Sales Enablement and Sales Operations: Clarity and Balance Matters

By Tamara Schenk
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While people often debate the true definition of sales and/or revenue enablement, an equally important, and often ignored, aspect of this field is sales operations.

Let me show you why and how sales operations and sales enablement are two sides of the same coin. When building a scalable, high-performing sales force, your approach must balance clarity of purpose and responsibility in each role.

Lack of clarity drives confusion and leads to bad decisions within your sales system.

Ask ten people how they define sales operations, and you will likely receive ten answers—this is a similar situation to revenue enablement. The only difference is that we are not talking about a lack of clarity in sales operations but rather the other side of the coin.

This brings your conversations and choices out of balance since you overly focus on enablement and neglect sales operations. Here, you concentrate on the interior design of your sales force, only to the detriment of their architectural design since it is not planned in a robust, scalable, and aligned manner.

Operations and enablement are two sides of the same coin, with the overall goal of improving sales results.

The common denominator of both disciplines/functions is to drive predictable sales results. Both tackle the same goal from a different perspective, and each needs the other to move the needle.

Mature and strategic sales operations teams provide a scalable platform for sales productivity and performance.

Sales operations are usually focused on building the foundation of a selling system to provide as effective a platform as possible. This includes the sales process, ideally based on an integrated methodology, powered by a CRM platform. Sales operations also define how to manage the pipeline and build the forecast, and operations usually manage the sales cadence calls to review the state of the business with various stakeholders. 

Sales operations own data, analytics, sales intelligence, technology, often sales compensation, sales performance management and territory management, and sometimes also the account management approach. With more digitalization in sales, sales operations play an even more critical role in ensuring that all IT with or without AI is integrated into the overall sales tech stack.

Sales operations define the approach and provide the necessary tools so sales managers and salespeople can utilize the services. These areas of responsibility are analogous to designing and building the foundation of a house, ensuring that the foundation is stable and robust, and ensuring that, for instance, the electricity and the heating and lighting systems are functioning.

Strategic sales enablement functions engage, equip, and empower customer-facing pros and their managers to be valuable, relevant, and differentiating in every buyer interaction along the entire customer’s path.

Even a formally implemented, CRM-powered sales process won’t move the performance needle alone. Salespeople must have the related skills and competencies, relevant knowledge (capability and situational or contextual knowledge), and associated methodologies and strategies. Primarily, enablement teams have to ensure that all the various enablement services from training (product, skills, methods, processes, tools, industries, customer’s path, value messaging, etc.), content (customer-facing content and internal enablement content), and tools (pricing, configuration tools, etc.) are consistent with each other and can be used effectively in front of prospects and customers. Ideally, always aligned with the sales leaders’ needs and requirements.

Mature enablement teams ensure that they implement a formal coaching process, in parallel to the sales processes, and that they develop their sales managers with the necessary skills. Because, based on research, sales coaching has been the most effective enablement service over the years with the potential to improve win rates in a two-digit manner, year after year.

To be effective both sales operations and enablement need a frame of reference.

If you have a less mature sales operations function (even with a different name), sales enablement might feel inclined to cover some of sales ops’ responsibilities. Just ensure you work towards a shared vision based upon an agreed-upon frame of reference, such as your sales process framework. Such a foundation is essential as it serves the entire sales force, and for sales operations and enablement with an indisputable foundation.

If you have a very mature sales operations function, sales enablement can still be a part of sales operations. This trend has decreased over the last couple of years because enablement teams grow in small steps, and this growth is relative to their scope and responsibilities. Enablement and operations teams are more commonly considered two sides of the same coin, playing on the same level, reporting to executive sales management, chief operating officers, or chief customer officers if they oversee the entire customer journey.

You should make sure that a proper collaboration model is implemented that clearly defines what sales operations and enablement responsibilities are.

Your enablement services cannot exist in a vacuum. If enablement services are implemented and rolled out without a defined and formally implemented frame of reference, such as your sales process framework, they will float around. The result will then be a waste of time, resources, and sub-optimal outcome.

This leaves your target audience, such as salespeople, with difficulty in understanding what to use, when, and why. Have a stable operations foundation with an effective collaboration model, and enablement success is far easier to achieve.