What is Revenue Enablement?

Why revenue enablement - not sales enablement?

Traditional sales enablement strategies no longer cut it in today’s evolving B2B landscape. For example, sales enablement often focuses solely on arming sales teams with tools and resources without considering the broader revenue generation ecosystem. Imagine a conductor only enabling the flutists in their orchestra or coaches only coaching one position on their team. Revenue enablement takes a more holistic approach, integrating various components to drive revenue growth and empower go-to-market teams in a rapidly changing business landscape.

Components include:

• Content management
• Revenue intelligence
• Conversation intelligence
• Value selling
• Talent optimization

“The term 'sales enablement' is no longer an effective description of how most B2B organizations support their customer-facing roles with the competence, confidence, and content required to deliver a seamless customer journey.” – Peter Ostrow, Jennifer Bullock, & Peter Zines in the Forrester report “The Future Of Sales Enablement Is Revenue Enablement.”

Several key factors have facilitated the need to shift from sales enablement to revenue enablement, including:

• Evolving Buyer Behavior: How customers research and make purchasing decisions has changed significantly. Buyers are coming to deal cycles armed with more information than ever and expect consistent, personalized, value-driven interactions. Buyers are already up to 70% done with their buying research before interacting with sellers. Revenue enablement ensures suppliers make the most of every interaction with a buyer, even in interactions without sellers. It equips every go-to-market (GTM) role with the tools and insights they need to engage effectively with modern buyers at every stage of the buying journey, understand their needs, and deliver tailored engagements and solutions.
• Data-Driven Decision Making: Fifty-five percent of B2B buying interactions are self-guided in digital channels, like LinkedIn, peer review sites, and supplier websites . As buyers increasingly interact digitally with suppliers, they’re leaving treasure troves of data behind. That data was previously unavailable to GTM teams and provides valuable insights into customer preferences, market trends, and sales performance. Revenue intelligence is crucial to revenue enablement. The ability to capture, analyze, and interpret this data is key to engaging buyers effectively. It helps GTM teams understand how and when to engage specific buyers, what content will work best, and ultimately how to scale those successful behaviors across the organization.
• Complex Sales Cycles & The Digitization of Engagements: Sales processes have become increasingly complex and, as a result, have increased in duration. Seventy-five percent of B2B buyers indicated buying cycles have lengthened over the past 24 months. More stakeholders are involved - often from new departments, presenting new challenges for GTM teams. Conversation intelligence (CI) feeding into revenue intelligence and personalized deal rooms help overcome these challenges. On average, humans can only retain 25% of a conversation, but CI tools will capture 100% of every conversation - AND automatically identify follow-ups after the meeting. When insights from CI feed into revenue intelligence, the insights become richer, and everyone benefits. Deal rooms provide a personalized space for buyers to interact with sellers and engage with customized content to address each stakeholder’s specific challenges. Gartner estimates that by 2026, 30% of B2B sales cycles will be primarily run through a DSR, which will be used to manage the customer life cycle.
• Customer value in every interaction: As CFOs continue to take more prominent roles in deal cycles, value selling is becoming increasingly critical. Effective value selling involves understanding your customer’s needs and mapping your solution to their value drivers. Typically this is done with quantifiable metrics representing projected value (ROI). To succeed with value selling, you must take a consultative approach — listen actively, ask questions, and tie value drivers to your solution. In a recent survey by Dynata, 78% of buyers indicated they’re more likely to purchase if the sales process is consultative. Once you understand your buyer’s needs and how they measure value, you can demonstrate how your solution can close gaps and drive increased organizational ROI, building trust with stakeholders and deepening relationships.
• The Need To Do Less With More: Due to continuing economic headwinds and volatility, CEOs and investors have drastically shifted from a mindset of growth at all costs to one of sustainable growth. With that talent optimization has become crucial to revenue enablement. At any organization, your people are your best and more important asset. Coaching and upskilling your GTM team to ensure they can meet new buyer demands is vital, but talent optimization doesn’t stop there. The right people in the wrong roles will cost your organization revenue, while the right people in the right roles can help to grow revenue exponentially. In B2B, sales promotions to manager and leadership are usually based on sales performance. However, our research found that of B2B sellers who achieve over 125% of their quotas, only between 39%-54% have the characteristics to be successful managers. Identifying the personality traits that can maximize each employee’s potential is imperative to enable them to reach their full potential.

What is “Revenue Enablement”

What is the definition of revenue enablement?

Revenue enablement is a comprehensive strategy to empower entire revenue teams - not just sales to drive growth. It involves organizing and distributing relevant content, leveraging data and analytics to gain actionable insights, analyzing sales conversations, adopting value-based selling techniques, and developing the skills and capabilities necessary for modern revenue professionals.

How did we get to revenue enablement?

Before “revenue enablement,” there was “sales enablement,” which focused on providing sales teams with tools, training, and content to enhance sellers’ effectiveness. However, as the B2B landscape has evolved and smooth, consistent buying journeys across multiple channels have become table stakes, traditional sales enablement is no longer enough. Today, revenue enablement focuses on the entire go-to-market team, including sales, marketing, and post-sales teams, to create a seamless customer experience throughout the revenue generation process. It ensures all these functions are aligned, leveraging the same data and analytics to drive decision-making, optimize strategies, and tailor customer interactions. The evolution of revenue enablement reflects the growing importance of collaboration, data-driven insights, customer-centricity, and sustainable growth in achieving revenue goals. 

4 Benefits of Revenue Enablement

How can revenue enablement increase revenue growth?

Revenue enablement drives growth by aligning sales, marketing, and customer success efforts to shared goals and outcomes. That alignment ensures a smooth and effective buyer journey improving overall revenue performance. It provides every member of the revenue team with the necessary insights, tools, and training to engage buyers effectively and close more deals. According to Sirius Decisions, organizations that focus on alignment earn up to 19% faster revenue growth and up to 15% higher profitability. By aligning marketing initiatives with sales objectives, revenue enablement ensures that targeted campaigns align with buyer challenges, generating high-quality opportunities and improved conversion rates. Ongoing training and development programs coupled with insights to identify the right personality traits for every position empower every member of the revenue team to operate at their full potential in the right role to drive growth. Revenue intelligence helps identify growth opportunities, optimize sales processes, and make data-driven decisions by leveraging real-time, accurate data and analytics. 

How can Revenue Enablement Improve sales productivity and effectiveness? 

Revenue enablement increases revenue teams' productivity and effectiveness by identifying successful behaviors and content. True revenue enablement provides revenue teams with the necessary insights, tools, and training to prioritize and engage the right buyers at the right time in the right channels. It helps map solution capabilities to buyer success drivers to accurately predict the value each buyer will see from the solution. It ensures members of the revenue team are operating in roles best suited to their skills and personalities. Revenue enablement also leverages data and analytics to provide insights into customer behavior. Revenue teams use this information to personalize their messaging and prioritize high-value opportunities. Revenue enablement equips go-to-market teams with relevant content, collateral, and training to speed up deal cycles and build long-lasting, trusting customer relationships. By implementing technology and automation platforms, revenue enablement streamlines sales processes, freeing up time for reps to focus on building relationships and driving revenue. 

How does Revenue Enablement improve alignment and collaboration?

Returning to the analogies about orchestras and sports teams, traditional sales enablement only focuses on one function of the revenue team. It’s a disjointed strategy that creates friction internally and externally throughout the deal cycle. Revenue enablement facilitates effective communication, and collaboration between all revenue functions via shared goals and KPIs. This leads to a more cohesive and coordinated approach where all marketing, sales, and post-sales teams are on the same page regarding target customers, messaging, and strategies. Revenue intelligence provides each function with the same accurate data - from a shared source of truth - including market trends, customer feedback, metrics on which content and actions work best at specific times, and competitive intelligence, all of which can be utilized to refine marketing campaigns and sales strategies. Revenue enablement also promotes the development of shared resources, such as content, and sales playbooks, which align messaging and positioning across all teams. With data and analytics from conversation and revenue intelligence, enablement provides visibility into the impact of marketing efforts on sales outcomes, enabling both teams to assess and pivot accordingly. 

“Evolving B2B buyer preferences and selling processes are driving companies to increase alignment between customer-facing functions. Disjointed messaging and operations across sales, marketing, service and other customer-facing roles create barriers instead of growth. Plus, the increasing number of customer touchpoints means different functions are working against different KPIs, which causes chaos and poor performance.” – Jordan Turner, in Gartner Report “What Shifting to Revenue Enablement Can Do for Your Organization”

How does Revenue Enablement enhance the customer journey?

As a result of the increased alignment between revenue functions that revenue enablement brings, the customer journey becomes increasingly connected, smooth, and consistent across every touchpoint - with or without a seller. With easily accessible content sellers are less likely to use outdated content or create their own non-approved content. Insights from sellerless engagements, effective training and coaching, and top-tier tools enable revenue teams to deliver a more personalized and engaging buying journey. By leveraging revenue intelligence for valuable insights, revenue enablement helps identify opportunities to optimize customer interactions, anticipate buyer needs, and proactively provide solutions. Additionally, revenue enablement emphasizes using technology and automation to streamline processes, reduce friction, and enhance the buyer experience. 

How do you implement a Revenue Enablement system?

How do you get started with a revenue enablement strategy?

So, where do you start when you want to shift from sales enablement to revenue enablement or simply implement a revenue enablement strategy? You must:

• Define key objectives and goals. Start by clearly defining your revenue enablement objectives and goals. These should align with your overall business objectives and be consistent across marketing, sales, and post-sales teams. Identify specific outcomes you want to achieve, such as booking meetings, increasing sales conversion rates, improving sales productivity, or shortening sales cycles.
• Assess the current state and identify gaps. You can’t forge a path forward without first understanding where you are. Evaluate your current revenue processes, tools, people, and capabilities to identify areas where revenue enablement is lacking. Assess the skills and knowledge of your team and identify any gaps that need to be addressed or changes that need to be made. Gather feedback from sales representatives, customers, and other stakeholders to gain insights into pain points and areas for improvement. Start by addressing gaps that are easy to close with the potential to make significant gains in your revenue organization. 
• Develop buyer personas and customer journey mapping. Gain a deep understanding of your target customers by creating buyer personas and mapping their unique customer journeys. Ensure a consistent and smooth journey via all channels throughout the customer journey, from the website to social media to content and everything in between. This helps align revenue enablement efforts with customer needs, allowing you to develop tailored, consistent content, messaging, and sales strategies that resonate with your audience.
• Create a content strategy. Develop a content strategy that supports the buyer's journey, aligns with sales objectives, and helps solve your ideal customer profile’s biggest challenges. Identify the types of content needed at each stage of the sales process, such as educational resources, case studies, product collateral, and objection handling materials. Track the success of marketing and sales materials through each deal to ensure sellers use the best possible content. Ensure content is easily accessible, up-to-date, and aligned with your value proposition and go-to-market teams’ goals.
• Implement training and coaching programs. Invest in talent optimization and training and coaching programs to enhance the skills and capabilities of your revenue team. Start by assessing the skills and characteristics of all revenue team members to identify gaps, create tailored training programs, and ensure each member is in a role that optimizes their skills. Develop comprehensive, personalized onboarding programs for new hires and ongoing training initiatives to address skill gaps and keep the team updated on industry trends and best practices. 
• Leverage AI-enabled revenue enablement technology. Identify and implement the right technology and tools to support revenue enablement efforts. This includes content creation and management tools, revenue and conversation intelligence tools, value-selling tools, and talent optimization tools. Ensure these tools provide actionable insights, automate administrative tasks, and help up-level your entire revenue organization by identifying and helping to close gaps.  They must integrate seamlessly with your existing ecosystem and, most importantly, be easy to use to drive adoption.
• Foster collaboration alignment. Implementing a revenue enablement strategy will inherently foster alignment between marketing, sales, and post-sales teams. Ensure each revenue function’s goals align with the others to ensure desired outcomes are the same across teams. Further, encourage collaboration and knowledge sharing within your revenue organization by using one single source of truth for data and AI to provide the same insights to each function simultaneously. Facilitate regular meetings, workshops, and committees to share success stories, challenges, and best practices. Foster a culture of continuous learning and create channels for ongoing communication and feedback.
• Measure and analyze performance. Establish metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) to track the effectiveness of your revenue enablement efforts, ensuring they lead to a set of desired outcomes that are consistent across revenue team functions. Continuously monitor sales performance, conversion rates, buyer/seller engagements, content success, and revenue growth. Analyze the data regularly to identify areas for improvement, measure the impact of your initiatives, scale content and behaviors that lead to success while retiring those that don’t, and make data-driven decisions to refine your revenue enablement strategy. Remember, revenue enablement is an ongoing, continuously evolving process, so measuring and analyzing the success of your programs never stops. Continuously evaluate the effectiveness of your strategy, gather feedback, and make necessary adjustments. Stay agile and adaptable to evolving market dynamics, customer needs, and industry trends.

What are the most common challenges to effective revenue enablement?

Implementing a revenue enablement strategy, whether brand new or shifting from sales enablement, is no easy task. It takes buy-in from the very top, and there will be hurdles to jump over and rings to jump through on your way to standing up an effective enablement program. Some of the common challenges organizations face are:

• Resistance to change. This is a huge one. People dislike two things: 1) the way things are, and 2) change. Driving the adoption of a revenue enablement program and the tools and processes that accompany it will be an uphill battle. To overcome resistance to change, involve key stakeholders early in the process and communicate the benefits and rationale behind the changes. Create a pilot group to be your champions inside each revenue function. Provide clear training and support during the transition period. Highlight success stories and early wins to demonstrate the positive impact of revenue enablement initiatives. Finally, foster a culture of continuous learning and improvement, encouraging feedback and input from all revenue team members to drive engagement and ownership.
• Limited resources and budget. Resource constraints can pose a challenge to effective revenue enablement. To address this, ensure buy-in from the executive team and revenue leaders, and prioritize initiatives based on their potential impact on revenue generation. Optimize existing resources and processes by leveraging technology, automation, and scalable processes to automate workflows allowing the revenue team to focus on core duties. Consider allocating budget specifically for revenue enablement initiatives to ensure proper training, technology, and content development investment.
• Lack of alignment between marketing, sales, and post-sales teams. Misalignment between revenue teams can hinder revenue enablement efforts. Encourage open communication and collaboration between the teams, and promote sharing information and ideas. Ensure goals are aligned so each team is working towards the same outcomes. Foster a shared understanding of goals, objectives, and target customers, and establish regular meetings and joint planning sessions to align messaging, content, and strategies.
• Lack of data and analytics. Insufficient access to data and analytics can hinder the ability to measure and track the effectiveness of revenue enablement efforts. Implement a robust data strategy that leverages AI-enabled revenue and conversation intelligence tools that provide actionable insights. Ensure proper data collection and integration across systems, including CRM platforms and revenue enablement tools. Ensure you capture as much information as possible by driving adoption across the revenue team. Define key metrics and KPIs aligned with revenue objectives and regularly analyze data to identify trends, areas for improvement, and success factors. Use analytics to track performance, measure ROI, and make data-driven decisions to optimize revenue enablement initiatives.
• Continuous improvement and adaptation. Implementing a revenue enablement program is not a “set it and forget it” exercise. Revenue enablement is an ongoing process that requires continuous improvement and adaptation to volatile market dynamics. Foster a culture of continuous learning and innovation within the revenue organization. Encourage feedback, collect input from the field, and regularly assess the effectiveness of revenue enablement initiatives. Stay informed about industry trends, customer preferences, and competitive landscape. Adapt strategies and tactics accordingly, making iterative changes to optimize revenue enablement efforts and ensure they remain relevant and impactful.

Conclusion

Recap of key points

A successful revenue enablement program can drive growth and lift your organization to new heights, making B players A players and ensuring everyone in the revenue org is as effective as possible. However, it is not a task to be taken lightly. Ensure you have buy-in from the very top of your organization. Be patient, vetting tools to ensure they’re suitable for your org. Involve key stakeholders from each function to meet their team’s needs and gain champions for the program from the very beginning. Lastly, ensure you’re continuously evolving your program to keep it fresh and aligned with ever-changing market dynamics.

Good luck!

Thanks for sticking with us through this long yet brief introduction to the era of Revenue Enablement. There’s a lot of ground to cover,, and this space is evolving quickly, but keep in mind small steps are perfect. After all, you have to crawl before you walk and eventually run.

Look at Revenue Enablement tools. See how Mediafly can help kickstart your revenue enablement project and partner with you to take your organization to the next level. Check out case studies showing how top revenue teams employ Revenue Enablement to increase revenues and shorten sales cycles. View our customer case st