Gaining budget and resources for your sales enablement program is always a challenge—and to make it more difficult, most enablement teams don’t have a way to measure their success and return on investment. In this post, learn six actionable steps that will help you advocate for your sales enablement program with greater confidence and a better chance of success.
1. Know your business.
Understand your organization’s objectives and key results (OKRs), then build your presentation around how your sales enablement program will impact the success and achievement of those OKRs. Can you show that your plan will help your company make money? Reduce the risk of sales turnover? Improve win rates?It’s unlikely you’ll increase your budget without your leaders seeing a clear return on investment. The key is to quantify how your program will facilitate the business to be measurably successful.
2. Know your audience.
Understand who you will be speaking to and what their expectations are. Research who you will be presenting to if you don’t know them well already. Get to know their backgrounds, their history, how they have worked with sales enablement leaders in the past, and the impact they would like to see.This research will enable you to speak the language of your audience. Focusing on words like efficiency, cost, revenue, impact, risk, and profitability will likely hit the mark with your CEO and CFO, while reducing employee churn and increasing employee satisfaction will likely get the attention of your head of HR.
3. Build a network of internal champions.
Get to know the leaders and high performers in your organization outside of the (virtual) boardroom. They have insight into what the front lines need and what success looks like. They can also help drive and champion your programs and serve as role models for their peers, which will get people on board with changes or new initiatives.These conversations not only help you become more effective in gaining buy-in, but they also help you establish trust and recognition within your organization as a leader.
4. Share measurable gains, and communicate potential to scale.
There are many quantitative and qualitative metrics that you can report on, but don’t overwhelm your stakeholders with a huge amount of data. Choose the right metrics that align with your business goals.If you haven’t begun to measure yet, that’s okay! Choose the metrics that matter, create a dashboard or spreadsheet, and track a baseline.
5. Communicate your wins on a regular basis.
Set a regular schedule to share an update with your C-suite or senior leadership team. When providing your update, reiterate how the investment in sales enablement aligns with business goals. Pro-tip: Include a few anecdotes that will give your audience real-life examples of the impact your program is having.These regular updates will keep your program top of mind and reinforce that it is a good investment.
6. Continue to measure and improve.
Feedback is a huge, valuable part of this equation. Regularly check in with sales leaders and sales teams to make sure you’re on the same page. Also, ask for feedback from your executive team and stakeholders. Every time you present to your C-suite, seek direct feedback.Seeking out a mentor can also be helpful for gaining direct feedback and having someone to bounce ideas off of.
If you don’t get the support or budget you need after your first presentation, don’t be discouraged. Take a step back and evaluate what could have been done differently. If you continue to share data-driven insights that show the value of your program, the likelihood of success will improve for future presentations.
