What’s the Difference Between Training and Enablement ?

The responsibility of your sales department is all about closing deals to boost the organization’s revenue. However, it would help if you empowered them to make these tasks easier for them to achieve. 

Talking about employee empowerment, sales leaders often invest in a sales training and enablement programs for their sales department to improve sales performance. While many sales managers may see these two business terms as the same, there are certain differences between them.

In business, we can use sales training and enablement interchangeably. This is because they both have the same end goal: to improve the sales reps’ performance in the sales organization. But a clear distinction could be seen in how they help achieve the end goals.

In this article, we’ll make you understand these popular business lingos and how they’re different. We’ll also help you decide which is right for your company to prioritize to empower the sales team in your organization.

Definition of sales training and sales enablement

To clearly understand how sales training differs from sales enablement, you first need to learn about both separately. When you know what each term means and stands for, it becomes less complicated to compare them side-by-side and weigh their importance on a scale of preference. Learning about sales training and enablement separately would also make you understand how they are complementary. 

With this in mind, we’ll get to the bottom of sales training first and then sales enablement.

What is Sales Training?

The definition of sales training is quite straightforward, and many sales professionals do not have an issue understanding this concept. Simply put, the process of providing sales reps with formal training to improve their selling skills and techniques needed to create better sales opportunities and close more deals for an organization is what sales training is all about. 

To make this definition more understandable, let’s think of sales training as a sales course (virtual or classroom training) that sales reps have to enroll in to become better at their job. An example of sales training could be a week-long hands-on course on ‘the ultimate guide to virtual sales’ with expert sales leaders as facilitators. Sales reps would learn how to sell their product or service to remote customers.

Sales training programs generally aim to improve the relationships between sales reps and their clients, improve the sales performance of sales professionals and increase their close rates. The training programs are often meant for sales professionals, sales managers, sales force automation professionals, and other professionals involved in the marketing and sales of a product or service. 

To learn about the advantages of sales training and the differences between sales training and sales coaching click here.

What is Sales Enablement?

Sales enablement is providing your salespeople with all the resources that will enable them to sell more effectively. These resources include the sales information, content, tools needed to engage their target clients, and key metrics to track sales performance.

Unlike sales training which focuses on developing your salespeople’s skills and knowledge to drive more sales, sales enablement focuses on creating an ecosystem that supports the success of the sales department in your organization. In addition, sales enablement also encompasses the key metrics and performance indicators that allow sales reps to track sales performance.

The general objective of sales enablement is to help sales professionals put into practice the knowledge, skills, and techniques they learn through sales training programs. Thus, enablement drives the sales performance of the entire organization. 

In the same example of a sales training course above, sales enablement allows salespeople to harness what they learned in ‘the ultimate guide to virtual sales.’ In addition, it would help them apply that knowledge to create a winning virtual sales strategy strong enough to close more sales in the virtual marketing landscape. Sales enablement also aids the functions of your sales department by providing them with the exact resources your buyers want. 

In a nutshell, sales training teaches sales reps skills and knowledge about creating and exploring sales opportunities. In contrast, sales enablement ensures that skills and knowledge taught are being transferred into knowledge applied after a sales training class is over.

Which is Right for Your Company?

Sales training and enablement are two interrelated concepts but with two separate functions. The formal concept is more about sales skills and knowledge acquisition, while the latter is all about applying the skills and knowledge acquired to your organization’s sales process.

Without the right skills and knowledge to drive sales, even the most enabling ecosystem will fail to support your sales department’s success. Likewise, a sales rep is more likely to forget the knowledge acquired during sales training if there’s no enabling workspace to support the application of that knowledge. These two business terms complement each other.

Conclusion

Sales training and enablement should not be viewed by sales leaders or sales managers from the lens of which one is better. Instead, combining the functions of the two concepts together would be best to provide a solid footing that’ll help improve your sales performance and boost your sales conversion rates significantly.

Did you enjoying reading this article? If you did, you might also want to check out our other articles like our ultimate guide to virtual sales and our guide on sales training for managers.

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