What sales tools will your organization invest in this year? Each year companies spend up to $13 billion on sales tools and software meant to increase revenue and accelerate the sales process. Specifically, the average company spends $3,894 PER REP per year on sales productivity – and spending for AEs is 17.6% higher (Sales for Life).

Now, it seems that if you are making that kind of investment in your salespeople, the product should be worth your while. However, nearly half of these organizations have no way to measure the effectiveness of that spending or the resulting increase in performance (or lack thereof).

Although 2/5 of companies believe they are putting their biggest initiatives towards training and onboarding, a lack of insight into rep effectiveness and outdated training methods will prevent reps from truly improving over time. At the end of the day, it should not take reps, on average, a full four months to catch on to best practices. While 1/3 of CSOs believe their company’s ability to hire successful reps needs improvement, it is usually the management of training initiatives that needs improvement.

Sales Training, Meet Sales Enablement

By itself, sales training time and time again proves itself ineffective after just a few months, as the information reps learn during training sessions is soon forgotten. Without data to reinforce training, there is sure to be no ROI on your training programs.

With sales enablement, managers can access real-time sales productivity data to enhance training and coaching processes at their organizations. That way, they can train based on data and established best practices, rather than hunches, and hold reps to more accurate standards. Salesforce found that in 2018, high performing teams were 1.5x more likely to base forecasts on data-driven insights, while underperformers were 1.7x more likely to forecast based on gut feeling.

Further, this type of tool allows managers to measure the increase in rep performance, and therefore the ROI of their spending on sales performance. When it comes to spending on sales technology, sales reporting and analytics tools are used by more than two-thirds of sales teams (Salesforce). So, don’t fall behind the competition this year due to a lack of data-driven training and management.

Train to a Standard

Managers; it is time to set benchmarks based on actual numbers and establish a training program based on proven methodology. When the data exists, why would you keep relying on guesswork? To be fully effective, managers must support their training principals with numbers so reps can see exactly where they stand and what it takes to be successful.

Structured training programs fueled by data are a manager’s best asset to increasing the phone-based performance of their team – making sales enablement the most investment-worthy product, in our opinion.

Learn more about how you can increase the performance of your sales team with a sales enablement tool.

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