Sales Enablement vs. Sales Operations
Sales operations and sales enablement are both functions that aim to improve your sales performance. Sales operations ensures that your sales infrastructure — like the CRM system, compensation and incentive plans, KPI reporting, and proposal and contract management — run seamlessly. Alternatively, sales enablement means providing sales teams with the tools, training, support and feedback they need to effectively sell.
What is Sales Enablement?
Sales enablement is a strategic business function that helps salespeople effectively engage with prospects and close deals. Sales enablement means providing salespeople with everything they need to engage with buyers. That includes:
- Effective onboarding and skills development training
- Useful tools and technology
- Resources; like content, research and best practices
- Performance feedback and sales metrics
As a function, sales enablement arms your sellers with all of the resources that they need to perform confidently in their roles.
Give Guru a whirl.
What is Sales Operations?
Sales operations functions focus on decision-making that allows salespeople to sell as efficiently as possible. Sales operations responsibilities can include:
- Making decisions about territory structures
- Compensation and incentive plans
- Process optimization
- Sales technology
- Data analytics and reporting
- Lead management
Sales Enablement & Sales Operations Working Together
Best-in-class organizations understand that when sales operations and sales enablement collaborate, sales become more efficient and effective. Sales operations planning, information sharing and a combined focus on goal attainment should align with key performance indicators. When they do, both sales operations and sales enablement teams can successfully support and optimize their sales teams’ productivity. Although knowledge management hasn’t traditionally been coupled with the idea of sales enablement, it can be a powerful tool that centralizes and informs your entire strategy.
What is a Sales Enablement System?
A sales enablement system or platform is your sales team’s hub for content. It helps them understand your products and services, provide meaningful information to prospects at any phase of the sales journey and find the metrics necessary to improve their performance. Content and knowledge are both integral to business growth, and by giving each group their own best-fit platforms, you’re improving the relationship between the two.
Leverage Guru to Enable Your Sales Operations
Guru’s sales enablement platform allows you to create a network out of your company’s collective intelligence. It makes sure your sales enablement content is accessible in every workflow your salespeople use. Your experts will find it easy to document and democratize information. Plus, our platform offers predictive content suggestions and measurement so you can track the impact of your content.
Find out how you can leverage Guru’s knowledge management solutions to fuel your sales enablement efforts.
