In periods of economic uncertainty, many organizations are proactively investing in enablement. Enablement is a critical function for organizations that are determined to achieve more revenue, sales efficiencies, and higher employee efficiency and morale. 
 
In the 2023 Value of Sales Enablement Report, 71% of respondents reported that their company plans to increase its investment in enablement technology in 2023. Nearly all respondents agreed that enablement technology is integral to weathering difficult economic times. 

However, in the Seismic Experience Room Survey – an in-person experience at a recent Sales Enablement Society conference hosted in Atlanta, GA – only 8% of organizations rated themselves as highly mature.  The remaining half rated themselves at the lowest levels of maturity, and one out of five of those were large organizations with over 2500 team members.  

Since enablement is a rapidly growing and highly visible business objective, many leaders are looking for a maturity framework to accurately assess where they are in their enablement journey. This can help them identify the use cases and solutions they should immediately implement based on their maturity, and on the path to achieving their desired business outcomes. 

This post is the first in a series where the Seismic Strategic Consulting team will share how your organization can adopt a maturity framework to assess your enablement program. Our consultants partner with customers to accelerate their sales enablement maturity and equip them with innovative solutions. We define and deliver their enablement strategy, leading to exceptional results and sustainable growth. 

What are the stages of the Enablement Maturity Growth Framework? 

At Seismic, we know enablement is an ongoing journey. Enablement efforts must grow and mature with an organization’s changing needs, economic realities, desired outcomes and a host of other factors.  

Seismic Services teams operate from a “strategy first” mindset – clients who adopt that approach realize the most value and experience the most success on their enablement journey. Our talented Strategic Advisors bring that mindset to each interaction, as we collaborate on strategic roadmaps and initiatives to help clients “see around the corner” on their unique enablement journey. 

Based on our deep expertise in the field of enablement, we’ve identified three key stages of maturity: Control Chaos, Understand Impact, and Drive Transformation on the path to strategic value. 

We look at it through the lens of: 

• Outcome – What you need to achieve  
• Process – How you get there 
• Measurement – How you measure success 

 Maturity Stage 1 – Control Chaos 

• At the start of your enablement journey, activities tend to be reactive. The key focus is wrapping your arms around people, processes, and technology. Your concerns include things like where to find content across different repositories and who has access to what. In essence, you need to Control Chaos and put out fires. 
• To do this, your current process needs to support those who have immediate needs by implementing ad hoc, flexible processes. 
• This is valuable during the reactive stage because it allows you to start generating activity and gathering feedback to understand your current situation. 

Maturity Stage 2 – Understand Impact 

• At this stage, your efforts and results are more predictable. Even with flexible processes and a feedback loop, you need better insight into which enablement initiatives have an impact and positively contribute to changing the behaviors of your customer-facing team, as well as those that need to be optimized.  
• To do this, you need to implement repeatable processes that can be followed consistently. 
• This sets you up to measure impact and influence. This goes beyond understanding what you’re doing. This includes assessing if you are doing it well, improving as you go, and creating repeatable impact. 

Maturity Stage 3 – Drive Transformation

• Proactive? Check! Strategic? Check! Mature? Check! At this point, your enablement function is at the highest level of maturity, where only 8% of organizations find themselves. You are exceeding your desired outcomes, have control, and are squarely focused on strategic initiatives to optimize growth. You are guided by your overall enablement strategy when launching new products and establishing programs to move from product to solution-led selling. 
• To keep doing this, you need to refine scalable processes that support growth and revenue goals. 
• Transformation is about setting the stage for sustained growth by putting into action all the insights gathered along the path to maturity and developing measures that will help you get ahead of any potential challenges. 

We are excited to share more about Seismic’s Enablement Maturity Framework over the next several weeks. Our next post will kick off the journey to transformation, with more details about Controlling Chaos — so stay tuned! If you’d like a guide on your sales enablement journey, we’re here to help. Contact Seismic’s award-winning Services team of Enablement Experts today!

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