By 2025, 75% of the highest growth companies in the world will deploy a revenue operations (RevOps) model, according to Gartner, Inc. A move from sales enablement to revenue enablement is needed in today’s rapidly shifting buying and selling dynamic to support this RevOps imperative.
Speaking today at the Gartner CSO & Sales Leader Conference 2021 Americas, Doug Bushée, senior director analyst in the Gartner Sales practice, said the sales enablement function, even though set up to enable sales, has almost exclusively focused on seller enablement. However, changes in today’s customers’ buying realities mean that sales enablement leaders must evolve the function’s capabilities from solely enabling individual sellers to supporting revenue enablement activities across all customer-facing roles.
“CEOs and chief sales officers recognize that functional silos handing off clients from one function to the other, and using different technologies, people and processes, are a barrier to revenue growth,” said Mr. Bushée. “As a result, progressive organizations are beginning to align sales, marketing and customer success technology, data and KPIs to provide an end to end view of the revenue-generating engine. The shift to a more end-to-end revenue operations view means enablement leaders should provide enablement support not only to the frontline sales force, but to other revenue generation roles found in marketing, sales and customer success.”
Instead of siloed functions that follow a linear buyer model, end-to-end revenue operations and enablement offers a continuous feedback loop across the buyer journey and creates one singular go-to-market model for driving end-to-end revenue growth and customer acquisition.
“This puts demands on sales leaders to provide consistent enablement to all revenue-generating touchpoints, filling in gaps in onboarding, training, and support for all revenue producing roles,” said Mr. Bushée.
To get started, Gartner recommends sales leaders focus on the following three areas:
- Enablement technology: Take inventory of sales, marketing and customer service technologies, and then identify ways to simplify the technology stack by eliminating redundant enablement technology.
- Talent development: Assess and identify commonalities and differences in existing programs for revenue-generating roles, and then create a unified roadmap with role-specific modules.
- Content: Review existing content creation and management programs, and centralize revenue-generating content, making it easily accessible for customer-facing roles.
Gartner for Sales Leaders clients can learn more in Align Functions’ Sales Enablement Efforts to Reduce Complexity and Improve Seller Effectiveness, Adopt End-to-End Revenue Management With Revenue Operations Framework and Tech Providers 2025: RevOps Is the End-to-End Strategy to Deliver Revenue Growth Faster.
About the Gartner CSO & Sales Leaders Conference
Sales leaders face unprecedented changes in B2B buying behaviors, customer expectations, technology and the talent needed to drive results. At the Gartner CSO & Sales Leader Conference, taking place virtually on May 17-18, 2021, sales leaders will learn from the latest research and Gartner experts covering sales talent, customer buying behavior, account-based marketing strategies and leveraging digital channels. Follow news and updates from the event on Twitter at #GartnerSales.
About Gartner for Sales Leaders
Gartner for Sales Leaders provides heads of sales and their teams with the insights, advice and tools they need to address mission-critical priorities amid mounting pressures to drive growth through new and existing customers. With extensive qualitative and quantitative research, Gartner for Sales Leaders helps sales teams combat commoditization and price-based purchasing, develop critical manager and seller skills, elevate the value of sales interactions, unlock existing growth potential, and optimize sales force enablement. Follow news and update from the Gartner Sales practice on Twitter and LinkedIn using #GartnerSales.