6 steps to revenue enablement

When sales, marketing, and customer success functions are not aligned, the buyer experience can suffer. Removing silos and refocusing business processes and KPIs around revenue (and the buyer!) can make a huge difference. Although the term ‘revenue enablement’ could sound like an inward-looking approach, in practice, when done effectively it focuses teams on providing a better customer experience. Indeed, Gartner suggests that three key areas benefiting from such an approach are consistency, alignment, and visibility¹.

A recent research study by Ice Blue Sky, Nebula’s Revenue Enablement Partner, has revealed specific challenges a revenue enablement model can help tech companies address, and ways in which businesses following this approach can create clear differentiation from their competitors.

70% senior B2B leaders in the technology sector feel removing friction and inconsistency from the buyer journey is a key driver for implementing revenue enablement.

Here are six steps to get you on track for a successful transition to revenue enablement:

Step 1: Analyse your current state

Identifying where the buyer journey may be less than smooth is essential for deciding how to make improvements. Misalignments can occur due to conflicting team culture, use of uncoordinated tools, access to different data, and variation in priorities and processes.

Typical challenges include:

• • Fragmented customer experience

• • Customer engagement, retention, and lifecycle value (CLV)

• • Inconsistent messaging or information provided to the customer

Step 2: Understand your business case

When you know the scale of the disconnects and gaps in your current set-up you can create a strategic roadmap with a realistic timeline. Mapping and costing your opportunity space will enable you to prioritise initial interventions that will achieve ROI fast.  

Step 3: Define your pilot

Start with the simpler ‘quick wins’ for your pilot phase. Defining the scope of these will help you get a handle on cross-functional roles and responsibilities, process efficiencies, appropriate budgets, and where any risks lie.

Step 4: Present your business case

C-level ownership of the revenue enablement project is essential, and to ensure buy-in, a robust business case is needed. This must show how the pilot, and future stages, align with the organisation’s strategic goals. Use the analyses from Steps 1 & 2 for supporting evidence.

Step 5: Deliver your pilot

Whether your pilot involves alignment of sales and marketing through an account-based marketing programme, or buyer-led post-purchase processes which align sales and customer success, it’s crucial to establish success metrics, reporting schedules, and business cases for the next stages.

Step 6: Create a collaborative culture and shared mindset

As part of your pilot, get everyone on the same page through education to ensure individuals understand the importance of their actions to the customer journey. Alignment of metrics and priorities for the entire buying process focuses efforts for business success.

Research showed that most tech businesses are not yet using a revenue enablement model, in part because of challenges around company culture and internal alignment changes.  

A revenue enablement function with a clear executive owner and alignment of sales, marketing, and customer success functions was only seen in 15% of businesses surveyed.

However, when revenue enablement is implemented effectively, it can drive better customer relationships and enables businesses to create more relevant deals, resulting in increased win rates and reduced sales cycle length. A further benefit is the way in which revenue enablement impacts a customer success experience, increasing customer loyalty and therefore influencing a stronger, strategic, and intrinsic partnership.

Discussing revenue enablement with Francesca Beddow, Director, Ice Blue Sky, who led the research, she commented: “Revenue enablement is a win-win for the customer and the organisation adopting this strategic and practical approach. By placing the customer at the heart of your operations the customer has a frictionless journey that delivers on their desired outcomes, and the organisation increases customer lifecycle value and creates synergies in servicing the customer. My top tip would be to spend the time to understand the customer journey and how this can be improved and delivered through a series of smaller interlinked projects.”  

With the six steps above as your starting point, you too can get ahead of the game, and start to enjoy the seamless buyer and seller experiences that come from revenue enablement