The truth is that no two organizations are exactly alike, and the same could be said for enablement programs. Each organization has its unique culture and structure, and an enablement program must align with that to be effective. Therefore, it is important for enablement programs and practitioners to define their function within their respective companies. To do this, practitioners should ask a few questions. First, what is my company’s sales enablement definition? Second, how does it align with our overall strategy? Lastly, how will it help us reach our goals?
Once you've answered those questions, the next step would be to create a formal enablement charter.
What is an enablement charter?
The charter should be written with input from all stakeholders of the enablement program, including members of leadership and middle management, as well as individuals responsible for delivering content to sales teams.
You should also consider how you want to measure success when creating your charter. This will help determine which metrics need to be tracked and reported regularly so that there is no question about whether things are going according to plan.
Things to include in your enablement charter
When creating your enablement program charter, you should remember the following:
● Define the goals of your enablement program. What are you trying to achieve? What is its purpose? What teams are you supporting (sales, customer success, sales leadership, marketing, etc.)? Are there any specific metrics that need to be met for success to be achieved (e.g., closed deal volume, customer satisfaction score)?
● Define the roles and responsibilities of those involved in the enablement process. Who will be responsible for what tasks and deliverables? What do they bring to their role (experience level, education level)? How often will they interact with other members of the team?
● Define the metrics you will use to measure success. This can include things like revenue generated by each member of your organization (salespeople and sales leaders), the average number of deals closed per month/quarter/year since starting work on a project, onboarding completion totals, changes to new hire ramp time, program survey scores, or customer retention rate after implementation of new processes or technologies (which may indicate a positive impact from enabling activities).
What are the benefits of defining enablement for your organization?
Once you have a clear definition of enablement, you can use it to:
● Create a shared vision for the organization. It will help everyone in your team understand what success looks like and why they're working together. Best of all, the definition of enablement will be defined.
● Guide the team on how best to achieve that success. By clearly understanding their roles and responsibilities in achieving enablement success, each enablement team member can take a step back from their specific tasks and see how they fit into the bigger picture of achieving that goal.
● Increase accountability among team members. Understanding the program metrics helps team members plan for how they will help the program meet its target goals. This ensures each person understands their role in enabling others' success and their responsibilities, which are tied directly back into supporting an overall vision or objective (this is particularly important when teams are distributed geographically).
● Build and strengthen internal partnerships. Almost all enablement programs depend on on interdepartmental partnerships to meet their goals. Whether that is working with Marketing on collateral and content management.; working with product teams to create product training or working with Operations to create dashboards in the CRM. Internal partnerships are a vital part of a successful enablement program. The charter will help to clarify the responsibilities of these partnerships and how they impact the overall program.
As you can see, having an enablement charter is key to ensuring a clear definition of enablement within your organization. Taking the time to understand how enablement is seen in your organization will help o outline your role and how you can help the business meet its goals.