Sales Enablement Maturity Model

1. Sales Enablement Maturity Model Sales Enablement Stage 1: Undefined Stage 2: Progressive Stage 3: Mature Stage 4: World-Class Orientation No defined, evaluated or implemented Sales Enablement functions or applications. Operational in nature, reacting to requests. Loosely defined function in place for less than two years. Working from a plan, balanced between strategic and operational. Defined function in place for 3+ years. Highly strategic orientation, documented plans in place. Defined Sales Enablement function in place for 5+ years. Leadership No perceived need for sales enablement. No funding or dedicated staff. Senior management view Sales Enablement as one of many success factors. Funding available for small pilot projects for testing. Sales Enablement a key corporate function. Major initiatives funded, dedicated staff & budget. Sales Enablement a critical success factor driving revenue and growth. Fully funded and supported by senior management. Technology/ Infrastructure No CRM, Marketing Automation, Knowledge Management or other Sales Enablement applications in place. Sales reps use their own systems and technology to support their sales efforts. CRM and/or Marketing Automation in place with 80%+ rep adoption. Exploring Sales Enablement applications such as playbooks, portals, CPQ, etc. Marketing Automation & CRM are highly integrated and Sales Enablement applications are being used. Defined process for testing and integrating new applications in place. Mature, integrated Sales Enablement infrastructure in place built on a CRM platform with multiple applications integrated & adopted. Reporting available in one interface. Alignment Marketing and sales operate in distrinct silos with minimal alignment on goals and activities. Typical ‘hand-off’ style working relationship. Some marketing/sales alignment forming on key processes such as lead scoring, no shared revenue responsibilities yet. Able to ‘coordinate’ efforts like follow up on campaigns. Marketing/sales & others ‘collaborate’ on multiple processes to generate revenues. SLAs and/or standard definition for SQLs in place. Goals set for contribution to pipeline. Cross-functional SE group formed with leaders from all departments. Shared revenue responsibilites. Compensation may be tied to revenue growth. Sales Support Tools No formal support or tools for asset management, CPQ, communication or other tools. No centralized portal for collateral (email templates, proposals, playbooks, etc.) Reps expected to create their own sales support material. Basic asset management and/or sales portal with collateral, manual CPQ, conferencing tools provided. May have manual sales playbooks, sales intelligence data sources, competitive analysis info, formal product training. Extensible platform supports MRM, asset management with ratings, feedback and version control, sales performance/ incentive management, CPQ, conferencing, playbooks integrated with CRM, field presentation tools for tablets, etc. Sales organization fully supported across entire sales cycle from lead generation to quoting and contracting. Reporting and feedback effectively drive development of sales support infrastructure. Surveys held regularly to solicit feedback and ideas. Processes No formal lead generation or sales opportunity management process; Sales process & buying processes are not defined. Sales process defined but not mapped to buying process. Opportunity management is ad hoc and unreliable for forecasting. No sales enablement processes established yet. Formal lead acquisition process, solid opportunity management, Sales process mapped to buying process, defined process for sales enablement including strategy planning. Lead scoring & nurturing, content mapped to buying and sales process by persona & journey maps, prioritization of sales enablement strategy plan is done regularly. Metrics Sales enablement success metrics unknown and not tracked. Revenue ($) tracked but not necessarily tied to goals. Lead quality and scoring is unknown and not tracked. Metrics in place to measure effectiveness such as #opportunities, sales productivity metrics, #leads generated, CPL in some cases known. No regular monitoring, reports pulled ad hoc when results not desirable. Known success metrics for top performing reps. Cost of acquisition (CAC) known, #downloads from portals, CRM adoption rate, cost per opportunity measured. Reports monitored and reviewed at regular intervals (weekly, monthly, quarterly, annually). Marketing ROI, TCO, age of opportunities, customer lifetime value, retention rate, pipeline velocity, reps have visibility into team’s productivity & performance metrics (may be gamified inside of CRM), closed loop reporting system for all campaigns and metrics. Results New reps hit quota in 9-12 months. 30-50% of new sales hired unsuccessful. Opportunity win rate is less than 10%. Revenue growth rate is less than 10%. New reps hit quota in 6-9 months. 20-30% of new sales hires unsuccessful. Opportunity win rate is 10-15%. Revenue growth rate is 10-20%. New reps hit quota in 4-6 months. 10-20% of new sales hires unsuccessful. Opportunity win rate is 15-20%. Revenue growth rate is 20-40%. New reps hit quota in 3-4 months. Less than 10% of new sales hires are unsuccessful. Opportunity win rate is 20%+. Revenue growth rate is 40%+. Sales Enablement Maturity Model