"I wasn't selling. I was just offering buying processes as a service. My entire focus was on facilitating buyers' internal tasks."
These words from a sales representative who closed a $400K deal in just 90 days might sound counterintuitive at first. But this approach represents a fundamental shift happening in modern sales – moving from seller-centric methods to buyer enablement.
In this article, we'll dive into the concept of buyer enablement and explore four powerful tactics to implement it, based on insights from Gal Aga, a veteran B2B SaaS sales leader with 17 years of experience as a sales director, VP of sales, and CRO, who has scaled companies from $1M to $100M in ARR.
The sales landscape has drastically changed. Today, 75% of buyers prefer a seller-free experience. They want to research, evaluate, and even purchase without direct involvement from salespeople. Yet, paradoxically, these same buyers have a higher chance of regret without proper guidance.
Why is this happening? Because buying has become more complex than ever before.
What we're seeing in the market:
The result? Sales teams struggle to meet quotas, deals stall, and potential customers ghost sellers after initial conversations.
According to Gal Aga, buyer enablement isn't just another sales methodology—it's a complete mindset shift. It refers to the strategic framework of how you interact with customers across your entire go-to-market organization.
Let's contrast the old and new approaches:
The old way of seller-centric sales focuses primarily on sales stages, pushes meetings and demos according to your timeline, overwhelms prospects with information, follows a predefined process regardless of buyer needs, and rushes to close deals. This approach leaves buyers feeling "sold to" rather than "helped."
In contrast, the new way of buyer-centric sales focuses on the buyer's internal stages, facilitates buying that happens between meetings, helps buyers digest information at their pace, reduces friction consistently throughout their journey, and creates genuinely helpful experiences.
Now, let's explore the four tactics Gal Aga recommends to transform your sales approach.
The first and most crucial tactic involves a complete reframing of how we think about sales. This isn't about minor adjustments—it's a foundational change in perspective.
Stop pushing for meetings based on your timeline. Instead, focus on:
"The most successful sales reps I've worked with," Gal explains, "don't view themselves as salespeople at all. They see themselves as consultants who offer 'buying process as a service.' Their entire focus is on removing obstacles from the customer's path."
This shift requires sales leaders to reconsider how they measure success. Instead of tracking activities like calls made or demos delivered, measure how effectively your team removes friction from the buying process.
"The biggest aha moment my reps had about selling was when I explained buying processes," Gal shares. Most sales training focuses exclusively on selling techniques while neglecting how organizations actually make purchasing decisions.
To implement this tactic:
One effective exercise is to map out the complete buying journey for your typical customer, identifying all stakeholders involved and the tasks they must complete internally. Then, for each stage, identify how your sales process can facilitate those tasks.
"When reps understand that 80% of the buying process happens without them, they start focusing on enabling that 80% rather than just optimizing the 20% where they're present," Gal notes.
Nothing beats learning directly from the source. Gal strongly recommends bringing actual customers into your sales training:
"Bring your CFO, your CEO, your VPs, and actual prospects that you've sold to, to tell stories."
Have them share:
This tactic is particularly powerful because it removes any skepticism. Sales reps can't dismiss feedback when it comes directly from the people they're trying to sell to.
Most sales enablement content focuses on helping reps sell. Buyer enablement flips this approach by creating content specifically designed to help buyers buy.
Examples include:
"Your content should enable THEIR buying process, not just YOUR selling process," Gal emphasizes.
This approach requires close collaboration between sales, marketing, and product teams. Together, they need to identify the specific challenges buyers face at each stage of their journey and create resources that address those challenges.
One particularly effective technique is to analyze deals that stalled and identify the specific internal obstacle that prevented progress. Then, create content specifically designed to overcome that obstacle.
When implemented effectively, buyer enablement delivers significant benefits:
Gal shares one particularly striking example:
"There was this one AE who consistently outperformed everyone else. When we looked at what she was doing differently, we discovered she spent 70% of her time creating custom materials to help her champions sell internally. She wasn't selling—she was enabling buying."
The shift to buyer enablement isn't just a temporary trend—it's a necessary evolution in response to changing buyer preferences. As Gal puts it, "The companies that thrive will be those that make buying easier, not those that try to make selling more aggressive."
To implement buyer enablement in your organization:
The future of sales isn't about pushing harder—it's about helping better. And buyer enablement provides the framework to do exactly that.
In this episode of SellMeThisPen Podcast, Michael and Gal discuss the dramatic shift in B2B sales, where buyers increasingly prefer self-service options yet still need guidance. They explore how sales teams can transform their approach from traditional selling to buyer enablement, focusing on removing friction from the purchasing process rather than pushing products.
Gal Aga is a veteran B2B SaaS sales leader with 17 years of experience as a sales director, VP of sales, and CRO. Having scaled companies from $1M to $100M in ARR, he's now CEO and co-founder at Aligned, where he helps organizations implement buyer-centric approaches to their go-to-market strategies.
