Sales enablement is an important function within companies. In fact, "Seventy-three percent of chief sales officers expect their budgets to increase by an average of 16.9 percent in 2022, with the top investment areas to be sales enablement, digital marketing, and sales operations," according to the destinationCRM article "Gartner Eyes Rising Sales Budgets."

With such an increase in outlay, businesses need to ensure a return on investment. Sales Enablement Pro and the Sales Enablement Society's annual Sales Enablement Analytics Report takes an in-depth look at how the sales enablement function measures results in terms of performance, proficiency, and productivity. The third edition of the report offers findings from 300 sales enablement professionals, executive leaders, and senior sales leaders worldwide.

Beginning with performance, at least 60 percent of respondents tracked revenue by product or product line, percentage of revenue from new business, year-over-year growth, percentage of revenue from existing customers, and percentage of sales representatives achieving 100 percent of their quota.

Within the performance realm, the report notes that "organizations are focusing on metrics that track buyer loyalty and retention." The number of respondents tracking Net Promoter Scores increased by 4 percent year over year.

For the report, researchers posed questions around sales pipeline metrics within the performance realm. The top metrics are average length of sales cycles, win rate, and average contract value or selling prices.

In terms of proficiency, researchers sought information on onboarding success. More than half of respondents measured time to productivity, while 46 percent measured time to ramp, and 45 percent measured time to quota attainment. Of those that said time to ramp has increased in the past year, nearly 70 percent do not use conversation intelligence tools. Those that did saw a 4 percentage point increase in quota attainment and win rate increases of 10 percentage points.

According to the report, the most frequently tracked sales training metrics remained consistent but with an increase in the percentage of respondents tracking each metric, including the number of training sessions delivered, percentage of completed sessions, qualitative feedback on learning, number of participants, competency improvement, and behavior change.

The study closes by offering three takeaways: Look at the customer journey holistically by "designing dedicated programs around enhancing buyer engagements and tracking performance across revenue-facing teams," use training and coaching tools to equip sales enablement representatives for success, and customize buyer engagements at scale.