Sales Enablement Vs Sales Training: What’s the Difference?

Quick answer

Sales enablement and sales training are connected, but they are not the same discipline.

Sales training helps salespeople build specific skills, knowledge, and behaviours. It can improve how reps run discovery, handle objections, negotiate, explain the product, or speak to a particular market.

Sales enablement looks at the wider system around performance.

In practice, it asks whether reps have the right onboarding, content, tools, coaching, processes, internal support, and cross-functional alignment to use those skills in real selling conditions.

The mistake I see most often is assuming that every sales performance problem can be solved with more training. Sometimes the issue is skill. Other times, the issue is that reps are working without enough context, poor content, weak internal coordination, or a process that breaks down once deals become complex.

That distinction matters.

In the software development example, the team did need sales training. But training alone could not solve the bigger problem. Reps also needed stronger onboarding, clearer Ideal Customer Profiles, more relevant sales content, better collaboration with marketing, and tighter alignment with the talent team so promising deals did not fall through when the right developers were unavailable.

A useful point to consider here is that sales training works best when it sits inside a broader enablement system.

Training builds capability. Enablement gives that capability the structure, reinforcement, and organisational support it needs to turn into consistent performance.

If you want the full breakdown, the rest of this guide goes deeper.

Introduction

One of the most common objections organisations raise when someone suggests their sales department might benefit from sales enablement is:

“Well, isn’t that the same as sales training? We’ve trained our sales teams long and hard, isn’t that enough!?”

In most cases, this misconception comes down to a lack of understanding. People assume sales enablement is simply a more fashionable term for sales training.

More precisely, the decision-makers are either unfamiliar with the concept or suspicious that it is yet another industry catchphrase designed to tap into their finances.

The differences between sales enablement and sales training are, in practice, quite clear. Understanding them is key because it shapes the choice of what your organisation actually needs.

The definitions

A good place to start is by clarifying the differences between sales enablement and sales training.

That starts with defining both terms clearly.

Drawing on a range of definitions of sales training, as well as my own experience, I use the following definition:

“Sales training is a structured educational process that equips sales professionals with the knowledge, skills, and qualities necessary to effectively engage with prospects and customers, aiming for a transformative impact on their sales actions and outcomes.”

In my sales enablement handbook, I give my definition of sales enablement as:

A passing glance at these two definitions reveals some key differences. 

For one, you can see that sales training can be seen as a part of sales enablement, and the majority of sales enablement initiatives would, in fact, include sales training.

In those instances, sales training is planned to complement broader sales enablement efforts. More on this will follow later.

Another major difference is that sales enablement is a far more encompassing approach to enhancing sales outcomes and increasing revenue.

Sales training typically focuses on the knowledge, skills and techniques that sales reps need to effectively engage with prospects and customers. Usually, its scope ends there.

Sales enablement, on the other hand, will also take into consideration resources, coaching, tools, and inter-departmental collaboration. 

A real-life example

While definitions and “theory” can tell us a lot, there is nothing that paints a picture as well as a real-life example.

This is a story I’ve heard first-hand and a great example of the differences between sales enablement and sales training. A perfect case to illustrate how they’re not the same thing.

The context

In the outsourcing software development industry, it’s not unheard of for companies to grow to a sizeable 500 people, primarily through contacts and word-of-mouth recommendations.

In fact, a 500-person software development company, mainly serving US customers, found itself in this very position. Yet, they recognised that relying solely on such recommendations was no longer sustainable for their growth.

On one hand, they need to have enough developers and tech staff on standby to promptly address new inquiries.

On the other, they strive to keep their “bench” – those not currently engaged in a project – as lean as possible.

Over a decade into their journey, this company identified that cultivating a robust sales pipeline could help them maintain this equilibrium.

This realisation led to the formation of their first-ever sales team.

Assembling the team

In building the team, they relied mostly on instinct and brought together sales professionals from different backgrounds.

The team was led by a VP of Sales who was naturally strong in sales but had limited formal experience leading sales teams.

Alongside the VP were four experienced BDRs, each with more than four years in sales.

The plan was for this group to manage the full sales cycle, from prospecting to close.

Only one person on the team had direct experience selling software development services to international customers.

The others had solid sales experience and came from the broader tech space, but their backgrounds were in software products, hosting solutions, or mostly regional markets.

The company had decided to rely fully on outbound sales. Part of the reason was that the existing marketing team was focused mainly on employer branding.

After a short introduction to the company’s services, the sales reps were given room to develop their own approaches to winning new accounts.

At that stage, the company was doing well enough to allow for that kind of experimentation.

Initial results

Initial sales performance was weaker than expected.

Some BDRs struggled to understand the software development space, including the terminology, technologies, industry context, and different types of products.

Others had trouble identifying the right leads to target, or lacked experience with sales tools and how to use them well.

They were also caught off guard by how complex and lengthy the sales cycle was.

The team started running internal knowledge-sharing sessions, which helped to some extent, but not enough.

From early on, one of the main challenges was balancing available staff with people on the bench.

The extended sales cycles, characteristic of software development services, often resulted in the team securing highly interested leads, only to discover that the company had depleted its available resources for those projects – resources that had been accessible just days earlier.

Though there were efforts to address this issue, no concrete processes were established.

The team managed to secure a few new accounts, but the results weren’t particularly noteworthy.

Both the team and the company began to see the merit in external assistance, leading to the decision to hire an external consultant for sales training.

(I recently wrote about the best sales enablement training companies, if you want to learn more.)

Not just sales training

The consultant they brought in executed things well.

The training was thorough, well-thought-out, and effectively implemented. It equipped the BDRs with the skills to arrange some genuinely promising meetings, and the value of the training appeared evident.

In tandem, the team’s earlier efforts in building their pipeline began to bear fruit with the acquisition of a few significant deals.

Yet, the anticipated results remained elusive.

The underlying issue?

The company and its team required sales enablement (programmes), not just sales training.

Why sales enablement?

When I initially came across this story (and believe me, there’s more to uncover), it struck me as a textbook example fit for a sales enablement course. 

Probably, the best approach to exploring how sales enablement might have benefitted this specific sales team and the company is to delve in chronologically.

Comprehensive sales onboarding

A comprehensive sales onboarding is always a crucial step when setting up and developing a new sales team.

However, given the unique dynamics of outsourced software development services, its importance is magnified.

The first reason is the sheer breadth of knowledge involved.

Sales professionals need to become familiar with a wide range of technologies, frameworks, and libraries. They also need to understand how these tools fit together, and the number of possible tech stack combinations is vast.

Additionally, every potential project comes with its own unique set of requirements, deadlines, and challenges.

As a result, every deal demands a tailored sales approach.

The mix gets even more intricate with the distinct practices inherent to various industries, shaped by their histories, regulations, or professional methodologies.

The decision-making process is also more complex than in many other sales environments.

Because custom software development usually involves a significant investment, the sales cycle tends to be longer and more demanding.

That means a BDR handling the full sales cycle often has to work with stakeholders from several parts of the business, including technology, finance, customer success, procurement, and legal.

Finally, there’s the task of addressing the occasionally perceived negative connotations linked with outsourced services.

Outsourcing, particularly in software development, can invoke concerns about quality, communication, and reliability.

This requires a value case that goes beyond cost savings and shows the innovation, scalability, and competitive advantage a well-executed software development project can bring.

The sales onboarding this company opted for did not account for all of the above. They told the team to independently research various technologies and organise brief interactions with the company’s tech leaders and project managers.

A subsequent onboarding, shaped by a sales enablement perspective, would have significantly simplified the team’s understanding of their Ideal Customer Profiles (ICPs), enabling them to target the appropriate audience with a tailored message, conduct insightful discovery calls, and guide the sales journey more proficiently.

Here’s just a glimpse into what a sales enablement approach could encompass for this sales organisation’s onboarding:

Improved sales content

In terms of sales content, the company only had a handful of case studies on their website and a generic portfolio that lacked relevance for specific target audiences.

Historically, sales were handled by the founders and C-level executives who had been with the company either from the beginning or for several years.

They didn’t rely on sales content. Their approach was personal; they never engaged with cold prospects and had all the necessary information memorised.

Moreover, their sales process was ad hoc, and they were able to improvise thanks to their experience and knowledge of the company.

However, the newly hired sales representatives didn’t have that same background, yet they were expected to engage with entirely cold leads.

Though the sales team began collaborating with the marketing department on crafting sales content, the effort lacked a structured and strategic process.

Adopting a sales enablement strategy would have given the sales representatives a stronger set of researched and tailored sales content, developed in partnership with the marketing team.

Furthermore, as new opportunities emerged, closer collaboration between sales and marketing would have supported the timely creation of purpose-built content, with clear goals, defined audiences, and the context sales reps needed to answer customer questions with more confidence.

Alignment with the talent team

The challenge of aligning the number of personnel on paid projects with those on standby was quickly identified as a pressing concern for the sales department.

Put plainly, leads were generated, and just as they were ready to work with the company, the sales team discovered a shortage of available staff for the project.

Given the company’s scale, managing numerous projects demanded substantial resource allocation.

To compound matters, developers, reflecting the industry trend at that time, were departing unexpectedly for new roles.

Moreover, the talent team, juggling multiple responsibilities, prioritised other tasks over the sales process.

While the company made several commendable attempts to address this, the efforts lacked consistency and formal structure.

A thorough sales enablement strategy would tackle this issue systematically, investigating the root causes of this misalignment, analysing available data, and devising a strategic action plan to mitigate this problem.

While it’s unlikely that the issue could be fully eradicated, a solid sales enablement framework could drastically reduce the frequency of deals falling through due to these hurdles – a frequency that alarmingly reached or exceeded 75%.

Ongoing sales training programmes

After resolving these organisational challenges, the next step in the sales enablement strategy would be targeted sales training.

This sales team had very little experience selling these kinds of services, so training was essential.

At the same time, a generic approach would not have been enough. The training would need to be built around the specific context of this team.

By the time it began, the team would already have a stronger understanding of the industry, access to the right sales content, and greater confidence that the company was set up to deliver on what they were selling.

This sales training could focus on a wide variety of challenges specific to their sales readiness:

Within sales enablement, the impact of training on sales performance would be assessed continuously, reviewed carefully, and adjusted when needed.

This leads us to the core of the sales enablement vs sales training discussion.

Sales training as part of sales enablement

As I’ve highlighted above, the conversation around sales enablement vs sales training shouldn’t position them as opposing forces.

Sales training often stands as an integral component of sales enablement.

Moreover, in the context of sales enablement, training becomes even more effective than in isolation.

Within a broader sales enablement strategy, sales training is not treated as a one-size-fits-all solution rolled out across every sales department simply because it can improve performance.

Instead, enablement teams examine the sales organisation more closely to understand the specific training needs of sales reps, sales managers, and sometimes executives.

This creates a solid foundation for building a sales training programme that is tailored to the company’s real needs.

Furthermore, reinforcement is vital.

Every new sales training initiative under the sales enablement umbrella should come with a built-in reinforcement strategy.

The sales enablement team would consistently monitor metrics and KPIs to assess the training’s effectiveness, its longevity, and the potential need for future training interventions.

Conclusion

When people compare sales enablement vs sales training, they often treat the two as interchangeable. They are closely related, but they serve different purposes.

Sales training focuses on skill-building. It helps sales reps improve specific parts of their work, whether that is discovery, objection handling, negotiation, or product knowledge.

Sales enablement has a broader role. It includes training, but also covers the content, tools, processes, and internal support that help sales teams perform well in real selling conditions.

Some companies may only need better training. Others may be dealing with broader issues around structure, content, alignment, or support. In those cases, sales enablement becomes the more relevant answer.

In practice, the best results usually come from combining both. Training builds capability, and enablement helps turn that capability into consistent performance.