With buyers spending an ever increasing time evaluating their options online and the time sales reps are spending with them decreasing, sales enablement is undergoing a significant change, giving the rise to Revenue Enablement. The aim of this shift is to take a more holistic approach to revenue generating activities from marketing, sales and customer success. In this blog post we explore the underlying reasons for this shift and the benefits in joining this shift brings to businesses.
Unavoidable Revenue Enablement
The shift in buyers' behaviour to rely increasingly on digital sources for their decision making process is still accelerating, according to Gartner in 2021 53% of Gen-Z and Millennials preferred a rep free experience and a year later, that number has shot up to 71%. The simple cause is that this is an age group who is digitally native, they grew up with digital and make much more use of it in daily activities as a result. It is no question whether this trend will continue as more and more people in these generations enter the workforce and get positions where purchasing decisions are made.
It would be easy to think that the solution is to scrap the sales department and go digital, but that's not the answer either as it turns out buyer's regret is much higher if there has been no interaction with a sales rep, since buyers who do not interact with sellers at all make ill-considered decisions in the buying journey.
All this means you will still need sales, but you will also need other channels. That's what the key to Revenue Enablement is: making sure all those channels operate under a unified revenue strategy and offer customers a seamless experience, no matter which channel they choose to use. We have all experienced how annoying it is when a company gets this wrong. We read something online whilst evaluating purchasing options for a mobile phone or even a car. Once we've decided on the best options and head over to the shop, the sales rep gives us completely different information. For me personally it is off putting enough to walk away.
Outcomes of Revenue Enablement
With a very clear and increasing need for revenue enablement established, the next question is how unifying marketing, sales and customer success actually works. Common consensus is that revenue enablement revolves around a few axes and principles:
- Alignment and Collaboration: Businesses need to break down departmental siloes and promote collaboration across the three teams. This starts with unified goals and strategies, and continues with redesigned commercial processes that span across teams.
- Optimise Performance: Analyse performance across departments against a unified goal and provide the tools, training and resources required in each team needs to perform at their best across the buyer journey. Sales will still require training, tools and resources to sell, as marketing will need the same to do their part.
- Automate Everything: I am personally a very strong believer in automation, especially where people are doing repetitive simple tasks rather than adding value. The rise of AI only adds to the argument; systems are great at taking care of repeating tasks- even generating text. However currently it cannot create new concepts and it will not interact with humans like sales does. Automation across the funnel maximises the value people deliver to your business.
- Enhance Customer Experiences: When everyone is working in unison, the customer experience will be enhanced as a natural result. Customers experience a consistent experience across channels, with consistent messaging, content and engagement strategies. It builds buyer confidence across the funnel and improves deal quality, followed by great retention.
In the end the evolution of Sales Enablement signifies a much larger shift in buyer behaviour, which affects business strategy on all levels. Unifying marketing, sales and customer success is crucial to stay connected to how new buyer groups want to purchase goods and services. Whilst the principle of revenue enablement is still in its incubation, I also believe that companies who get this right from the start gain a substantial competitive advantage over others.
