In this article we'll explain what sales enablement is, compare sales enablement vs. hiring another rep, and look at where each investment delivers the greatest ROI.
You have $250,000 to invest this quarter. You're responsible for driving results. Do you hire another salesperson, or invest in sales enablement? Which investment will have the biggest impact?
The answer isn't always obvious, which is why we wrote this article. In it, we'll explain what sales enablement is, compare sales enablement vs. hiring another rep, look at where each investment delivers the greatest ROI, and share a framework for deciding where your next GTM dollar is most likely to pay off.
Sales enablement is the practice of giving sales teams the knowledge, coaching, content, tools, and resources they need to sell better.
It can include:
Sales enablement *can* help every rep perform like your top performers, but only when it’s working. The struggle for many orgs is that they track activity rather than business outcomes. Training metrics, content views, and certifications on their own don’t tell you whether reps are improving their win rates, ramp times, etc. That's the gap we'll address next.
Like most things in business, there's no one-size-fits-all answer. Whether it's better to hire another salesperson or invest in sales enablement depends on the problem you're trying to solve.
Are you struggling because your team doesn't have enough capacity? Or do you already have enough salespeople, but they're not performing as consistently as they could be?
Let's look at a few common scenarios to help you decide where your next investment is likely to have the biggest impact.
Here are a few scenarios where hiring another rep makes sense:
Here are a few scenarios where investing in sales enablement makes sense:
Both hiring and sales enablement are designed to generate more revenue. The question isn't which one is "better." It's which one is more likely to deliver the biggest return based on where your business is today. Let’s compare the ROI of each.
Going back to our example, let's say you have $250,000 to invest this quarter. Do you use it to hire another rep or invest in sales enablement?
The answer depends on the problem you're trying to solve. Let's look at two common scenarios.
Scenario 1: You need more capacity
If your sales team is regularly turning away opportunities because every territory is at capacity, your reps are consistently hitting quota, and pipeline is healthy, hiring another salesperson is a no-brainer.
Yes, you'll need to account for salary, commissions, benefits, recruiting, onboarding, and ramp time. But if capacity is what's limiting growth, the investment is likely worth it. Another rep gives you the ability to cover more territory, work more opportunities, and ultimately generate more revenue.
Scenario 2: You need better performance
Now imagine a different situation. Let’s say you already have enough reps, but new hires take nine months to ramp, only 40% of reps hit quota, and every salesperson tells a slightly different story. Hiring another rep is unlikely to solve those problems because you're adding to a system that's already underperforming.
Instead, that same $250,000 could be invested in improving onboarding, coaching, sales methodology, content, and enablement technology. Rather than increasing the capacity of one salesperson, you're increasing the productivity of your entire team.
There’s also a time element to this ROI equation because it’s not just about how much you’re investing, it’s also about how long it’ll take to pay off.
If you hire another rep today, you’re probably not going to see the full impact for months. They have to be recruited, onboarded, trained, and ramped before they're consistently contributing to revenue.
Sales enablement is different because you're investing in people who are already selling. Better onboarding can help new hires ramp faster, better coaching can improve execution, and better content can help reps have more effective conversations immediately.
That's why timing matters. If you need results quickly and already have enough sales capacity, sales enablement may have the shorter path to ROI. But if your team is already performing well and opportunities are going untouched because you don't have enough coverage, hiring another rep is likely the faster path to revenue growth.
How you measure sales enablement ROI depends on what you're trying to improve. Every enablement initiative should support a specific business goal, and the metrics you track should reflect that goal.
So before you start measuring results, take a step back and ask yourself a few questions:
Once you have your answers, identify the metrics that best measure progress toward that goal. Common sales enablement metrics include:
From there, compare your baseline against performance after the initiative has been implemented. If the metrics you're targeting improve, the next step is determining whether those gains can reasonably be attributed to your enablement efforts.
To do that, compare similar groups whenever possible. Comparing this quarter to last isn't necessarily an apples-to-apples comparison because market conditions, territories, and managers can all change, any of which may impact performance.
For a more accurate ROI measurement, compare groups such as:
The closer the comparison, the more confidence you'll have that sales enablement vs. another variable was responsible for the improvement.
In conclusion, we’d like to share a little-known secret with you that can save you a lot of money (not to mention a lot of headaches): don't invest in anything until you've identified the problem you're trying to solve.
We know it sounds obvious, but it's one of the biggest mistakes sales organizations make. Scenarios like your team missing quota, win rates slipping, or new hires taking too long to ramp often trigger panic-mode decisions that cost time and money, but do little more than make the same problems more expensive.
So, what's the solution? Before approving another hire or investing in sales enablement, ask yourself: What's the biggest thing preventing your team from growing?
Maybe it's a capacity problem and you simply don't have enough reps to cover your territories. Or maybe you already have enough salespeople, but most of the team struggles to hit quota, delivers inconsistent messaging, or follows different sales processes.
Once you identify where your bottlenecks are, you can make the best business decision for your organization and make sure every dollar is working for.
