What is a Sales Enablement Manager?
If you’re looking to optimize the sales and marketing in your company, consider a sales enablement manager. Not all companies have them, but those that do can make more effective sales.
With all the benefits they can give your company, you might wonder how to hire a sales enablement manager and what qualities to look for. This guide will cover what a sales enablement manager is and does.
What Is a Sales Enablement Manager?
A sales enablement manager takes on many roles, including supporting the sales enablement team. They may do this by giving them tools, practicing with them, providing training, and giving them content needed to increase their sales performance.
They also need to be able to work as a team with stakeholders, the marketing team, and all salespeople. Their main goal is to create a team that can increase sales and productivity.
Who Owns Sales Enablement?
When working in sales with sales enablement professionals, you must ensure everyone has clear duties as to who owns different tasks and who is accountable for making the foundation of sales enablement solutions.
Everyone needs to know who they are coaching and what tools they need to give them for coaching. All sales enablement leaders need to understand how to implement strategies for sales training and customer engagement, as with these things, a business will last for a while.
When they make a system or use sales enablement software, the rest of the team needs to commit to working alongside them with the technology to make the outlined system work.
The marketing team also needs to be responsible for tasks like ROI achievement and ensuring they have high customer engagement.
Training and Development
A significant part of the sales process is ensuring that your salespeople know how to use all the resources that you make available to them. If they don’t know how to use them or they do not see that they are there in the first place, no one benefits.
There needs to be training for all sales enablement tools and a sales enablement program – this is where the training comes in. After initial training, sales representatives should continue to have ongoing training when a new technology enters the business.
Required Skills
If you have to work as a sales manager, you must ensure you possess all of these skills. Without them, you will not be able to successfully do the job. Key skills include presentation skills, organizational skills, and excellent communication skills.
Ideally, you want to have at least five years in content management and experience in sales development, sales enablement, and sales ops.
You also need to be able to do the same things that your salespeople do, but better. This includes creating content, copywriting, and closing – make sure you know how to train staff to do these things in the same way you can.
Along with training, you need to be able to build the sales training content that you plan to give out to your workers. This includes showing them proper product marketing, how to face customers, and how to work together as a team.
You also need a few years of experience with leading sales training, whether with your material or using the material of others.
You should have deep knowledge of at least one sales enablement tool, but ideally, you know how to use more than one. You also need to be able to use customer relationship management (CRM) tools.
Lastly, part of the essential skills includes interpreting data, partnering with the sales division to see what can be done better, and approaching every problem with a data-driven solution.
While these are the must-skills, some other skills will make you more likely to be hired. They are not required but can give you an edge in the interview process.
- Previous experience working as a sales enabler leader or being a leader in a sales role
- Knowledge of KPIs and understanding of how to grow a business
- Understanding the journey of customers and how they come to buy things
- Know how to build a sales team and work together with marketing
- Experience in similar industries to build a good foundation of all the knowledge you need
- Experience with sales kickoffs
- Know how to use quantitative and qualitative data
- Experience with sales funnels, sales cycles, and sales processes
Frequently Asked Questions
Is a Sales Enablement Manager a Good Career?
The viability of being a sales enable manager depends on the career you want and the skills you have. You will find the job enjoyable if you enjoy working in sales and marketing. You also need to be able to work as a team and enjoy being around others.
This job might not be perfect if you don’t enjoy working with others.
If you’re wondering if sales enablement is a lucrative career, you can check out this statistic:
In 2019, 61.3% of organizations had a sales enablement program, and those leveraging sales enablement reported above-average win rates.
This fact shows that more and more businesses are looking for people that can implement a sales enablement strategy. With the right training programs and sales organization, you can have a career and salary that makes your life enjoyable – just keep in mind you need to be willing to face customers, help the sales team, and undergo ongoing training. You can also eventually become a sales director, which shows a huge salary increase to an average of $141,825 per year, according to Glassdoor.
What Is Sales Enablement Salary?
Glassdoor reports that the average salary of a sales enablement manager is $83,033 as of March 2023 throughout all levels of experience, with more experienced managers earning more.
Overall earnings from Glassdoor’s report also cites an average total salary of $112,416 in the U.S. as of March 2023, with the top 25 percent earning more than $145,000 while the top 75 percent earn more than $89,000.
As you can see from the above statistics, the salary for this job is very good. As with most jobs, you will be able to work your way up the ladder and then get more pay as you get more and more years of experience under your belt.
If you have a degree in marketing or sales, you will probably start at a higher salary than others. Companies will also reward you with higher pay if you have a high impact on revenue and if you have the necessary range of skills to be able to do the job successfully, which helps to explain why the salary and overall earnings vary significantly.
What Are Two Critical Elements of Sales Enablement?
The two most critical elements of being a sales enabler are training and coaching. You also need to have a good understanding of the customer journey. Training and coaching are important parts of sales leadership because you must show the people in your team how to build effective relationships with customers and sell products. This is good for the team because they experience satisfaction.
With a sales enablement manager role, there also needs to be a high understanding of the products. When the salespeople lack understanding of a product, the sales leader can come in and explain the product’s benefits with training and coaching.
A sales team can work together more effectively with the proper training and coaching.
What Problems Does Sales Enablement Solve?
The main problem that is solved with sales enablement is identifying gaps in marketing, products, and sales. You might have gaps in your company that you need to learn about. These gaps can hinder your company’s growth and impact your ability to be an effective leader in the industry.
With the right sales enabler leader, you can better optimize sales content. Since a considerable part of this role is coaching, a sales enabler can see that new hires can perform well even if they are new to this role.
As with all companies, you want your organization to be completely in sync when it comes to marketing and sales. These two divisions go hand in hand, so the workers need to know each other well and have team-building exercises.
What Is the Difference Between Sales Operations and Sales Enablement?
Sales enablement mainly focuses on the education and preparation of the products and how to sell them effectively. Sales operations are more about executing the sales process and seeing what is going well and what can be done better.
The two have some big differences, but they work hand in hand since they are in the same division. Both also work with the marketing teams.
What Skills Do You Need For Sales Enablement?
Looking for a job in sales enablement? It’s a great choice for a career with growth opportunities. You need to ensure you have all the skills to succeed. Remember that you are in charge of a team, so the team needs to rely on you for all their needs and questions.
Here are the main skills to refine for yourself before interviewing as a sales enabler:
- Be able to lead a team
- Be able to coach and train new team members
- Research products and work with the marketing team to make effective sales approaches
- Build sales training content
- Own past experience creating content
- Interpret data to see sales growth
- Be good with numbers and data entries
A company usually ensures you have at least the above skills before moving forward in the hiring process. Check that you have good evidence of all these skills on your resume. You should also list all similar jobs on your resume to highlight your experiences.
Conclusion
A sales enablement manager trains all salespeople so they can be knowledgeable and effectively sell your company’s products. They also create content to make it easier for the sales team to earn revenue for the company.
If you need help with sales training or are considering hiring a sales enablement manager for your company, you can contact The Brooks Group today. We have all the resources and training materials you need for your company or organization to be leaders in the industry with solutions tailored to your specific needs.
