Sales enablement: Is sales training a component of sales enablement?

I'd like to add add two aspects:
First of all: Yes, sales trainings are an element of sales enablement belonging to the bucket of skills & competencies and much more - sales coaching is necessary as well.
Second we should be aware of WHAT do we want to achieve with sales trainings and HOW do we want to achieve the desired results?
WHAT: Do we want to transfer knowledge or do we want to change selling behaviors? From my point of view we need both in a well structured and coordinated way. Of course we need trainings considering sales tools, sales cycle, go-to-market model and of course the different portfolio elements, products and services to enable our sales force with this knowledge. Additionally we know that our sales reps are often in a kind of comfort zone where they feel good (e.g.with customers they know, with products and services they are familiar with). On the other hand B2B customers and markets are changing: sales reps especially of strategic vendors have to address more business value to their customers, they have to sell outcomes instead of products only. Additionally strategic vendors focus more and more on leverage cross selling potential to increase the wallet share in strategic accounts – all of that requires a different skill set and different sales behaviors.
That brings us to the HOW: I'm sure we need a combination of sales training and sales coaching to transfer fact based knowledge with trainings and to work on the sales behaviors using coaching methods.
To learn more on that - I'd like to recommend this research document on sales coaching from Forrester's Brian Lambert:

http://www.forrester.com/rb/Research/sales_coaching_defined/q/id/57757/t/2

I see two potential questions:
(1) Is sales training a component of sales enablement in most organizations today? (2)Should sales training be a component of sales enablement?

First, I agree with Paul that in the monastery where everything is perfect, sales training is a component of world class sales enablement.

In my experience sales training is only sometimes part of sales enablement. I see the following organizational scenarios:

1. Training, learning and development or sales training groups with no sales enablement function. The tendency here can be to see every sales performance issue as a problem requiring a training solution.

2. Sales enablement group focused predominately on content with little linkage to sales training, coaching or performance assessment. The tendency here can be to see most sales performance issues solved by making field related content easier to find, access, download, and use.

3. Sales enablement focused predominately on subject matter expertise. This happens more where sales enablement is one of several responsibilities of a product marketing manager/subject matter expert. The tendency here can be to focus overly on sales tools, product collateral, and product expertise.

Everyone above makes a compelling case above for why sales training is important and an important part of sales enablement but insufficient in and of itself and why, in the ideal sales enablement model, all of the items above- marketing, sales training, collateral, sales tools, sales coaching- should be aligned both to the customer and the needs of the sales organization.

Hey Caty,

I'd agree that Sales Training is a subset of Sales Enablement (at least as I define them).

Enablement really is about empowering them to be successful at closing new customers who have a good fit for a product or service (and therefore the potential to be happy customers that will be retainable). This means not just product/service knowledge, but tools, pricing/discounting flexibility within reason, access to support / lifelines and more as part of the overall package.

The 'tools' bucket is potentially the most difficult because it ranges from collateral to calculators to case studies - and for each business/buyer there is a different mix of tools that will be the most compelling content.

I am curious about why you ask - are you defining roles at a company or trying to figure out 'who owns what'?

While I won't say that anywhere I've worked is perfect, as a Product Marketer for many years, a critical part of Sales Enablement is having a variety of members participate - one owner, but lots of support. I consider it a core part of my job to both train & enable sales on a variety of topics ... because ultimately their success is my success.

Good luck!

enabling someone and training someone are interrelated but yeah, I think they are 2 different groups - just by the dynamics of what each entails to 'set up and pull through'.

yes, training helps enable someone - but just by offering training doesn't assure that the sales person is fully enabled.

enabling involves other intracies - usually requiring more dedicated time and focus one on one with each sales person.

Training requires certain technology, space, time, people, specifics. Enabling requires different specifics so how you go about organizing one and executing it to completion vs how you go about doing this for another is quite different (set up and pull through).

Sales Rep confidence and competency in delivering your message in a way that gets the customer to care enough to do something different... and then choose you... is the ultimate goal of Sales Enablement. Training is absolutely critical to making this a reality in the field.

If you are asking because you are trying to determine an organizational structure, and whether Sales Training should be rolled into Sales Enablement, my answer is... yes. Enablement is the bigger "bubble" on the org chart because it stretches across multiple "sales support" orgs to create a consistent, clear transfer of leads, knowledge and process that equip sales people to succeed.

The challenge after deciding organizational alignment is: Do you have the right Sales Training? It's such a broad term and definitions abound. It's often a blend of product training, process training, and soft skills, focusing on presentations, conversations, negotiations, etc. There's not enough room here to walk through the ideal mix. But, I will say that all Sales Training needs to be approached with a blended model:

1. Baseline assessment of competency
2. E-Learning for knowledge transfer
3. Hands-On Workshop for practical application working real opportunities
4. Just-in-Time, Online refresher content in bite-size, multi-media modules
5. Coaching Training for frontline managers to reinforce the learnings on a real-time, real-world basis -- opportunity-by-opportunity
6. Post-event Survey to determine adoption, behavior change and business impact

Finally, training then needs to be reinforced by making sure the ongoing sales content (messages and tools) you create are aligned with the skills they've just been taught.

The answer to the question depends on the defintion of sales enablement. For some, training might thus be a part of sales enablement. For others, sales enablement and sales training migth be understood as components of a sales readiness approach.

Independent of these different views, sales enablement and sales training are certainly inter-related.

First of all if sales enablement is supported by a specific tool, training is needed for the optimal use of the systems from a contents consumption as well as from a contents production stand point;

Second, it seems pretty obvious that product training and sales enablement contents need to be aligned.

Third and less obvious is the need for compatibility of sales enablement content and structure with sales methodologies. Some methodologies already implemented might clash with tadvanced he sales enablement concept. A successful implementation of a sales enablement concept, might thus also require an upgrade in methodology training.

Finally, there are aspects of skill oriented sales training that are not touched by a sales enablement implementation.

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This is a great topic of conversation and I've included it as our Focus post of the week. http://blog.insideview.com/2010/10/27/is-sales-training-a-component-of-sales-...

To answer the question, yes I believe that sales training should be part of sales enablement. Having said that, I think that we should all acknowledge that, across the spectrum of sales capapbilities, there is only a certain percentage of sales people that improve from the application of either.

In my experience, about a third of sales people will be able to take knowledge transferred during training, and then apply tools, methods and coaching to achieve the desired increase in productivity and success. This trend is accentuated the more complex the sales proposition and prcoess becomes.

Most sales people can manage transactional sales quite well. Some reasonable tools, some "standard" sales straining and they are off and running. However, as we shift towards complex propositions, larger deals and the trend towards sellers being problem solvers, it is important to look at sales peoples' profiles and their capabilities and then put into place the appropriate combination of tools, training, guidance and coaching to optimise thier success. This for me is what sales enablement is really about.

There may be ways to split training from enablement for organisational, funding or delivery reasons. Ultimately, matching our offering and our peoples' capabilities to customer and market requirements is where we ought to focus.

When we look at the forms in which training is carried out like eLearning, podcasts, videos, eBooks, self-assessments, post-event surveys, and even the face to face workshop or seminar, our first contact with pretty much all of them will be a link. Sometimes the registration link, sometimes directly the link to the content. From my point of view it is crucial to present these links in the business context within the Sales Enablement solution. Not only can I see which training is available for which customer need, language, time zone, format, line of business, etc… and where the gaps are, but also being inside a Sales Enablement solution the link will be rated and commented on. I can see how many of my peers or who of the star performers has used it as well as the comments that might improve some of the content and related it back to the real world experiences of the crowd.

I think this is the frame work where the alignment between product training or sales methodology training on the one hand side and sales enablement content on the other hand side will come naturally (as long as the Sales Enablement solution and the structures / business context were agreed upon with buy-in from everyone and other platforms/portals get turned off).

Best,
Paul

Different things can be meant by these terms. I generally look at a few specific categories:

Sales product training - the products and/or services that need to be sold. What they are, how they work, why they are different/better than the competition.

Selling education - how to sell. Perhaps based on a sales methodology. How to climb the pain chain, get past gatekeepers, carry out effective cold calling etc.

Sales enablement - access to the right information and knowledge, for a specific sales scenario, at the right time, and in the right format. This includes how to effectively use a CRM system, which marketing materials are the best to use at various stages of the sales cycle, how a peer won a similar deal in a similar industry etc.

All interconnected, and all crucial for a high performing sales team. It is common to find, though, that sales and marketing management may place more emphasis on one of these over the others, which can send a sales team's performance off balance.