sales enablement strategy
A practical sales enablement playbook for contract manufacturers—built to move RFQs faster, reduce handoff friction, and lift win/renewal rates.
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What is sales enablement?
Sales enablement helps contract manufacturing teams progress complex, multi‑stakeholder RFQs by aligning people, process, and content so reps know what to use and when, and handoffs are clear from the first enquiry to renewal.
Why do manufacturers need sales enablement?
Sales teams once prided themselves on their knowledge of the market and the tight-knit groups of companies they sold to. They knew their territories inside and out and didn’t need much marketing support to achieve their targets year after year.
But then things changed. Sales cycles lengthened, decision groups grew, and proof demands rose—stretching traditional selling.
Long technical evaluations, more decision‑makers, and higher proof demands have stretched traditional selling. Enablement gives structure to RFQs—clarifying roles, content, and checkpoints—so deals don’t stall.
A new sales landscape emerges
In the old sales and marketing paradigm, sales were a linear process. A prospect entered the funnel and was handed over to sales after a set period of nurturing and qualification. Sales and marketing roles were clearly defined and separated. The sales and marketing role in that relationship was concluded when the deal was signed.
For many contract manufacturers (CMs), finding, accelerating, and sustaining sales growth in a new business landscape has become a major challenge.
Growing product complexity means more people are in each target organisation to persuade before a sale can be made.
Buyers now expect a hybrid, omnichannel experience across digital and human touchpoints.
In the age of digital, OEMs could research more effectively online and make important purchase decisions - without ever speaking to your sales team.
How buying habits have changed
Gartner reports B2B customers’ buying habits are now more painstaking and analytical than ever - but they are also more difficult to track and control.
Prospects typically have numerous buying tasks to complete before they choose a B2B partner.
The research shows that most B2B buyers will revisit nearly every one of these buying tasks at least once before making a purchase.
The customer buying journey resembles more of a maze than a linear path, making workflows harder than ever to define and automate:
As they navigate their buying tasks, prospects rely heavily on different websites, peer recommendations and influencers to make their decisions. They seek and compare advice from different sources. They scroll socials, listen to industry podcasts, read business reviews and expert blogs - all before they ever talk directly to your sales team.
Your digital content should help buyers revisit tasks—problem definition, solution exploration, requirements, and selection—without starting from scratch. Multiple stakeholders advance and revisit tasks in parallel; design content to support that non-linear motion.
Map RFQ artefacts (specs, compliance, quality evidence, lead‑time) to those tasks so the right proof is easy for prospects to find when they come back to it
In this new and complex business landscape, the ‘lone-wolf approach’ to sales operations has become much less effective. Marketing and sales teams must collaborate to find, nurture and convert more right-fit leads.
Why sales and marketing alignment matters in manufacturing
As sales cycles become increasingly complex, the need for closer collaboration between sales and marketing to improve sales performance has grown. But in industries like manufacturing, where traditional models of selling have prevailed, these functions are often still working in silos.
The result can be conflicting plans and priorities as teams compete for influence and budget.
Marketing teams complain they don’t have the sales intelligence to create the messaging and content to drive more effective and targeted campaigns.
Over half of all manufacturing marketers struggle most with journey‑mapped content and internal alignment:
- 62% struggle with creating content for the buyer’s journey
- 58% struggle to align content efforts across sales and marketing
- 56% struggle to communicate internally among teams/silos
Source: CMI (2025)
Conversely, sales teams complain they lack the collateral they need to close deals and pursue new opportunities.
In this environment, salespeople can dismiss marketing efforts and rely on self-generated sales materials to communicate with prospects.
Enablement reduces hunt‑time and rework by standardising where content lives and how it’s used at each stage.
Marketing can be frozen out of discussions around sales strategy, deprived of the digital tools that could help them fuel the pipeline more effectively. They can be left to run one-off campaigns, update websites and socials - and not much more.
With marketing and sales teams pursuing different strategies and competing for C-Suite attention and resources, the actual process of revenue generation can sometimes be forgotten.
"Sales enablement isn't just a buzzword; it's a strategic approach to aligning marketing, sales, and customer success to drive revenue growth."
Nancy Nardin (2022)
How enablement helps
However, research shows that only when sales are enabled by marketing can the full growth potential of a business be unleashed.
Businesses who have sales enablement strategies and tools in place are consistently more successful in building sales growth. Those with formal enablement programs report higher win rates, retention, and deal sizes:
- 49% win rate on forecasted deals
- 60% higher customer retention rate
- 14% increase in deal size
Source: Oracle
For those who get their automation and enablement process right, the rewards are great.
The sales enablement flywheel
But in the inbound and content marketing age, the sales process has become more cyclical and self-sustaining.
In this model, the previously linear pipeline is replaced with the sales flywheel -
The flywheel reimagines customers as the very centre of your operations, with each department perfectly aligned and empowered by technology to serve them more effectively.
Closing deals is now the start, not the end, of the sales process.
With the marketing team facilitating ever-closer cooperation between them, every department in the business works together to support the sales function and build revenue momentum.
Together, they can:
- Help identify and attract more right-fit leads for the business
- Engage and convert more prospects
- Delight customers with the quality of their service - and sell more to them
How sales enablement becomes revenue enablement
In this model, contract manufacturing sales and account management teams continually share their insight and expertise to feed into lead-scoring strategies, workflow definition, and the content creation process. Service tickets, NCRs, and on-time delivery data should loop back into content, messaging, and account plans. To close the loop, track RFQ turnaround, quote-to-order percentage, and renewal rate.
All these activities help to secure new revenue opportunities through a relentless focus on customer satisfaction.
A stream of content ideas and case studies powers discovery by new clients and more effective cross-selling.
The quality of your market insight and support turns existing customers into powerful advocates on your behalf, driving further revenue growth.
Sales enablement strategy: The essential building blocks
Every great sales enablement plan needs to be built on solid foundations. Everyone in the business needs to ‘buy into’ the approach and then commit to ever-closer alignment through process and technology.
1. Sales and Marketing Alignment
Your teams must understand the benefits of working together and be committed to doing so.
Creating formal processes for target setting and knowledge sharing between sales and marketing is vital. Schedule regular reviews to resolve stalls, update stage criteria, and retire outdated content.
2. Persona Development
Unless your teams agree on your ideal customer profile and the buyer persona you are selling to, you won’t be able to create the content that will drive more discovery and engagement.
Develop detailed customer personas and ensure that sales strategies are aligned with these personas. Understanding their needs, challenges, and decision-making processes is key to effective selling.
"Sales enablement is not just about arming sales with content; it's about arming them with the right content for the right stage of the customer's journey."
Tamara Schenk
3. Sales Enablement Content Strategy
Content creation is a key part of any sales enablement strategy.
Your team needs to have formal processes to identify content gaps and areas where you can demonstrate insight, expertise and leadership to customers and potential customers.
Use your buyer personas to understand when and where prospects search for information online, so you build the content they need in the format they want.
A comprehensive content strategy maps content opportunities onto the different stages of the buyer’s journey. It identifies where and how different content can be deployed to keep customers engaged and moving through the sales cycle.
Source: HubSpot
What media does your ideal customer consume? Whose views and help do they seek out at each stage of the buyers’ journey?
The more you can use your customer research in your content creation process, the better your content will have of resonating with your audience and converting visitors to subscribers as they move through the sales cycle.
Developing a content strategy mission statement can help everyone in the business understand the purpose of your content creation.
Martech can be deployed to augment your content strategy
Use tools to solve specific jobs, such as Sparktoro for research and MarketMuse for topic clustering and measurement— but avoid tool sprawl.
Build keyword target list for organic strategy using tools like Moz and SEMrush.
AI tools can enable faster competitive analysis, content ideation and generation. For example, ChatGPT and Perplexity AI can help you research, ideate and write more rapidly.
Content expert Andy Crestadina demonstrates how companies can leverage strategy and, more recently, AI technology to accelerate and improve content production.
Watch his excellent introduction to AI in Digital Content Marketing for a review of the most impactful strategies to adopt.
But bear in mind that in the world of generative AI, original content packed with insight from your internal team of experts can represent unique value for your customers. Focus your teams on creating content that speaks to their particular pain points through the lens of your unique experience and expertise.
83% of B2B marketers try to differentiate from the competition by content quality.
72% of B2B believe covering untapped topics/stories improves content quality.
Source: CMI
4.Your CRM
At the heart of every successful sales enablement process is the CRM software that integrates and accelerates your teamwork to serve customers and reach revenue goals more efficiently.
CRM tools automate processes like lead scoring and deal tracking, streamlining the sales cycle and allowing sales teams to focus on engaging with prospects.
By tracking every customer interaction in one system, businesses can refine sales strategies and create personalised experiences, ultimately converting prospects into loyal customers more efficiently.
To capitalise on your CRM, make the agreed stages, handoffs, and definitions visible in the system you already use. Start with light automations that remove admin (not add it), and measure impact on RFQ turnaround and quote‑to‑order.
5. Sales Enablement software
Different kinds of software can be deployed to help you integrate your sales team and process more efficiently and effectively with the rest of your operations.
The examples below are recommended, but it's important to choose the minimum set that solves your highest‑value jobs.
HubSpot Sales Hub: All-in-one sales enablement tool that helps organise sales activities, track emails, schedule meetings, and manage customer relationships. It's part of a bigger set of tools that includes marketing and customer service.
Salesforce Sales Cloud: A flexible tool for managing customer information and sales activities. It helps businesses of any size track leads, manage sales opportunities, and forecast sales.
Seismic: Excellent for managing sales documents and presentations, helping sales teams find and use the right materials for each customer while tracking their effectiveness in making sales.
Highspot: This tool helps sales teams organise and find the right materials quickly. It also offers suggestions for sales strategies and pitches and provides detailed reports on sales activities.
Showpad combines document management with sales team training. It's great for interactive selling and understanding how customers interact with sales materials.
Outreach: This tool automates communication with customers across channels, manages customer interactions, and provides insights to improve sales methods.
Zoho CRM: An affordable and user-friendly sales enablement tool for automating sales processes and managing customer information. It includes features like managing sales pipelines and analysing sales data.
MindTickle: This tool, focused on training sales teams, offers onboarding, short learning sessions, skill development, and coaching to keep sales teams knowledgeable and skilled.
A 10-step guide to building a sales enablement process
Here's a step-by-step guide to help you develop a plan that aligns your business goals and empowers your sales teams in cycles of continuous improvement.
1. Define your objectives
Set clear revenue and sales goals that your teams can align on; these could be:
- Increasing sales productivity
- Shortening lengthy sales cycles
- Improving win rates, or
- Enhancing customer engagement
2. Review your current sales process
Analyse your current sales process. Map RFQ bottlenecks and root causes (technical queries, approvals, scope change), and identify the stages where Sales struggle or where deals often stall.
3. Collaborate with Sales and Marketing
Work together to ensure that marketing materials are relevant and useful for the sales process. This collaboration should also focus on developing lead qualification and nurturing strategies.
4. Develop relevant sales content
Create content that supports the sales process. Build RFQ‑stage content such as discovery checklists, spec/compliance proof, anonymous case studies, and proposal templates.
5. Implement training and sales coaching
Regular sales training and coaching are vital. This should cover product knowledge, sales skills, and the use of sales enablement tools. Role-playing and scenario-based training can be particularly effective.
6. Choose the right tools and technology
Select the smallest toolset to create visibility around your process and content—integrate only where impact is clear. This will include CRM systems, content management tools, sales intelligence software, AI, automation, and analytics tools.
7. Measure and analyse performance
Establish key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure the effectiveness of your sales enablement strategy. Track RFQ turnaround times, quote‑to‑order percentages, win rate by vertical, and renewal rate.
8. Gather feedback and iterate
Regularly solicit feedback from the sales team on what’s working and what’s not. Use this feedback to continuously improve your sales enablement strategy.
9. Foster a culture of continuous learning
Encourage a culture where continuous learning and development are valued. This includes staying updated on industry trends, competitor activities, and new sales methodologies.
10. Ensure executive buy-in
Remember, a successful sales enablement strategy is not static; it should evolve with your business, market trends, and customer needs. Regular review and adaptation are key to maintaining its effectiveness.
"Sales enablement is not a one-size-fits-all approach. It's about tailoring your support to meet the unique needs of your sales team and your customers."
Jim Ninivaggi
But beware! The road to sales enablement nirvana is never easy.
Common reasons why sales enablement fails
Despite sales enablement becoming increasingly important and popular, successful execution is anything but simple. Even with hundreds of useful tools.
Here are some of the most common reasons why organisations might be failing to make their sales enablement strategy work as intended.
Failure #1 – Mistaking the role of sales enablement
Sales enablement will be unique to every company. It’s a business strategy – not a product or checklist. Scope and success metrics must be defined and applied to your organisation sensitively and expertly. This job is not for an unseasoned sales team leader without proper, tailored advice.
Failure #2 – Choosing the wrong person to lead sales enablement
Sales enablement success needs a sales enablement leader, who should also be a champion and a strategist – not a tactical project manager.
Failure #3 – Skipping or taking shortcuts in the set-up
It isn’t easy to thoroughly map the customer lifecycle and sales cycle. You need to perform a forensic assessment of ideal customer(s), personas, customer journeys and more whilst paying attention to considerations throughout the sales journey and for multiple stakeholders.
Failure #4 – Tactics before strategy
It’s easy to put execution ahead of strategy. To succeed in your sales enablement strategy, you must work through tough questions and identify, challenge, and agree on objectives and meaningful KPIs. You need to be 100% ideal customer-focused. You also need a go-to-market strategy that is stress-tested.
Failure #5 – Content is poor
Sales enablement draws on inbound marketing, which requires appropriate, timely, segmented, and better content than your competitors. It's not about producing content 'vending machine' style but expanding what works and retiring what doesn't.
Failure #6 – Insufficient buy-in between departments
You cannot force alignment between sales, marketing, and other departments. This is an issue for senior management to solve. Sales enablement requires the total buy-in of marketing, sales, operations, service, and HR, to name a few departments.
Failure #7 – Insufficient technology stack
A common problem is that sales teams either cannot find appropriate sales content or don’t know it exists. You need an intertwined central repository, CMS and CRM, and you need to use a smart tech stack that simplifies and integrates the tools you need most to deliver the objectives.
Conclusion
In many manufacturing companies, sales and marketing teams have been siloed for too long. This has resulted in conflicting priorities, a focus on short-term sales tactics, and flat-lining growth.
Many companies lack the digital tools to align and automate their sales and marketing efforts.
But, crucially, they can lack the strategic plan that will help them agree on goals, share expertise, and collaborate in a structured way to deliver sustainable revenue generation.
"In the world of sales, knowledge is power, and sales enablement is the key to unlocking that power."
Deb Calvert
If RFQs are slowing or renewals are flat, start with a two‑hour enablement review in which your teams map your stalls, align the handoffs, and pick one improvement to ship this quarter.
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