainment is a system based on formal mechanisms for collaboration between various interdependent functions. As explained, each company sees the birth of enrollment processes within it. However, without the existence of a formalized system of collaboration, and a framework presenting the responsibilities of each key actor, none of these projects allows the emergence of coherent dynamics, vectors of excellence in the long term.

The 3 essential fields of sales enrollment

We have deliberately chosen to exclude the 3 constituent fields of sales enalization in order to emphasize in advance the concept of system, which is necessary to maintain the coherence of your strategy over the long term.

The sales enability system influences 3 blocks, or subsystems. A sales preparation block (Sales Readiness System), a training block (Training system) and a mentoring or coaching block (Management system).

Within the sales preparation system, we find all the knowledge, content, methods and processes that exist to help salespeople maximize the value they share with customers. This block is therefore closely linked to commercial training, which should promote the adoption of the tools mentioned above at the sales force level. Finally, the coaching system must allow managers to identify the shortcomings and strengths of each member of their teams, in order to personalize the assistance they provide and to balance the performance of each person in an upward way.

In summary, the purpose of a sales enrollment system is:

• improving the level of readiness for sale, i.e.:
• increasing knowledge of the target market and personas
• refining the sales process and methods, according to the buying process and the decision-making criteria of prospects
• the improvement of content and sales support tools
• The construction of a training block, allowing:
• the ownership of the objects included in the system of preparation for sale
• their use in the field in a consultative selling context
• The personalization of managerial support, by:
• identifying the shortcomings of each salesperson
• disseminating the practices of top-performers

So, when you want to implement software to give shape to your sales enrollment system, ask yourself these few questions.

• ‍ “To what extent will this technology improve the various elements of our sales preparation system?”
• “Will it encourage the appropriation of these elements?”
• “Will it contribute to integrating each new commercial innovation (knowledge, content, content, processes, methods) into the operating methods of our sales force?”
• “Will it allow managers to gain insight into the qualities and faults of the salespeople whose activities they supervise?”

The main reasons behind the failure of sales enrollment strategies

This week, we're offering you an overview of the reasons why sales enrollment strategies fail. The following weeks will be dedicated to the prerequisites and then to the various elements guaranteeing the success of any enablemen initiative.

1. The absence of a control tower

If we insisted on the concept of system, it's because sales enainment is not limited to IT projects. Indeed, the technology used is not the keystone of an enabler project, but a tool at the service of it. Sales enrollment is above all a continuous process of thinking, making it possible to identify and respond to needs in the field, and requiring the contribution of various professions. For such a system to exist within the company, we recommend that one person act as a control tower, in order to oversee and coordinate the efforts of each stakeholder. Generally, when an enrollment strategy is successful, the employee who has taken on this control tower role gains momentum. It is then a question of finding another champion. This handover is crucial for your enrollment system to survive.

2. The lack of collaboration between the various functions of the company

According to the 2019 CSO Insight Sales EnABLEMENT Report, 76% of professionals in roles closely linked to sales enabilty consider that their strategy is not the subject of a sufficiently structured collaboration.

Whether intra or interdepartmental, it is informal. The various functions know what is expected of them, without a documented collaboration model. In general, the efforts invested in sales enrollment produce few tangible results.

To integrate sales enrollment as an integral component of a business strategy, it is essential to build precise specifications, describing, on the one hand, the key players in the company's enability system, and on the other hand, the scope of each person's responsibilities.

3. years of alignment of sales enrollment strategy with sales strategy

A sales enalization project designed in isolation, which seeks performance only for performance, without integrating management objectives is doomed to failure. For such an approach to continue within the company, it must be aligned with its overall strategy.

If over a given period of time, management considers increasing the average basket of its customer base as a top priority, sales enancement projects should keep increasing the upsell as the main currency. In the absence of such convergence, management is gradually withdrawing its support for enrollment projects and champions.

4. Strategies “in response”

Most companies that fail to implement enrollment projects that are truly vectors of commercial excellence generally act in response to changes in the environment in which they operate.

Decisions taken in response very rarely have a measurable impact on the increase in a company's performance. At most, they allow you to survive and adapt to market trends. In conclusion, don't wait for activity to stagnate or fall to focus on enrollment. It is much more difficult to acquire competitive advantages when the business is at an all-time high.