Report underwritten by Mindtickle shows among other key findings that 90% of sales leaders believe improving their sales enablement program will help achieve revenue goals
Mindtickle, the leader in sales readiness technology, announced the availability of its most recent benchmark report, “The New Sales Enablement Standard: How Today’s Sales Leaders Grow Revenue With a Sales Readiness Approach.” A collaboration with Heinz Marketing, the report provides a snapshot of the key issues revenue and sales leaders face in their sales enablement and training programs to navigate today’s fast-changing business environment. The report highlights the critical importance of sales readiness strategies for revenue leaders, as well as the benefits of prioritizing seller productivity and efficiency, effective sales training and coaching, and well-defined training KPIs.
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Revenue leaders that embrace sales readiness in their organizations see better results, the report found. According to the results, eight out of 10 companies that prioritize individual seller productivity and efficiency hit more than 75% of their sales quota. And 78% of sales teams with an effective sales training program hit 100% of their quota.
“The results from this report are a testament that revenue leaders that take ownership of sales readiness programs in their organization achieve transformative results,” says Chris Lynch, chief marketing officer at Mindtickle. “They realize that getting the majority of their organization to perform is not a pipedream, and it starts with identifying the right behaviors in real-world selling situations, and instilling them across the organization.”
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“The New Sales Enablement Standard: How Today’s Sales Leaders Grow Revenue With a Sales Readiness Approach” uncovered five additional key insights to help sales and revenue leaders identify why their traditional approach to sales training is holding back their teams from achieving success.
- Sales teams with highly defined key performance metrics have higher success reaching sales quotas. The so-called “Pareto principle of sales” — in that 80% of the revenue is generated by 20% of the sales team — is simply not sustainable. To overcome this constraint and drive revenue growth across the team, sales leaders must establish an ideal rep profile (IRP), quantify their training with KPIs and tie them to real-world selling to establish a baseline of performance and continuously develop their reps. With these, teams can customize their sales enablement tactics to each seller to help them reach their individual goals. The report found that nearly 9 out of 10 teams that define KPIs for their sales training programs hit at least 75% of their quota.
- Companies with dedicated sales enablement programs are more likely to meet their sales quotas. It’s typical for sales or marketing to manage the sales enablement strategy. Unfortunately, our research shows that this isolated approach results in only 14.7% of sales teams hitting their sales goals, likely because the enablement program lacks additional engagement and guidance from partner functions. Our research found that, of the teams that hit 100% of their sales goals, 32% have a dedicated sales enablement program that usually includes cross-functional collaboration.
- Prioritizing continuous improvement and customized training creates continuous sales excellence to achieving revenue goals. The majority of companies have an onboarding program to ramp up new hires and prepare them to perform in their first few months. However, much of the information provided in the onboarding program is forgotten mere weeks or even days after its completion. In fact, without spaced reinforcement, the majority of sales training knowledge and skills are forgotten within the first three months. Sales organizations that focus on continuous excellence — regularly training employees on a more consistent basis to ensure knowledge retainment — achieve greater success. In fact, of those respondents in the survey that hit 75% of their quota, 90% participate in monthly sales training.
- Coaching is the missing puzzle piece to building sustainable seller optimization and revenue attaining teams. Sales coaching is a vital part of any enablement program. It includes sales management defining the knowledge, skills and capabilities sellers need to achieve success. Coaching also includes management’s ability to track and analyze seller performance over time. The majority of respondents that have effective coaching built into their program are realizing significant results. In fact, 80% of teams surveyed that practice effective coaching hit greater than 75% of their sales quotas.
- Practice is important but teams struggle to optimize resources to improve their programs. Building seller knowledge requires consistent ways to practice, and that means organizations need the right tools and resources to support their programs. Those that invest in those resources see effective results. 57% of respondents in our report that have consistent and repeatable practice opportunities see their sellers achieving 75%+ of their sales goals.
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