Sales Enablement vs Revenue Enablement

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Sales Enablement vs. Revenue Enablement: What’s the Difference?

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Sales reps are no longer the primary channel for B2B customers. They are part of a broader ecosystem, all working together to serve customers’ needs to buy what they want, when they want – where they want it. A customer may start on a website, reach out to their sales rep and then purchase with a customer service rep over the phone.

That means distributors need to rethink how they serve their customers so that the experience is consistent, no matter where they shop and buy.

They need to move from sales enablement to revenue enablement. That may sound like switching from jelly to jam, but it describes a total overhaul in how distributors approach their customer-facing business functions. 

It’s a way for distributors to move those functions – from sales to customer service to marketing – out of their dusty old siloes and into a cohesive, company-wide workflow that vastly improves the customer experience.

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The difference between sales enablement and revenue enablement 

The key difference between sales and revenue enablement is that while sales enablement focuses on the seller, revenue enablement focuses on the customer, according to research firm Gartner. 

Sales enablement efforts typically consist of equipping sales reps with the tools they need to, well, make more sales — which is great and necessary. But sales enablement alone doesn’t quite position distributors to meet customers’ expectations of a smooth, straightforward buyer journey. 

Revenue enablement, meanwhile, is about centering and meeting those expectations by making sure that sales reps, customer service reps, marketers and other customer-facing team members have easy access to vital, up-to-date product and customer information, as well as the tools to put that information to good use across the buyer journey.  

When everyone is on the same page, each step of the customer experience is consistent, which in turn increases loyalty and opens opportunities for more revenue. In fact, a Gartner survey found that companies that pivot to revenue enablement are at least 75% more likely to exceed targets for categories like seller revenue, cross-sell/upsell, and revenue growth.

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What a Revenue Enablement Ecosystem looks like:

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‍The importance of consistency 

Let’s say for the sake of a simple example that a restaurant owner is looking to buy salt and pepper shakers. She goes to her supplier’s website and finds shakers that look good, but it’s not clear from the listed specs if they would fit in the table caddies the restaurant uses. 

The restaurant owner calls up her sales rep, who looks up the shakers in question and gives a description that seems to conflict with the description on the website. The sales rep tries his best to sort through the discrepancy, and the owner eventually decides to buy the shakers anyway. Unfortunately, when they arrive, it’s clear that they won’t fit. The owner calls customer support, and the support rep says that, as far as they know, their company doesn’t even offer those shakers. 

If this happened, it’s safe to say that the restaurant owner would not be very satisfied with her experience.

This happens when customer-facing teams aren’t aligned. It’s one thing for a customer to have an issue with an order; it’s another thing altogether when the people tasked with helping the customer don’t seem to be communicating with each other or even using the same information. Customers end up confused, frustrated, and unlikely to continue buying from that distributor. 

Standard sales enablement tools could have helped the sales rep in this scenario anticipate the restaurant owner’s need for new salt and pepper shakers and reach out to make a proactive sale. But they wouldn’t have done much to address the cross-team inconsistencies that hurt customer loyalty and spend in the long term.

Who can see and measure Revenue Enablement Impact?

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The path to revenue enablement

So how can a distributor shift its focus to revenue enablement? It starts with technology. Think about the various systems that a modern distributor uses to perform its business functions: enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM), inventory management, and more. 

Every time a customer-facing rep has to hop from one system to another, it increases the chances of something slipping through the cracks and causing an inconsistent customer experience. Using a revenue enablement platform that centralizes critical data, distributors can greatly increase efficiency while improving customer satisfaction. 

Talent development is an important factor, too. When a distributor decides to focus on revenue enablement, it’s not just the data that needs to be de-siloed. Sales reps need to understand what customer service reps do and vice versa. They need to speak the same language. Hiring should target candidates with diverse customer-facing skillsets, and the training process should emphasize and develop those skillsets. 

Of course, it is easier said than done. But companies that commit now will hold a major advantage over distributors that cling to outmoded approaches to customer-facing operations.

Making the leap to revenue enablement

Interested in focusing on revenue enablement, but not sure where to start? We’d be happy to help. Reach out to us today to learn more about revenue enablement and how our easy-to-use platform can help your company improve its focus on the customer. 

Sources Mentioned & References:

• Gartner: What Shifting to Revenue Enablement Can Do for Your Organization.
• Gartner Newsroom: How Revenue Enablement Helps Sales Organizations Exceed Performance Targets.
• Forrester: Revenue Enablement: Why Forrester Has Made the Change.

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Keywords: Sales enablement vs. Revenue enablement; Difference between sales enablement and revenue enablement, what is revenue enablement, revenue enablement platforms