Sales enablement can be a crucial element to unlock revenue growth, which makes it worth investing in for every B2B SaaS company.

In fact, companies that establish effective sales enablement programs achieve as much as 15% higher win rates than those without.

Despite the clear positive impact, 76% of companies do not invest in a comprehensive strategy - which means many organizations are missing out on a significant opportunity to drive more revenue.

But what exactly does sales enablement entail, and what are the key metrics you should be tracking when you’re implementing or optimizing your sales enablement strategy?

Let's dive in.

What is sales enablement and how to measure it

In its essence, sales enablement is the act of providing your sales team with whatever they may need to become more effective in their selling efforts.

Any sales enablement program includes, but is not limited to:

• Content & sales collateral
• Tools like CRMs
• Product training & education
• Lead generation strategies
• Individual coaching

To measure the impact of your sales enablement efforts, you should be tracking both qualitative and quantitative metrics. 

Here’s a brief overview of what they may be.

Qualitative metrics: customer feedback, sales rep satisfaction, confidence of the sales team, the relevance of content, the collaboration within revenue teams.

Quantitative metrics: win rates, deal size, lead-to-opportunity conversion rate, sales cycle length, sales collateral usage, technology adoption rates, time it takes for new salespeople to become fully proficient, sales growth, any many more.

It is best to use a combination of both, but today we’ll only cover the quantitative metrics and best practices to measure them. Before you do that your first step should be defining your goals.

• What are you trying to achieve with your sales enablement efforts?
• How will they fit in with the rest of your company objectives?
• What are some of the current pain points and challenges of the sales team?

Once you have clear answers for these, you can then decide which metrics are the most important for you and your business. 

The most important sales enablement metrics

While you should always take your team and your business’ unique situation and needs into consideration when you’re choosing your quantitative metrics, there are some common sales enablement KPIs that are important and worth tracking no matter what.

Let’s go over the key sales metrics now.

Win rate: The percentage of won deals out of the total number of deals pursued.

This important metric is the number one indicator of your sales team’s efficiency in turning opportunities into revenue and the primary sales target for any business. Tracking your win rate helps you ensure the quota attainment and identify where there’s room for improvement and how effective your sales enablement strategy is, so you can continuously optimize your process.

Deal size: The average size of a closed deal in terms of monetary value or total revenue.

Bigger deal sizes = more revenue. When implemented successfully, your sales enablement strategy should increase the value of your deal sizes. The average deal size will also greatly affect your choice of sales strategies.

Sales cycle length: The average length of time between the initial contact with a prospect to the final close date.

Shorter sales cycles are a great indicator of high efficiency in your sales process. Tracking the length of your sales cycles as one of your sales KPIs, and identifying where the bottlenecks are will help you determine what types of sales enablement approaches or materials can move things along, so you can streamline your team’s process.

Customer lifetime value: Estimated total net profit generated from a single customer over the course of their relationship with the company.

It is always easier to retain and upgrade existing customers compared to acquiring new ones. So, increasing your customers’ lifetime value will always be more profitable for your company in the long run.

Tracking customer lifetime value will keep it top of mind for you, and ensure you and your team are focused on actions that will strengthen loyalty.

Sales rep productivity:  Measure of a salesperson’s efficiency, quantified by either the number of closed won deals, or the generated revenue amount.

Training and coaching is a big part of sales enablement. Tracking sales productivity will not only assess individual sales rep performance, but it will also help you identify top performers. Analyzing what they do better compared to their teammates can lead to valuable findings which can help sales leaders improve the entire team.

Leading indicators for sales enablement

Leading indicators are metrics that predict future performance, as opposed to lagging indicators which are often outcome-focused. Applied to sales enablement, leading indicators are helpful in identifying areas for improvement, so you can course-correct before it is too late.

They will not only help you have a better idea of what sales enablement methods to implement, but will also give you quicker insights into how well your sales enablement strategy is working.

Below are a few of the top leading indicators for sales enablement success.

• Pipeline velocity: Refers to how fast deals move through your sales pipeline. In most cases, an increase in pipeline velocity is a positive change.
• Sales activity: Quantifiable actions that your sales team takes, like the number of calls, emails, and meetings.
• Sales training completion: The percentage of your sales reps who complete your predetermined training and coaching programs.
• Content engagement: The number of times, and length of time your prospects engage with your supportive sales collateral.

Pro Tip: Flowla’s platform gives you detailed insights into which prospect has viewed which material when, how many times, and how long.

This not only gives you a more accurate measure on one of your most important leading indicators, but can also tell you which materials are more effective so you can improve your sales process.

Learn more about flow insights here.

By keeping track of these leading indicators, your sales enablement team can identify potential issues further ahead, and take the necessary actions to optimize your sales processes.

The importance of measuring sales enablement

Measuring sales enablement is critical for a company - it helps revenue teams recognize the areas for improvement and make data-driven decisions, which ultimately result in driving revenue growth. 

Other ways measuring sales enablement can help you are:

Better resource allocation: This can help you understand which sales enablement tools, content, and methods are the most effective, so you can allocate your resources more efficiently.

Optimizing your sales process: Tracking metrics like win rate and sales cycle length help you identify friction points, so you can streamline your process.

Improving customer experience: More qualitative or customer-focused sales enablement metrics like customer feedback and engagement metrics can help you improve your customers’ experience, increase loyalty, and better your reputation, which will turn into more revenue in the long run.

The insights gained from tracking sales enablement can help companies stay competitive and adapt to changing market conditions.

Conclusion

Tracking the right sales enablement metrics can be critical in helping you optimize your sales processes and driving more revenue. It should be top of mind for every salesperson and revenue leader to take the time to measure the actions and results of sales enablement efforts to then be able to make data-driven decisions.

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