Why sales and marketing must align on buyer enablement
Imagine you’re at a restaurant, ready to order. The menu has great descriptions, the server is friendly, but when you ask for recommendations, they shrug and say, “Not sure, the kitchen just makes the food—I don’t really know what goes into it.”
How confident are you feeling about the restaurant now? Not very, we're guessing.
That’s exactly how buyers feel when sales and marketing aren’t aligned. Buyer enablement only works when both teams are in sync.
To make it easy for buyers to say yes to you, you need to understand how sales enablement and buyer enablement are different. Let’s break it down.
The key difference between sales enablement and buyer enablement
Sales enablement gives your team the tools, training, and marketing content they need to sell. Buyer enablement makes sure decision makers and multiple stakeholders have everything they need to actually make a purchase—without unnecessary friction.
If you’re only focusing on sales enablement, you’re just setting the stage. Buyer enablement is what ensures customers actually get what they came for.
Sales enablement
- Helps sales teams sell
- Focuses on internal sales training and resources
- Owned by sales organizations
- Includes email sequences, call scripts, and product demos
Buyer enablement
- Helps buyers understand the purchasing process
- Focuses on external decision-making resources for potential buyers
- Requires collaboration between marketing teams and sales representatives
- Includes comparison sheets, ROI calculators, and case studies
When sales and marketing aren’t aligned, buyers hit roadblocks.
A strong buyer enablement strategy removes the guesswork, giving them what they need to move forward—faster decisions, smoother deals, and less time wasted on prospects who were never ready to buy.
But before you start fixing friction points, you need to know where they are.
Before you start: Buyer enablement readiness checklist
Before implementing a buyer enablement strategy, sales organizations should assess their current sales process and customer journey.
Key questions to evaluate buyer enablement readiness
- Do we have a clear understanding of our ideal customer profile and company size?
- Have we mapped out the three stages of the buying journey: awareness stage, consideration stage, and decision stage?
- Are our sales teams and marketing teams aligned on messaging and content?
- Do we have data on where potential buyers drop off in the purchasing experience?
- Do we have a clear process for handling objections and answering questions throughout the decision-making process?
A strong foundation aligns your team, removes obstacles, and ensures buyers aren’t left filling in the blanks on their own. But strategy alone isn’t enough—you need a clear, actionable process to make buyer enablement work.
Here’s how to build it, step by step.
The 5-step buyer enablement strategy to stop the stall
A great product or service isn’t enough—buyers need clarity, confidence, and momentum to move forward. Without a structured buyer enablement strategy, deals stall, decision makers hesitate, and sales reps waste time chasing prospects who aren’t ready to buy.
This five-step process ensures your buyers have everything they need at the right time, so they can make decisions faster—with fewer roadblocks along the way.
Step 1: Map your buyer journey and decision-making process
To enable buyers effectively, you need to map their actual decision-making process, not just the one you wish existed.
How to understand buyer behavior and purchasing decisions
To create a successful buyer enablement strategy, businesses need to analyze the buying process of both awareness stage buyers and existing customers. The goal is to uncover pain points and optimize future interactions.
Action steps
- Interview five recent customers who completed a purchase to understand their buying journey.
- What relevant information did they need at each stage?
- What slowed down their purchasing decisions?
- What marketing content helped them move forward?
- Identify the key decision makers and blockers in the purchasing experience, such as CFOs and procurement teams.
- Build a buyer journey map covering the three stages: awareness stage, consideration stage, and decision stage.
Deliverable
A customer journey map outlining each decision stage and identifying common blockers that prevent sales teams from closing more deals.
Step 2: Audit your current sales content and marketing efforts
You've definitely tried to put together furniture with the wrong instructions or with missing pieces. And it made you want to throw everything out of the window.
That's what your buyers experience each time you spam them with outdated, irrelevant, or impossible-to-find content. This is why you need an audit.
Clear the noise, cut what's not working, and make sure your content moves buyers forward.
How to optimize marketing content to drive more sales
We always say "the right content at the right time" because it bears repeating.
The audit will help you answer these questions:
- Are buyers getting the answers they need before they ask?
- Is your content guiding them to the next step, or leaving them hanging?
- Can sales easily access and share the best resources when it matters?
Action steps
- Gather all existing sales collateral, including case studies, product demos, ROI calculators, and thought leadership pieces.
- Map these assets to the buying journey to identify where potential buyers need more targeted content.
- Remove outdated materials and prioritize creating content that aligns with buyer behavior.
Deliverable
A prioritized list of high-impact content to update, remove, or repurpose for a more effective buyer enablement strategy.
Step 3: Build a self-service buyer hub
A self-service buyer hub removes that friction, giving decision makers everything they need on demand—so they can move at their own pace without relying on back-and-forth emails.
With emlen, this isn’t just about storing content—it’s about curating the right experience for each buyer. Instead of dropping them into a folder full of generic resources, you’re giving them a guided path tailored to their decision-making process.
How to create awareness and provide support for decision makers
Don't make your buyers sift through endless PDFs or chase your sales reps for answers. They want a central place where they can find the information they need, when they need it.
A well-structured digital sales room removes roadblocks and keeps deals moving forward.
How to build it with emlen:
- Create a personalized digital sales room – Instead of sending scattered links, build a destination where buyers can explore the most relevant resources for them.
- Structure it around the buyer journey – Every buyer moves through three key stages, and your content should match their needs at each one:
- Awareness stage: Thought leadership, industry insights
- Consideration stage: Case studies, ROI calculators, competitor comparisons
- Decision stage: Pricing breakdowns, implementation guides, next steps
- Make it dynamic, not static – With emlen, you can see who engages with what and adjust in real time. If a buyer is stuck in the consideration stage, surface the content that helps them move forward.
What you’ll walk away with:
A fully personalized, trackable buyer hub that makes purchasing decisions easier—without requiring sales to push buyers through every step.
Step 4: Train sales representatives to enable buyers, not just sell
That shift—from selling to enabling—is what separates teams that chase deals from those that close them.
How to shift from selling to guiding buyers through the purchasing experience
Most deals stall because buyers get stuck—lost in internal approvals, unclear on next steps, or unsure how to justify the purchase. A sales team trained in buyer enablement doesn’t just push for the close—they anticipate roadblocks and help buyers navigate them.
Your action steps:
- Teach reps to guide, not push – Instead of leading with a pitch, train reps to identify where buyers are in their journey and provide the right resources at the right time.
- Make every touchpoint valuable – Generic follow-ups kill momentum. Equip sales with decision-enabling content—ROI breakdowns, implementation roadmaps, or competitive insights—so every interaction moves the deal forward.
- Coach reps to personalize outreach – Buyers don’t want canned emails. Implement a coaching framework that helps reps tailor their approach based on real buyer signals, not guesswork.
Your outcomes:
A sales team that removes friction instead of creating it—helping buyers make confident decisions instead of stalling out.
Step 5: Track buyer engagement and optimize the buyer enablement strategy
A tool like emlen is a goldmine of buyer engagement data. Even if you're not using emlen (and you should), you still need to figure out who is engaging with what to really drill down your buyer enablement strategy.
How to use data to improve the purchase process and drive more sales
Every stalled deal tells a story. Maybe buyers aren’t engaging with key decision-making content. Maybe they’re hesitating at a specific stage.
Tracking the right metrics helps you spot where buyers get stuck and more importantly, how to keep them moving forward.
Key buyer enablement KPIs
Tracking the right metrics ensures your buyer enablement strategy is actually working.
Here’s what to measure:
• Time to close – A shorter sales cycle means fewer stalled deals and faster revenue.
• Percentage of stalled deals – Pinpoints where buyers hesitate so you can address friction points.
• Content engagement – Shows which resources buyers actually use to make decisions.
• Sales rep adoption – Ensures your sales team is actively using buyer enablement materials to support deals.
Even with the right strategy and an eye on the data, execution can go wrong. Here’s where most teams get stuck—and what to do about it.
5 Common buyer enablement mistakes and how to fix them
1. Buyers keep ghosting you
The fix: Stop making them work for answers. Ensure they have clear, accessible decision-making resources upfront—pricing, case studies, implementation plans—so they don’t have to chase information.
2. Sales cycles are still too long
The fix: Identify where deals stall. Are buyers getting stuck in legal or procurement? Are they unsure about ROI? Provide the right content at those friction points—like competitive comparisons or case studies that justify the investment.
3. Sales reps aren’t using the buyer enablement hub
The fix: If reps don’t see value in the hub, they won’t use it. Make it part of their workflow, integrate it into CRM, and train them on how to leverage it to close deals faster.
4. Your content isn’t influencing decisions
The fix: Track engagement. If key decision-makers aren’t interacting with your materials, your content might be missing the mark. Analyze what gets traction, cut what doesn’t, and test new formats.
5. Buyers still have too many questions late in the process
The fix: If buyers are asking the same things over and over at the decision stage, your enablement strategy isn’t working. Address objections earlier by surfacing the right information before they need to ask.
When you get this right, buyers move through the process with confidence, deals close faster, and sales reps stop wasting time untangling last-minute objections.
Now it's time to put all of these insights into a plan of action!
Your 30-day buyer enablement strategy roadmap
You have all the information you need to make your own informed decisions to move forward. Here’s how to break it down into a clear, 30-day roadmap to build momentum and start seeing real results.
Week 1: Lay the foundation
- Align sales and marketing on buyer enablement goals.
- Map the actual buyer journey by talking to recent customers.
- Identify key decision-makers and where they get stuck.
- Audit your existing sales content—cut what doesn’t work, and flag gaps.
Week 2: Build your buyer enablement system
- Create or update key content based on buyer journey insights.
- Structure a self-service buyer hub with decision-enabling resources.
- Train sales reps on guiding buyers instead of just pitching.
- Set up real-time tracking to measure buyer engagement.
Week 3: Roll it out and optimize
- Launch your buyer enablement hub and ensure sales reps are using it.
- Test new messaging and resources to remove friction in stalled deals.
- Track engagement: Which content is driving decisions? What’s being ignored?
- Adjust based on buyer interactions and feedback.
Week 4: Fine-tune and scale
- Identify the biggest roadblocks still slowing deals.
- Optimize content that isn’t performing.
- Coach sales reps on leveraging enablement resources effectively.
- Set up ongoing reviews—buyer enablement isn’t a one-time project.
By the end of 30 days, you’ll have a fully operational buyer enablement strategy that’s not just theory—it’s actively helping buyers move forward, shortening sales cycles, and making it easier to close deals.
The only thing left is for you to get started right away.
Buyer enablement: Make it your secret superpower
You’ve just covered a lot. Buyer enablement isn’t just about content or sales tactics—it’s about removing friction, creating momentum, and making it effortless for buyers to say yes.
And while it might seem like a lot to implement, the truth is, your buyers are already making decisions with or without you. The only question is: Are you helping them move forward—or making them work for it?
The companies winning today aren’t the ones with the hardest-working sales teams. They’re the ones making it easiest for buyers to buy. And shouldn't that be you?
Take your next steps
- 🔎 Explore our product tour – See how emlen makes sales enablement seamless.
- 📆 Book a demo – Let’s discuss how emlen can help your team drive revenue faster
- 📬 Contact us - Have a question that didn't get answered in this post? We'd love to help!
