What Is Revenue Enablement? How To Drive Revenue Growth (2024)

In any retail operation, your sales staff are the frontline force generating revenue through daily customer interactions. If you’re running a brick-and-mortar business, it’s your floor staff fielding product questions and ensuring that every customer leaves satisfied. The importance of this role has given rise to sales enablement—where organizations invest in equipping consumer-facing teams with everything from objection-handling coaching to compelling case studies that help close difficult deals.

But, revenue generation increasingly extends beyond the traditional sales function. A skilled customer service rep can transform a support call into a cross-sell opportunity. At the same time, a savvy marketing team member can refine ad targeting to generate more leads and sales. This expanded understanding of revenue creation has given rise to revenue enablement, breaking down departmental silos to empower every customer-facing employee with the tools and training needed to drive growth. 

Read on to discover how your brand can implement revenue enablement strategies that maximize revenue throughout the customer journey.

What is revenue enablement?

Revenue enablement is a company-wide practice intended to give your team the tools, training, and resources they need to drive consistent revenue growth. 

From customer-facing marketing specialists to sales teams and customer support representatives, revenue enablement equips every department with the insights and capabilities to increase revenue through each stage of the customer journey. Team members spot and act on revenue opportunities, whether they’re handling support tickets, analyzing marketing data, or closing sales deals.

This approach evolved from traditional sales enablement and has its strongest foothold in B2B software companies. However, it can apply to retail, too—from direct-to-consumer kitchenware brands to bedding suppliers outfitting boutique hotel chains.

Revenue enablement vs. sales enablement

While sales enablement helps sales teams succeed, revenue enablement extends these principles across a broader swath of the organization. 

Traditional sales enablement gives sales teams the tech and training to close deals—from product education and sales scripts to competitor battle cards and detailed pricing guides. In retail environments, this might include training floor staff on upselling techniques or providing sales teams with detailed product specs to answer customer questions confidently.

Revenue enablement is broader, extending these enablement practices beyond customer-facing roles—namely, to marketing and customer support. Within an ecommerce business, this means training customer service teams to turn support interactions into positive buying experiences. That enables marketing teams to transform campaign data into targeted revenue plays and equips sales managers with tools like Salesforce to spot and act on renewal and expansion signals.

Here’s a side-by-side comparison of sales enablement and revenue enablement strategies:

Area	Sales enablement strategy	Revenue enablement strategy
Focus	Sales performance and closing deals	Holistic revenue growth across all channels
Teams involved	Sales teams	Marketing, sales, customer support (or customer success)
Key metrics	Deal size, conversion rates, sales cycle length	Revenue growth, customer satisfaction, customer lifetime value, retention rates, cross-sell success
Primary goal	Improve sales team effectiveness	Maximize revenue opportunities across the entire customer journey
Business impact	Improved sales performance and quota attainment	Aligned teams driving consistent revenue growth

Advantages of revenue enablement

While sales enablement drives revenue through traditional sales channels, revenue enablement identifies opportunities across other customer touchpoints. This broader approach delivers some advantages, including:

Increased revenue through multiple channels

Companies with a sales enablement function focus on revenue through common paths—leads, meetings, and closed deals. But revenue enablement uncovers opportunities in unexpected places.

For example, if you run an outdoor gear company, your chat support agent might recommend waterproofing sprays while helping customers choose hiking boots. Meanwhile, your marketing team might notice that customers who buy hiking boots often buy trekking poles, too, leading the team to launch targeted pole ad campaigns for boot-only purchasers. These additional touchpoints become natural moments for revenue growth while solving real customer needs.

Better team alignment and efficiency

Sales enablement can create unintentional silos, with sales teams working independently from other potential revenue-generating teams. This disconnect can lead to jarring customer experiences, like promising marketing deals that support isn’t aware of and sales teams aren’t equipped to handle. 

Revenue enablement breaks down these barriers by creating shared goals and collective buy-in. Larger companies often explicitly have revenue teams, with customer-facing departments falling under a single umbrella.

When your marketing team spots a trend in cart abandonment, for instance, they can share those insights with customer service to shape better support conversations. Teams reduce duplicated efforts, share winning strategies, and work together to create customer experiences that encourage checkouts and repeat purchases. 

Higher customer lifetime value

Revenue enablement efforts go beyond closing the initial sale. Instead, these efforts are holistic around an individual customer. Website support can guide shoppers toward products that match their needs before they make a purchase, reducing returns and building trust.

Post-purchase, data insights can help identify the right moments for relevant recommendations—like your marketing team sending targeted emails recommending grill tool sets to customers who just purchased a BBQ smoker. Each interaction aims to grow customer spending and increase your overall customer lifetime value.

Useful tools for effective revenue enablement

Revenue enablement relies on the right mix of technology to help teams identify and act on opportunities. Ideally, these tools should integrate with your existing ecommerce platform and retail systems. Here are a few tools that can help your brand work as a unified revenue enablement unit:

Marketing automation

Marketing automation tools can track customer signals—like abandoned carts, past purchase dates, or browsing habits—to automatically send targeted emails, SMS, and social ads at moments when customers are most likely to buy. Shopify Email and Shopify Flow help teams deliver these targeted messages at scale, turning customer data into revenue-generating opportunities across email, SMS, and other channels.

CRM platforms

Customer relationship management platforms help you build complete profiles of customer interactions, simplifying the process for your team to act on buying signals and sales opportunities. For instance, these platforms can give teams instant access to purchase history and conversation records for more targeted recommendations and personalized outreach.

Business intelligence and analytics tools

Analytics and business intelligence tools build your understanding of customer behavior patterns across touchpoints, revealing hidden growth opportunities. Shopify Analytics provides insights into customer behavior and purchase patterns.

Customer service platforms

Customer service platformsare not just a messaging platform between your team and customers—they also offer opportunities to solve problems while suggesting relevant products and upgrades. Tools like Shopify Inbox help businesses convert browsers into buyers by enabling automated messages, instant AI-generated answers to common questions, and sales-focused features like cart insights and custom discount codes.

Content management systems

Content management systems let you build a repository of up-to-date product information and marketing materials to support buyers before they purchase your product. Shopify’s native content tools let teams quickly update product information and marketing materials.

Implementing revenue enablement across the customer journey

Every stage of the ecommerce customer journey presents unique opportunities for driving revenue—from a shopper’s first brand interaction (awareness) to their zillionth purchase (loyalty). Here are strategic revenue enablement practices that customer success teams can implement at each stage:

Awareness

In the awareness stage, potential customers are just discovering your brand and products, often through search, social media platforms like TikTok, or word of mouth. These curious shoppers may have a need in mind but haven’t yet narrowed down their options. Working in tandem, revenue enablement connects marketing, sales, and support to attract customers who are more likely to convert.

Here are strategies to strengthen your awareness stage:

• Marketing teams can analyze your most profitable customers’ buying habits, then target similar audiences with search and social ads—bringing in new shoppers who match the patterns of your best customers (e.g., lookalike audiences on Facebook).
• Support teams can capture recurring questions from service conversations, using this information to build better FAQ content—answering pressing questions before they slow down purchase decisions.
• Sales teams might log common buyer hesitations they encounter on calls, helping marketing address these points upfront on product pages and reducing buying barriers for site visitors.

Consideration

During the consideration phase of the customer journey, shoppers actively compare products, read reviews, and add items to their cart while still weighing their options. For a B2B buyer, this stage could involve deeper research into specs, bulk pricing options, and shipping capabilities, as they may likely need to justify purchases to other stakeholders and ensure products will meet their desired business outcomes.

Revenue enablement aims to speed up the consideration process, giving buyers the information (or incentive) they need to make a final decision.

Here are three revenue enablement strategies for your consideration phase:

• Marketing teams might trigger personalized discount offers for abandoned carts based on cart value and browsing history—giving wavering customers the final push they need to purchase.
• Support teams can build and use a detailed product knowledge base for chat conversations, helping uncertain shoppers choose the right size or model—turning hesitation into confidence at the decision-making juncture.
• Sales teams might share relevant case studies with prospects comparing similar products, showcasing real results from satisfied customers.

Acquisition

During the acquisition stage, customers have moved beyond browsing and comparison—they’re ready to make a purchase. Unfortunately, this moment is also when small friction points can derail a sale.

Here, revenue enablement ensures that obstacles are removed and purchase decisions are reinforced.

Use these strategies to improve revenue collection during your acquisition stage:

• Marketing teams might experiment and A/B test different free shipping thresholds (e.g., $50 versus $75) and measure their impact on average order value.
• Support teams can document specific checkout issues customers report during service conversations, helping development teams prioritize fixes—from unclear discount code fields to confusion about estimated delivery dates.
• Sales teams can analyze which combination of products customers most often purchase together, helping marketing create compelling bundle offers.

Service

During the service stage, customers receive their orders, use their products, and potentially reach out with questions or concerns. This phase is important for building trust and identifying additional sales opportunities.

You can use revenue enablement principles to turn these seemingly routine service interactions into revenue opportunities.

Try these tactics to strengthen your service stage:

• Marketing teams can trigger post-purchase emails that send product care guides or recommend related items, turning product maintenance needs into natural sales opportunities.
• Sales teams might follow up personally with customers who make large purchases to ensure they’re happy and discuss complementary items—building relationships that lead to repeat business.
• Support teams may track common repair requests and timelines, helping marketing send relevant replacement offers before products wear out.

Loyalty

Happy customers can become your best recurring revenue source. During the loyalty stage, customers with positive experiences are primed for repeat purchases, bulk orders, and referrals. This is where revenue enablement can work across functions to turn satisfied customers into long-term revenue drivers.

These strategies support revenue generation in your loyalty stage:

• Sales teams can offer incremental discounts for long-term purchasing commitments, rewarding customers who sign up for recurring orders or annual contracts.
• Support teams could consider extending premium service perks to repeat customers, like no-questions-asked returns or priority shipping, showing loyalty to those who show loyalty to you.
• Marketing teams might combine points-based rewards with referral bonuses to turn your best customers into brand ambassadors while incentivizing higher spending.