There are plenty of business functions that support sales.
Marketing attracts new customers, developers deliver solutions, and support helps buyers optimize their experience. While these activities benefit your most revenue-focused sector, no one supports reps like sales enablement does.
Sales enablement equips sales teams with content, tools, training, and data to close deals effectively. It aligns marketing, sales, and operations to improve win rates, shorten sales cycles, and boost revenue by ensuring reps deliver the right message at the right time.
Businesses often turn to sales enablement software to help establish a repository of marketing materials and sales playbooks that will be useful during all aspects of the selling cycle.
In this article, we’ll explore how sales enablement works in practice to support reps with training, customer-facing content, and sales technology.
Nothing beats a strong and readily equipped sales team, making sales enablement a key player in the success of your entire organization.
First of all, it helps ensure sales readiness. When reps have the knowledge, skills, and content to sell to their customer base, they can maximize every interaction. Activities like onboarding, training, and professional development help sellers be the best contributors they can be, increasing the likelihood of profitability.
A well-oiled sales enablement operation can also result in retaining a talented workforce. When supported and well-equipped to do their job, reps are more likely to be successful. And when they feel that satisfaction, they’ll recognize the contributions made by the company, boosting engagement levels. Knowing that your employer wants you to succeed and develop as a professional can make a world of difference, and sales enablement has the power to make that happen.
Both of those benefits of sales enablement can have a positive impact on your bottom line, including win rate and customer retention. Sales enablement creates better sellers by helping reps appeal to customer pain points and making the solution at hand seem like the best answer. Another function of your sales enablement department is to help reps and customer success teams nourish relationships with buyers. Both of which will increase sales and positive customer relationships.
The goal of a sales enablement team is to provide any and all support reps need during customer interactions. But what does that look like in action? There are four main functions of any effective sales enablement team or department.
You can’t successfully support your sales team if you don’t equip them with the right talent. One of the key functions of any sales enablement strategy is to recruit and hire people who will make the sales team as strong as possible. These hiring efforts need to focus on both the quality and quantity of candidates. Sales enablement will likely work with human resources to ensure they understand the characteristics, skills, and experience required to be part of the sales organization.
While the recruiting and hiring efforts will bring in solid sales reps, they’ll still need training and coaching to get acclimated. These new sales reps have the potential to add significant value to your organization, but only if you invest in them. Another function of sales enablement is to do just that. Sales coaching and training will include extensive information regarding the solutions your business offers, how that value is demonstrated to customers, and how to stand out among competitors.
To keep customers engaged throughout the entirety of the buying process, sales enablement teams need to ensure reps have two different kinds of sales collateral. The first set includes relevant content that can guide the rep through the selling process, such as customer data, sales techniques, and a cadence to follow.
The second type is information provided to the customer, such as product descriptions. That distributed content needs to be somewhat reusable and intriguing to whoever is receiving it.
Reps also require the right sales enablement software to streamline the sales process, automate tedious tasks, and keep customer details in order. Remember that the point of having a sales enablement team is to help the sales team do their jobs, and a part of that is providing software solutions that can free up their time to focus on the customer.
Lastly, sales enablement teams need to look at the big picture of the sales organization and find what’s working and what needs to be changed. Sales is not a “set it and forget it” type of business action. As your business, industry, and customer base change, your approach to closing deals needs to adapt. Sales enablement assessments need to be able to answer all of your questions regarding whether or not the team is operating as it should.
And of course, they will have to measure the success of the sales team. Because if they aren’t hitting their goals, that might be in part due to the lack of support from sales enablement. Overall, sales enablement needs to determine whether its actions are supporting the sales team, helping them succeed, and contributing to the organization as a whole.
Technically, sales enablement can happen naturally throughout your entire organization. The daily activities of certain departments tend to work to the advantage of your sales team. However, if you want an empowered sales team, you should also have a deliberate sales enablement process in place. Here’s how to make one.
The first step in any business strategy is going to involve establishing goals. While the overall purpose of having a sales enablement team is to support sales to ultimately close deals and increase revenue, those general north stars aren’t going to cut it.
When setting goals, be as clear and specific as possible. Take an organizational goal and make it explicitly actionable for your team. For example, if you wanted to open up more time for sales reps to focus on selling by helping them with manual tasks, your goal might be to increase the metric associated with time spent actively selling. Make sure every sales enablement goal is SMART, meaning Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Reasonable, and Time-bound.
Sales enablement team members are expert sellers, too, but they can’t successfully empower the sales team without collaborating with them. Have conversations with the sales team to determine the most effective ways to support them. Find out where they are struggling and where they are succeeding. No team is the same, and this way, you know what to focus on for that specific set of sales reps.
These conversations should also include marketing and customer service teammates. Selling is a team effort that involves cross-collaboration and aligning all involved departments for success.
Understanding the customer is a priority for sellers, making it a necessary aspect of your sales enablement strategy. A key function of sales enablement is to equip reps with the right information they need to keep customers informed and engaged throughout their entire buying process. This requires a deep understanding of their thought processes for each stage.
This doesn’t mean you have to be a mind reader. You can use customer data to gain insights into the types of people who are most often buying your solution and then find ways to appeal to those characteristics. While no customer is exactly the same, you can still create a buyer persona based on people you’ve already done business with. Make sure to pay extra attention to their industry, business size, and job title.
Beyond basic demographics, make note of buying signals that customers give off and pair each one with an accompanied action for the rep to take. Assess past customer behavior and use it to inform your sales enablement strategy.
If your sales process and buyer journey don’t align, you can kiss any chance of closing a deal goodbye. With the information you found regarding your typical buyer’s journey, double-check that it all aligns with your approach to selling. Instead of matching your sales process to your ideal buyer journey, take your real-life buyer journey and designate sales process steps accordingly. Find ways to capitalize on your customer’s current stage as much as possible. Don’t forget about including the right content to keep them engaged.
It’s more important to focus on the customer than on your own sales process. If you tailor the journey for them, you’ll stand out and be more likely to earn their trust.
A crucial part of any sales enablement strategy is equipping the team with the right resources, primarily content and software.
Your reps will need a wide range of reusable content that they can present to customers, including but not limited to the following items:
Reps also need the right software that can streamline the process of moving customers down the pipeline. Sales enablement needs to identify any sales activity that can be streamlined, automated, or simplified with software and then deliver that solution to the team. Examples of those sales tools will be described later on in the article.
With your sales enablement strategy ready to go, it’s time to implement. Don’t worry about the entire approach being perfect. There’s always going to be room for improvement. In fact, it’s going to be necessary for the sales team to be as empowered as possible.
Sales enablement is an ever-changing strategy. No part of business is static: your industry will implement new regulations, your business will introduce new products, and your customer base will evolve accordingly. With those changes, your processes, content management, delivery channels, technologies, and strategies will need to adapt.
Assess the sales enablement strategy after implementation and never stop from that point forward. Especially after your business experiences a drastic change. Compare progress to the goals and objectives of the strategy and reevaluate areas that aren’t getting you to where you want to be.
After all that effort, you’re probably wondering what success looks like for a sales enablement team. While the feeling of satisfaction that accompanies the act of empowering your sales team, you can’t fight numbers. Because the success of your sales enablement efforts relies heavily on that of the sales team, most sales enablement goals involve measuring sales metrics.
Here are some metrics your sales enablement team should measure from day one.
Ideally, every person and department within your organization would always be thinking about ways they can support the sales team. After all, they are your most revenue-focused department. However, the typical sales enablement ownership consists of both your sales and marketing teams.
Marketers are responsible for equipping sales reps with all of the content they need to keep potential buyers engaged. Materials that reel the customer in, like videos, blog posts, and product guides, fall into the hands of the marketing team. This information is shared with the customer so they can decide whether or not they want to move forward with the buying process.
Sales is responsible for selling. Obviously. But they also have a duty to communicate with the marketing team regarding the effectiveness of the content they are using, as well as insights into the data of current customers. It’s a “help me help you” type of deal.
To make the sales enablement strategy and efforts a success, your sales and marketing departments are going to need to be aligned every step of the way. When setting goals, aligning processes, finding the right tools and content, and evaluating, it needs to be a group effort. Sales might know how to close the deal, but marketers bring the customers there in the first place.
Along with the content used for selling that’s created for your customer base specifically, technology is going to pull most of the weight in sales enablement. Here are a couple of different software options that will make your sales team strong.
Sales enablement software is a solution that offers a place for teams to hold all of their relevant marketing materials and sales collateral. The ultimate goal of this software is to keep reps prepared as they interact with customers. Everything that a rep should need throughout the sales process can be stored in a sales enablement solution. Features of this software include content storing and distribution, customer engagement measuring, and marketing and sales alignment.
G2 helps businesses find top sales enablement software to organize content, boost rep readiness, and enhance buyer conversations during the sales cycle.
*These are the five leading sales enablement software from G2’s Winter 2026 Grid® Report.
Customer relationship management (CRM) software can track and manage every interaction you have with a customer, painting a clear picture of their buying journey. All customer data can be stored in a CRM, providing a single, secure point of reference. The purpose of implementing a CRM is to gain insights into how to better sell to a particular customer based on their preferences and history with the company.
G2 helps businesses find top CRM software to manage customer relationships, track sales, and understand the buyer journey.
*These are the five leading CRM software from G2’s Winter 2026 Grid® Report.
A big part of enabling sales is making sure they have enough material to work with. In this case, material refers to leads or potential customers. Lead generation software includes tools for generating, scoring, and prioritizing leads. And the more solid leads you have, the more likely the sales team is to convert them.
G2 helps businesses find top lead-capture software to generate, qualify, and prioritize leads, enabling sales teams to focus on the most promising opportunities.
*These are the five leading lead capture software from G2’s Winter 2026 Grid® Report.
Other tools, like chatbots or live chats, can instantly connect a customer to a sales rep. If they want to start talking about making a purchase, they can do it in an instant. While this isn’t necessarily a sales enablement tool, it definitely unlocks the potential to tap into sales-qualified leads you might otherwise miss.
G2 helps businesses find the best live chat software to engage website visitors in real time, capture sales-qualified leads, and connect buyers with sales teams faster.
*These are the five leading live chat software from G2’s Winter 2026 Grid® Report.
Got more questions? We have the answers.
B2B sales enablement focuses on supporting sales teams that sell to other businesses, where buying decisions involve multiple stakeholders, longer timelines, and higher-value contracts.
Sales enablement requires a mix of strategic thinking, communication, training design, content organization, and data analysis, along with the ability to work across sales, marketing, and leadership teams.
Sales enablement teams are typically made up of specialists who focus on strategy, content creation, sales training and readiness, coaching, and performance analysis, each contributing to rep effectiveness and revenue performance.
When done well, sales enablement helps teams ramp faster, execute more consistently, engage buyers more effectively, and turn sales activity into predictable revenue growth.
Common challenges include low content adoption, unclear ownership, misalignment between teams, difficulty proving ROI, and scaling enablement efforts as the business grows.
A strong business requires a solid sales team, and the best way to get there is with an entirely different team dedicated to supporting them. Sales enablement happens naturally throughout your organization, but a separate strategy that empowers your revenue generators even further never hurts.
Having a strategy is essential for business processes. Guide reps from start to finish with a sales cadence suited to your customers.
This article was originally published in 2023. It has been updated with new information.