Enterprise sales play an important role in many organizations’ growth strategies. That’s not surprising. Enterprise deals are typically large, which means even a single deal can significantly impact revenue growth.
While the benefits of enterprise sales are clear, navigating these deals isn’t easy. Sales reps must contend with large (and growing) buying committees, long sales cycles, evolving markets, shrinking budgets, and many other challenges.
With enterprise sales enablement, your sales reps can overcome these challenges, deliver engaging experiences to each buyer, and, ultimately, close more enterprise deals.
In this post, we’ll explore:
- What is enterprise selling?
- What are the key challenges of enterprise sales?
- What is the importance of enterprise sales enablement?
- What is enterprise selling?
B2B sales enablement is key to enterprise sales success. But what exactly is enterprise sales enablement?
Let’s break it down.
Enterprise selling defined
First things first: what is enterprise sales?
Enterprise sales involves selling products and services to large companies, often called enterprises.
Enterprise sales are often referred to as complex sales. That makes sense, as enterprise deals involve a lot of complexity, including longer sales cycles and large buying committees. We’ll explore some of these challenges and complexities in more detail later.
Enterprise sales enablement, defined
Mindtickle defines sales enablement as “a practice that provides members of the sales team with learning, content, and tools that allow them to succeed at their job.”
Enterprise sales enablement supports sales reps who engage with enterprise organizations. With enterprise sales enablement, sales reps can build the skills and behaviors needed to be successful in enterprise SaaS sales. With the right sales enablement, these enterprise sales reps can close more deals faster.
Today, the impact of sales enablement is well understood. According to the 2024-2025 Chief Revenue Officer + Sales Leader Outlook Report, the vast majority – 84% – of organizations invest in a sales enablement department.
According the resaerch,
Yet many organizations continue to take a one-size-fits-all approach to sales enablement. They build and deliver generic sales enablement initiatives that may or may not address sellers’ needs. Often, this is because organizations don’t know what those needs are. The same report found that just 40% of C-level executives can identify rep strengths and weaknesses for customized training.
According to the same research, only
Enterprise sales enablement must be personalized to be effective. The first step is to determine the skills and behaviors enterprise sales reps need to be successful in your organization. Then, the enablement team can develop and deliver initiatives to help each rep hone those skills.
What are the challenges of enterprise sales?
Enterprise sales deliver many benefits to revenue organizations. For starters, these deals are often large, which boosts revenue. In addition, adding recognizable enterprise logos to your client roster can increase your credibility, which will help you build trust with other large organizations.
But enterprise SaaS sales also presents a whole host of challenges. A generic sales playbook may not address these challenges.
Some of the top enterprise sales challenges include:
Change #1: Large (and growing) buying committees
Many people are involved in enterprise sales, and that number continues to grow. Per the Gartner B2B Buying Report, the typical B2B enterprise buying group includes as many as 11 stakeholders. Those stakeholders represent an average of five different business functions.
The typical B2B enterprise buying group includes
Each stakeholder has different priorities and different requests. Meeting the expectations of each of these stakeholders can be a lot for a B2B sales rep to juggle.
Challenge #2: Long sales cycles
The sales cycle can take weeks or months when selling to small businesses, or it can take days.
The enterprise sales cycle typically takes much longer. It can take several months or even a year to close a deal.
Keeping everything on track and buyers engaged during such a lengthy sales cycle is challenging.
Furthermore, your chosen sales methodology may not be the right fit for long sales cycles.
Challenge #3: Constant change
Because enterprise sales cycles are long, change is guaranteed. Members of the buying committee may leave the company, while others are added. Customers’ needs and budgets can change. Your products and pricing (as well as that of your competitors) may change. A sales rep assigned to an enterprise account may leave their position for another company.
It can be tough to stay on top of rapid change and adapt accordingly to keep buyers engaged.
Challenge #4: Fierce competition
Competitors present challenges to all sellers. Enterprise sales reps are no exception.
Enterprise sales reps must understand their competitors’ offerings well and be prepared to overcome customers’ objections.
What is the importance of enterprise sales enablement?
Why is sales enablement important for enterprises? In short, it positively impacts customers’ experiences and sales performance.
With a strong enterprise sales enablement strategy, sellers are equipped to deliver outstanding experiences that meet customers’ expectations. This is key to closing more deals.
Let’s look at some of the key benefits of enterprise sales enablement.
Alignment between sales and marketing teams
A top goal of sales and marketing teams alike is to increase sales. But often, the two teams work in silos. Sales and marketing often have little visibility into each other’s goals and priorities, and they act as advisors rather than partners.
Enterprise sales enablement must be a cross-functional effort that requires sales and marketing alignment. When these two teams work together, the company can achieve its sales goals faster.
Content that resonates with customers
B2B buyers rely on content to make informed purchase decisions. A recent survey found that over half of B2B buyers now rely on sales content more than they did in the past.
But generic content won’t cut it. Modern enterprise buyers expect personalized content that’s relevant to their needs.
With enterprise sales enablement, sellers can easily access content that will resonate with each buyer – wherever they are in the sales cycle. In addition, sales enablement teams can deliver training to ensure enterprise sellers know how and when to use the available content.
Tailored training and enablement for each rep
Your enterprise sales reps need certain skills and competencies to be successful in their roles. Documenting these must-have skills is foundational to any sales enablement strategy.
Once you’ve documented your ideal rep profile, you can measure your enterprise sales reps against it. That way, you can identify their strengths and weaknesses and deliver personalized training that addresses the needs of each sales rep.
Personalized coaching to improve sales skills
Sales coaching is a key pillar of any B2B sales enablement program. It’s also a proven, powerful tool for improving enterprise sales rep performance.
But generic sales coaching isn’t effective. Sales coaching must be customized to the needs of each seller.
With the right B2B sales enablement tools, sales managers can identify each seller’s strengths and weaknesses. Then, enterprise sales reps can receive customized coaching that’ll help them strengthen lagging skills.
Insights to inform next steps and improve sales outcomes
Enterprise sales cycles are often quite long. It can be challenging for sellers to determine what steps to take to keep buyers engaged – and when to do so.
A winning sales enablement program—complete with an integrated sales enablement platform—equips sales teams with insights they can use to determine the next best step in any deal. Today, some sales enablement platforms use AI to deliver data-based recommendations.
For example, B2B sales enablement software can capture much data about how customers interact with different pieces of sales content and how (or whether) this content impacts sales outcomes. The sales enablement platform can analyze this data and data about the specific customer to suggest content that will resonate with the buyer.
Increased customer engagement
B2B buyers have high expectations for outstanding buying experiences. An integrated sales enablement program ensures sellers have the knowledge, tools, and resources to deliver experiences that meet those expectations. This increases customer engagement and the likelihood of the prospect making a purchase.
Build an entire team of top enterprise sellers with enterprise sales enablement
Enterprise sales can be lucrative. But these complex deals are also challenging.
Sales reps must develop the right skills to succeed in enterprise sales. Enterprise sales enablement ensures your teams have what they need to engage customers and close more enterprise deals.
A solid enterprise sales enablement strategy requires the right technology.
Today, many technologies address a single pillar of sales enablement – for example, sales content management. However, a better option is to choose an integrated solution that incorporates all the key pillars of sales enablement.
Mindtickle is an integrated revenue productivity solution incorporating all essential sales enablement components. With Mindtickle, sales reps have easy access to training, coaching, enablement, and sales content – all from one platform. In addition, sales teams have access to robust insights that can help them determine what steps to take to keep deals on track – and moving toward the finish line. Sales managers also have visibility into their reps’ in-field performance so they can identify where additional coaching is needed.
Enterprise Sales Enablement with Mindtickle
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By Rahul Mathew
By Christian Pieper