What Is Product Enablement?
Product enablement is a corporate learning program that helps the company’s employees gain relevant knowledge about a certain product. Though applicable for the entire company, a learning program is adapted to each department, such as customer support or sales, to fit their specific needs. Apart from providing each team with relevant information, the product enablement program ensures that cross-functional teams are in sync.
The basic assumption of the product enablement philosophy is that the more employees understand the product the better for the company. Product enablement is highly important for teams involved in marketing, sales, or customer support to be prepared for a product release and for communication with customers, especially during the first months after the product launch. At the same time, it can be part of a corporate educational program and communicate updates to a wider audience. However, all educational resources prepared within the product enablement effort must be team-specific and related to their work – a generic training program is less effective in helping employees interact with customers or answering product-specific questions.
Responsibilities of a product enablement team
The role of the product enablement team might differ depending on the organization, but in most cases, the typical high-level responsibilities will include the following:
- Develop department-specific employee training programs and educational resources in collaboration with the product team
- Run the training programs in the required departments and teams
- Develop a knowledge portal to ensure that the educational materials are easy to access
- Provide the product team with feedback received during the training sessions at various departments
Four pillars of product enablement
Effective product enablement rests on four key elements that help develop resourceful trainings and easy-to-use educational materials:
Product positioning
Each employee at every department needs to understand the value of the product, which customer needs it addresses, and how customers are expected to interact with it. You can prepare specific taglines or key phrases that can be used in advertising campaigns, social media, and in general communications with customers and prospects.
Pitch
A pitch should focus on the product benefits in real life. Instead of listing the product features, take the perspective of customer testimonials and specific use cases that might help your product become memorable.
Gamification
Gamification is one of the central notions in modern education: play allows employees to gain first-hand experience with the product, it encourages them to consider products from multiple perspectives and experiment with them to discover customer value and even uncover hidden benefits and features to promote.
Program
A comprehensive program becomes a guide for employees that helps them, on the one hand, decide which products will be the most useful for specific customers, and on the other hand, learn which actions to take to improve their communication with customers and increase productivity.
Product enablement benefits
Product enablement ensures that everyone in the company clearly understands the product’s concept, purpose, its benefits, and main use cases. In this way, it increases organizations-wide alignment and minimizes miscommunication.
Besides, it increases productivity and saves time by providing ready answers to employees. It creates cohesive branding and marketing by suggesting which benefits and features to focus on.
Ultimately, product enablement makes the customer onboarding process smoother, improving customer.
