Has your sales team hit the wall? Are you having trouble getting the right people on board? Does it seem like your sales, marketing, human resources, and product development teams are speaking different languages? Is it taking too long to get to revenue?

If you have any of these problems, you might be in need of a sales enablement expert. Sales enablement is more than just training. Enablement is about changing the whole sales culture from recruiting to onboarding to decreasing the time to revenue to increasing rep productivity.

Roderick Jefferson has been a sales enablement expert for over twenty years, teaching, training, and turning around the sales cultures of established giants like Marketo, Oracle, Salesforce, and PayPal as well as many, many small and mid-sized companies. Recently, his excellent work was recognized with the award of Leading Sales Consultant in 2018 by SellingPower. Previously, he was recognized as Sales Onboarding Program of the Year by SiriusDecisions in 2015, beating out over 280 companies.

Jefferson took time out of his busy consulting schedule to chat with me about sales enablement.

Not a quick fix

Sales enablement is not a quick fix. Sales enablement consultants do not come in to “fix” broken things. That’s for IT specialists. Jefferson said enablement is about getting the whole organization into alignment. His consulting firm works with small and mid-sized companies to improve the sales experience from recruiting new hires to increasing close sales rates.

Holistic process

Sales enablement is a holistic process. It begins with recruiting the right people, onboarding them properly, and teaching them how to collaborate with other lines of business, including marketing, human resources, and product development.

Jefferson said the process goes in both directions—top down and bottom up, looking at leadership and salespeople—making sure the right people are in the right roles. In the long term, it’s about creating the best delivery mechanisms that are scalable and repeatable and will ultimately lead to increased revenue for your company.

For mature and hyper-growth companies

Sales enablement works for both mature and growing companies. In hyper-growth companies, Jefferson shows how to get people up to speed faster, cutting down the time to revenue. In mature companies, enablement is more about organizational alignment and getting salespeople on the same page as the customer.

Enhanced by technology

Technology has improved sales enablement. Jefferson explained content management systems are automating the processes that used to be manual. He sees artificial intelligence playing a greater role in sales coaching. Not only can automated systems record sales calls, but intelligent systems will help monitor and target the areas that need to be worked on right away.

To learn more about how sales enablement can help your company grow, contact BigSpeak Speakers Bureau today to book Roderick Jefferson.

Kyle Crocco is the Content Marketing Coordinator at BigSpeak Speakers Bureau, a graduate of UC Santa Barbara, and the lead singer of Duh Professors. He regularly publishes business book reviews and thought articles on Medium, Business 2 Community, and Born 2 Invest.