How to Drive Sales and Marketing Alignment in an Enablement Role

The COVID crisis has demonstrated the importance of alignment between businesses, customers, and goals. Pre-pandemic, however, many organizations were able to achieve their top-level numbers without addressing major problems. To tackle alignment issues along the buyer journey, sales enablement leaders need to focus on two dimensions: horizontal and vertical alignment. Horizontal alignment requires vertical alignment to be effective, while vertical alignment is about adjusting enablement to align with the buyer journey, the business strategy, and executive sponsors.

The three most critical success factors for effective sales enablement include buyer journey alignment, alignment to business strategy and other strategic initiatives, and senior executive and stakeholder alignment. Buyer journey alignment requires mapping out customer journeys with stakeholders from Marketing, Sales, and Customer Success. Alignment to business and sales strategy is necessary during the enablement charter or business plan creation phase, while senior executive and stakeholder alignment requires clear business messaging and understanding their goals.

Aligning to customer journeys, business and sales strategies, and executive stakeholders is essential for success. This requires skills such as professional selling and mapping out customer journeys with customer experience, Marketing, Sales, and Customer Success teams. For more resources on sales and marketing alignment, check out the accompanying articles.