Sales Enablement vs Sales Readiness: What's The Difference?

Businesses are continuously looking for new strategies to solve the current sales challenges. Gradually, they comprehend sales enablement and sales readiness as a long-term sales solution. Companies with sales enablement have a better chance of win rates than those who do not have.

CSO Insights found that 60% of organizations have adopted the sales enablement function. And more than 50% of firms plan to allocate more money to improve sales readiness, such as value messaging and selling skills development, in the next year.

As more sales teams use terms such as ''sales-readiness'' and '' sales enablement'', it is essential to understand the difference between the two terms. But before exploring the differences, let's understand what each term means and how it can help the sales teams sell effectively.

What Is Sales Enablement?

Sales enablement is a strategic process of providing your sales team with guidance, training, and tools they need to engage customers effectively.  Good sales enablement content and tools target the customers, helping sales representatives use relevant content to increase customer engagement. In addition, sales enablement analytics allows sales teams to gain data-driven insights to improve their business and increase revenue.

Examples of Sales Enablement

Sales enablement impacts organizational processes and profits in varied ways. With sales enablement, be sure to;

• Build a long-term strategy that includes roles of specific tools processes and scalable, repeatable best practices. This can be achieved by working with the sales team and agreeing on specific goals, milestones, deliverables, and duties.
• Drive better conversations that achieve high conversion rates by enabling sellers and buyers to access on-demand, high-quality, engaging materials.
• Eliminate conflicting messages among potential buyers by breaking down departmental silos in your company. It is crucial to adopt organizational-wide communication tools that automatically sync everyone to newly available resources or workflow updates.
• Improve growth and bottom lines by systemizing sales training activities and coaching to deliver the best outcomes.
• Optimize sales pitches using advanced data analytics that provides valuable insights on the most profitable and promising opportunities; the sales enablement software informs the use of the best content in each case.
• Gain complete visibility of the buyer's behavior using cloud-based technology that tracks customer's engagement with the branded sales content.
• Lastly, communicate early and regularly to ensure commitment, engagement, and implementation between sales enablement, sales, and other business departments.

Sales Readiness

Sales readiness involves assessing and certifying that the sales team has the right skills and training to engage with customers and convert more leads to sales. Training and coaching play a vital role in creating an agile, productive, and ready sales force. The critical goal of sales readiness programs is to prepare the sales team to close more and bigger deals and improve their interactions with customers whether they are interacting face to face, through emails, or in a web conference.

By enabling sales representatives to learn, observe and apply the skills and knowledge accrued through readiness programs, they can successfully bridge capability and enablement gaps.

 Examples of Sales Readiness

Sales Readiness manifests in the following ways:

• Delivering effective onboarding so that sales representatives can be ramped fast and effectively.
• Practicing demos behind the scenes to prepare the sales teams for showtime.
• Refining your sales team's core sales skills and verifying their progress. 
• Providing training and feedback so that your sales representatives can improve their weak areas and further refine their strengths.
• Communicating products' updates clearly and briefly through on-demand training and micro-learning for team alignment.
• Keeping the sales representatives on the same page through messaging, practice change, and more with sales enablement content.

How Are Sales Enablement and Sales Readiness Different?

As more businesses use sales readiness and sales enablement terms, it is important to note these terms are different. Sales enablement ensures the sales team has all the resources and skills to improve their performance and productivity. On the other hand, sales readiness involves verifying whether your sales team has the knowledge and skills to maintain effective communications throughout the sales cycle.

Key readiness activities such as assessment, coaching, and training help develop more agile and prepared salespeople. The goal of readiness is to prepare sales teams to close more and bigger deals. However, it is essential to ensure the customers are satisfied after every interaction with the sales representatives.

Real-World Examples of the Difference between Sales Enablement and Sales Readiness

• Launching a new product or service — From a sales enablement standpoint, the most vital action is to ensure the sales team accesses content and training materials on the latest offering to explain the product/ service benefits to the customers during interactions. Sales reps also will need to expound on their products' different features. On the other hand, sales readiness highlights improving seller's preparedness to engage with various prospective buyers during conference calls, emails, meetings, or other interactions. Sales teams can achieve preparedness through training sessions to encourage reps to participate actively and strive to retain information.

• Initiating a sales campaign targeting a new audience — Sales enablement tools will help the sales reps identify new buyer persona and create digital content specifically for them. Sales readiness will include cross-departmental cooperation with the marketing team, creating imitation meetings to practice the new approach.

How Do Sales Enablement and Sales Readiness Work Together?

Sales teams should note that sales readiness and sales enablement are not opposing forces but instead work together to achieve a common goal, and one leads to the other on the road to successful customer engagements. As part of a cohesive program, sales enablement combined with sales readiness results in a more effective sales team.

A sales readiness program is a part of sales enablement; it focuses on the outcome and data-driven results. It gives sales managers and sales representatives insights into performance, results, and gaps in the sales team. When combining sales enablement and sales readiness, sales teams can access tools, skills, and confidence to think outside the box when engaging with buyers to deliver their marketing goals.

Sales readiness uses parts of sales enablement to improve sales teams. Using sales coaching and training and concentrating on customer messaging, your company can create a more efficient and outperforming sales readiness program.

Final Thoughts

As companies grow, combining sales readiness and sales enablement is more critical than ever. Arguably, it is vital from the start of your business. Both sales Enablement and sales readiness depends on sales training and enhanced productivity.  This brings in more clients and increased revenue.

Consistency within the company will attract more customers, as clients feel more comfortable with an organization that aims to meet the clients' needs. Sales enablement and sales readiness create unity within the company as everyone becomes committed to achieving the company's goals.

Does your sales team have the right assets and tools they need to market your products/services effectively? Demoflow can help your team close more deals while improving customer experience and marketing costs. Try it now.