Whether you’re starting from scratch or trying to improve an outdated system, Sales and Marketing Intelligence should never be an afterthought. If you want to stand out and stay successful in a competitive market, you need to put your sales enablement strategy front and center.
In this guide, we’ll walk through the seven steps to building a strong sales enablement plan, followed by ways to analyze and improve your efforts over time. Let’s get started.
What Is Sales Enablement?
Sales enablement is all about giving your sales team what they need to succeed. This can include training, tools, content, and other resources. The goal is simple: Help your sales reps close more deals and serve customers better.
Creating a successful sales enablement strategy takes effort. You’ll need input from different teams, the right software tools, and a lot of content. Many companies start small by helping individual reps as needed. But over time, most realize they need a more organized and consistent approach.
7 Steps to a Winning Sales Enablement Strategy
Step 1: Set Clear, Measurable Goals
The first step is to know what success looks like. Without clear goals, it’s hard to know if your strategy is working.
Common sales enablement goals include:
- Increasing win rates against competitors
- Raising average deal size
- Improving how many leads turn into closed deals
- Shortening the sales cycle
- Tracking how often sales content is used and if it helps close deals
Having clear goals helps you focus your time and resources where they matter most.
Step 2: Assign Clear Roles and Responsibilities
Sales enablement often involves people from multiple teams. It’s important to know who’s doing what.
One way to organize this is by using a RACI matrix:
- Responsible: The person doing the work (like creating a presentation or writing a sales guide)
- Accountable: The person who makes sure the work gets done properly and on time
- Consulted: People who give input or advice (usually sales managers)
- Informed: People who need to stay updated but aren’t directly involved (like senior leadership)
This kind of structure helps prevent confusion and keeps everyone aligned.
Step 3: Get Everyone On Board
For sales enablement to work, your team needs to believe in it—especially your sales reps and company leaders.
Here’s how to build support:
- Tie your efforts to your company’s main goals
- Build relationships with people at all levels
- Share early wins to show value quickly
- Keep people involved through team meetings or shared workspaces
- Celebrate success and reward progress
- Be honest about how much you can handle
Start small. If your sales reps lost many deals to one specific competitor recently, build your first enablement project around that. Show how you can help solve a real problem.
Step 4: Create Helpful Sales Content
Sales enablement content helps reps close deals faster and more confidently. Good content can also help buyers feel more informed and comfortable.
Types of sales content can include:
- Battlecards (quick-reference guides about your competitors)
- Sales scripts or talk tracks
- Email templates
- Product one-pagers
- Case studies and success stories
- Objection handling documents
Focus on content that reps actually use during different stages of the sales process. And make sure it’s useful both for new reps and experienced ones.
Step 5: Make Content Easy to Find and Use
Even the best content is useless if your team can’t find it when they need it.
To fix this, build a simple, searchable system where reps can access everything. You might use a shared drive, a sales enablement platform, or a CRM tool.
You also need to explain:
- What each piece of content is for
- When to use it
- Where to find it
Some tools, like Crayon, help teams organize and share content like battlecards, alerts, and sales dashboards—all in one place.
Step 6: Track Your Results
Now it’s time to go back to those goals you set in Step 1. Are you hitting your targets?
Look at things like:
- How often reps are using sales content
- If win rates are improving
- Whether deals are closing faster
- If training is making reps more confident
If something isn’t working, don’t panic. That brings us to the next step…
Step 7: Keep Improving
No sales enablement plan is perfect. There will always be things to improve.
Some content won’t get used much. Some tools might be confusing. And sometimes your ideas just won’t have the impact you hoped for.
The key is to learn from what’s not working—and fix it.
How to Analyze and Improve Your Strategy
Here are three ways to figure out where your sales enablement plan needs a boost:
1. Funnel Leak Analysis
Look at where in the sales process people drop off. Are you losing leads before they book a demo? Or after they see a demo?
- If people leave early, focus on better outreach tools, discovery call scripts, or emails.
- If they leave late, you may need better product presentations or follow-up materials.
2. Sales Content Usage
Keep an eye on what content your reps are actually using.
- If a piece of content gets used often and leads to more closed deals—great!
- If something rarely gets used, ask reps why. Maybe it needs a redesign, a better explanation, or maybe it just isn’t helpful.
Also, have regular chats with your sales team. Their feedback is just as valuable as your data.
3. Win/Loss Analysis
Study your wins and losses.
- What helps your reps win deals?
- Why do they lose?
- Are reps now better at explaining why your product is better than the competition?
If your reps used to lose deals because they couldn’t show what made your product special—but now they win more often for that same reason—that’s a good sign your enablement efforts are working.
Final Thoughts: Start Small, Stay Focused, and Keep Growing
Sales enablement isn’t about doing everything at once. It’s about building a program that helps your team succeed—one step at a time.
Use the seven steps in this guide to build your foundation. Track your progress. Make smart changes when things don’t work. And always listen to your sales team—they’re the ones out there using the tools you create.
If you’re looking for a tool to help along the way, platforms like Crayon can make it easier to organize your content, track success, and help your reps close more deals.
Sales enablement done right can be a game-changer for your company. So why not start building a smarter strategy today?
