Is sales readiness & sales enablement the same?

Publish Date: 4th March 2021
Publish By: Sagar Pradhan, Growth Marketer

Today, we are going to talk about Sales readiness and Sales enablement. These terms are often in use interchangeably. Hence there is a lot of confusion. So, today’s blog article is for all those who want to clarify their concepts and learn more about this business’s sales tech part. Let’s initiate by taking a deep dive into the various aspects and better understanding these things.

Is sales-readiness & sales enablement the same?

Sales readiness and sales enablement terms are often in use for one another. The reason can be because these terms are misunderstood as one. But this is not the case; these are two different terms. Why are these two terminologies in trend nowadays? What’s all the confusion?

Companies today are finding new and proven ways to meet their sales quotas and streamline the process. Due to the current work scenarios, there has been a couple of restrictions on performing field sales, meeting in person, visiting the client for updates, and closing deals. Hence, organizations are seeing sales enablement and sales readiness as a solution. 

It is essential to know the differences between these two terms used by sales reps and sales-driven organizations. Let’s begin exploring more on these terms for a better understanding. 

Sales readiness and sales enablement 

Sales enablement involves a broad range of tasks and roles that influence the entire process of sales. The term might hold a different meaning to different organizations. 

Hubspot defines sales enablement as – “Sales enablement is the iterative process of providing your business’s sales team with the resources they need to close more deals. These resources may include content, tools, knowledge, and information to sell your product or service to customers effectively.”

Know more – https://www.hubspot.com/sales-enablement 

Research claims that organizations that use sales enablement have shown better results than those who don’t employ sales enablement and follow the traditional/ conventional ways and methods of performing sales activities.  

Sales readiness, however, is about ensuring that your sales reps have the skills, required knowledge, proper access to content to have significant and smooth interaction with their buyers in the consumer buying journey. The core readiness activities are – quiz, assessments, practice sales pitches, and consuming content for better training. These contribute to the sales reps being more productive, effective, stream the sales operations, and providing positive outcomes. 

The ultimate objective of sales readiness is to help prepare your sales reps to close deals better by handling critical conditions and managing the sales process well. The buyer must be convincing, pitching must be done with accurate product information, understand the feature offerings & feel trusted about the seller’s organization. It is the difference between sales readiness and sales enablement. 

To conclude – sales readiness is a component of sales enablement, which involves getting a solution to the problem. Are your sales reps ready? Sales enablement is a broader concept, which includes – management, communication, and collaboration as well. Awarathon is an exact match for highspot competitors.

Sales readiness is not Sales coaching.

Yes, you heard that right. Sales coaching is an integral part of preparing your sales reps to succeed. It includes parameters like product details, process, methods, handling situations, FAQs, etc. 

But coaching is the first step, whereas the core objective is sales readiness. 

Reading, learning, gaining good subject knowledge is far more different than mastering it. Say, for example, you read books, watch tutorials, and observe gameplays on playing chess. Does this mean that you have now learned it? No, right. Similarly, just because the sales rep has completed his coaching does not mean he/she is now ready to perform live sales. 

And this is precisely where sales readiness comes in. It includes assessments, quizzes, practise pitching, and many more details to monitor your performance before you start doing the live sales process with buyers.  

A work approach driven by sales readiness would equip your sales reps and teams to practice the new messaging independently. This approach will help the sales managers provide constructive feedback/ insightful suggestions to their sales reps to improve where required. The form can then assess if sellers can do real justice to the company in terms of accuracy, consistency of message delivery, and other critical relevant factors before trying out to sell with a buyer. 

To conclude, sales training or sales coaching will not help your sales reps mark their paths towards success. But a sales readiness strategy will do both.

The way towards Sales readiness

To prepare, its sales team needs to put in their work. Sales managers might not have the time or the required skills to train their sales reps. 

Sales reps are not held accountable for implementing what they have learned in their sales training programs. They focus more on achieving sales quotas. Without the learnings brought into action, without streamlining the process, without understanding your buyers, without product understanding, without practising sales pitch, without learning where you lack, is meeting numbers also possible? 

It is where sales-readiness plays a vital role. But it requires organizational commitment. Once a need to change is made, the way is seen clearly.

Building a readiness strategy that ensures reps can make the most of every interaction they have with the buyers. Therefore, even if the organization invests in a sales enablement leader to guide, investing in technology that supports sales cannot be ignored for long term benefits. 

A quick brief about Highspot Competitors

Awarathon is one of the best highspot competitors. Awarathon is a first-of-its-kind AI-enabled video roleplay platform that ensures your sales teams make the perfect pitch. Consistently. It is a dynamic tool for video-roleplay-led sales coaching. Its feature-rich platform goes beyond basic video-roleplay functionality to comprehensively address the needs of a fast-growing sales team.

Our proprietary AI trainer breaks down each element of the perfect sales pitch to provide actionable feedback to reps so that your company’s message is communicated consistently. From body language to gestures to contextual speech intent, the software maps every essential knowledge and skill parameter. Robust, customizable reports help you identify critical gaps and improvement areas. Detailed insights help you address learning needs at a team and rep level in a targeted manner. This makes it one of the best highspot competitors.