A sales enablement charter specifies your revenue goal and sales objectives along with who is responsible for what. It serves as a roadmap for the sales enablement function, outlining its mission, objectives, scope, responsibilities, and key initiatives. It provides a framework for driving sales effectiveness, fostering collaboration, and delivering value to both internal teams and external customers.

This is a critical step in deploying a sales enablement strategy, so don't skip it!

What to include in your sales enablement charter

Start by assessing the current state of your marketing efforts and sales operations and then create a vision for what they will look like after implementing sales enablement.

An influential report by CSO Insights advised sales enablement practitioners to include these four components in a charter:

  • Target groups: Who do your sales channels and partners sell to today?
  • Vision, mission and purpose: Define these three elements and jointly come up with an emotional tagline that captures the urgency and spirit of your efforts.
  • Objectives, strategies and roadmap: Map your current state of Sales and Marketing and what the future state will look like with sales enablement.
  • Services and metrics: What services do Sales and Marketing provide to each other, and how will you measure them?

Identify your fellow stakeholders

To the above, we recommend including a shared process for determining which team members in Sales and Marketing are responsible for creating content.

Ideally everyone in Sales and Marketing will have a hand in assisting Enablement with content development. Typically, content creation is a core skill in the toolkits of marketers. Today it’s imperative, though, to actively involve sales reps because every day they are talking to buyers and relying heavily on relevant content when selling to them.

Clearly define what sales reps’ role in the content creation will be, including:

  • Building and continually refining their content creation skills via training and workshops
  • Authoring their own content assets such as presentations, demo scripts and implementation roadmaps
  • Reviewing material produced by small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) from other areas such as Software Development, Field Engineering and Customer Support
  • Committing to regular interviews with full-time creators to transfer information from the field
  • Forging an agreement that specifies how often creators may accompany reps on sales calls or meetings to harvest real-world intel

Implement a review and revision process

After completing the first version of your charter, publish it and promote it throughout the company, and ensure it’s always top of mind for everybody in Sales and Marketing.

Hold a company-wide kickoff to inspire enthusiasm. You don’t have to print slick T-shirts for the masses, but make the charter easy for any employee to access online and create handouts people can tack to their walls or tape to their systems.

To sustain momentum, regular team meetings between Sales and Marketing are a must.

Give this joint committee an easy-to-remember name such as the Sales and Marketing, or SAM, team. In the first few months following kickoff, commit to weekly SAM meetings. As the relationship progresses, settle on a less frequent cadence, maybe once or twice a month. (Warning: Meeting less than once per month puts your initiative at risk of failure.)

Make every SAM meeting open and productive, continuously revisiting your revenue goal, recognizing when milestones are reached and refining the activities owned by each team member. Realize that transformation doesn’t happen overnight. To ensure forward progress, celebrate every step toward achieving your revenue goal as a victory.

Sales enablement charter example

Use this example of a sales enablement charter as a jumping off point and template for your own plan.

Sales Enablement Charter

Mission

The mission of the Sales Enablement function is to empower our sales teams with the knowledge, skills, tools, and resources they need to effectively engage with customers, drive revenue growth, and deliver exceptional value.

Objectives:

  1. Increase Sales Productivity: Enable sales representatives to work more efficiently and effectively, reducing time spent on non-selling activities and increasing time spent engaging with prospects and customers.
  2. Drive Revenue Growth: Equip sales teams with the necessary resources and support to win more deals, increase deal sizes, and accelerate sales cycles.
  3. Enhance Customer Experience: Provide sales professionals with the insights, content, and tools needed to deliver personalized and compelling experiences that address customer needs and drive loyalty.
  4. Foster Continuous Improvement: Cultivate a culture of learning and development within the sales organization, encouraging ongoing skill enhancement and knowledge sharing.
  5. Improve Cross-Functional Collaboration: Facilitate collaboration and alignment between sales, marketing, product, and other departments to ensure consistency in messaging, strategy, and execution.

Scope and Responsibilities

The Sales Enablement function will focus on the following areas:

  1. Training and Development: Develop and deliver training programs to enhance sales skills, product knowledge, and market expertise.
  2. Content Creation and Management: Create and curate sales collateral, presentations, case studies, and other assets to support the sales process.
  3. Tools and Technology: Evaluate, implement, and optimize sales enablement tools and technology to streamline processes and improve effectiveness.
  4. Sales Process Optimization: Analyze and optimize sales processes and methodologies to increase efficiency and effectiveness.
  5. Sales Communication: Facilitate clear and consistent communication between sales teams and other departments, ensuring alignment on goals, messaging, and strategy.

Target Audience: The primary audience of the Sales Enablement function includes sales representatives, sales managers, and other customer-facing roles within the organization.

Metrics and KPIs

Key performance indicators for the Sales Enablement function include:

  1. Win rates
  2. Quota attainment
  3. Sales velocity
  4. Customer satisfaction scores
  5. Training program effectiveness
  6. Content engagement metrics

Resources and Support: The Sales Enablement function will be supported by dedicated staff, budget, and access to relevant tools and technology. Collaboration and alignment with other departments will be encouraged to leverage existing resources and expertise.

Governance and Processes: A governance structure will be established to oversee the Sales Enablement function, including decision-making authority, workflow, and escalation procedures. Processes will be documented and regularly reviewed for optimization and improvement.

Timeline and Milestones: A timeline with specific milestones and deadlines will be developed to guide the implementation of key initiatives and projects within the Sales Enablement function.

Continuous Improvement: The Sales Enablement function will prioritize continuous improvement, regularly collecting feedback and performance data to inform decision-making and drive iterative enhancements to processes, programs, and resources.

Communication Plan: A communication plan will be implemented to ensure clear and consistent communication within the Sales Enablement team and with other stakeholders in the organization, including regular meetings, reports, and updates.

Need help creating your charter? Reach out for guidance.