Pam Didner, author of the book Effective Sales Enablement, describes sales enablement as equipping sales reps “with knowledge, skill sets, and tools they need so that they can do their jobs: selling. In terms of collaboration, it comes down to how the sales enablement is organized and structured. Sales enablement is a group of people with content, tools and processes to make your sales team productive and efficient.”
Just how productive and efficient? Look at these stats on how sales tools are changing the game:
- High-performing sales teams use 3x more sales technology tools than underperforming teams.
- 74% of buyers will choose to work with the sales reps who can demonstrate value.
- 95% of buyers say that they want benchmarks to measure against industry standards and competitors.
- 94% of B2B decision makers seek out sales teams that can show specific insights into the problems their company is trying to solve.
- B2B buyers are 5x more likely to engage with a sales professional who offers new insights into their business.
- 89% of B2B buyers say that the vendors they’ve made successful purchases from provided content that made it easier to show the ROI for the purchase.
- Over 75% of companies using sales enablement tools saw an increase in sales in the first year. 40% of those companies reported an increase greater than 25%.
It’s clear from these statistics that B2B companies stand to benefit a lot from efficient sales enablement practices. So how can you make sales enablement function similarly for your organization? If you’re a business owner or a sales manager looking to boost your sales team’s performance, here are the things you should prioritize for successful sales enablement in your organization.
6 Essential Tips for Sales Enablement
1. Leverage Content
The buyer’s journey typically goes through these stages: awareness, interest, consideration or evaluation, intent, purchase, retention or loyalty. We’ve discussed the importance of producing content for every stage of the buyer’s journey. Not only does it personalize the experience for your prospect, it can also help convert your leads into actual customers. Marketing or the sales enablement team (if you have one) is tasked to create these kinds of content.
The sales enablement team has to understand the value of relevant, valuable content—and leverage it. Create case studies, testimonials, white papers, infographics, videos, etc. Then get feedback from the sales team’s clients who receive these materials. Their feedback can help you improve on the content, if needed. Encourage sales reps to express their opinions on how content should be created. They are the people interacting with customers, and they would know what content works and what doesn’t. Besides, this is the whole point of sales enablement: sales and marketing aligned and working together.
2. Form a team with the right people
However you want to call the team tasked to provide sales enablement for you, you need to have the right people in it. Begin with the head of the team. He or she must be well-versed and competent in the areas of sales and marketing, customer service, communication, and strategy. Then you’ll need members to handle data and analytics, systems and processes, training and talent, and tools and talent.
Also key to this team’s success is their ability to stay goal-oriented and collaborative. They need to share the same goals the sales reps have and they should know how to work with sales and other relevant teams or departments. Start building your team for sales enablement especially if you have a large sales team. It will be worth the investment.
3. Put sales team’s needs first
Sometimes sales enablement focuses too much on the tangible tools—the campaign content, brochure, white paper, reports, and the like—that they forget about their most important asset: the sales team.
The sales enablement team should function to help advance and boost the performance of the sales team. To do so, they need to understand how the sales team functions, what they need, what they want to achieve, what motivates them, and so on. Ongoing training should be prioritized, for one. There are many different ways to train and coach; find what’s suitable for the sales reps.
4. Consider social selling when creating content
B2B and B2C companies have discovered the power of social selling. B2B companies, in particular, have found success leveraging LinkedIn and Twitter for connecting and engaging with new prospects. This is why every sales rep should have a strong social selling profile.
How can sales enablement help in this area? The team should produce the valuable content that the sales reps can share in their respective social media platforms. It should be on top of topics that customers care about, and create content around these.
5. Cover all channels
Social media is just one of the many channels sales reps use every day when trying to engage customers. Don’t forget about the others, like email, phone calls, demos, presentations, and so on. Make sure to have those covered as well. Create templates for use in emails, for example. Help write winning cold call scripts. Produce convincing pitches and presentations.
The idea is to cover all channels the sales team uses and have strategies for each one to make certain that everything is maximized.
6. Analyze the data
The sales enablement head should be studying sales reports the same way the sales team head does. These reports tell you a lot about customer behaviors and patterns, winning strategies, sales issues, and the like. A smart CRM like Lucrativ can generate these reports and have them available in a central location—for everyone’s perusal. In fact, a CRM can enable the successful collaboration of all members, teams, and departments of a sales organization.
Sales enablement is so important in a sales team’s success. Businesses should invest the time and resources to develop it. In time, they will reap its promising rewards and fantastic ROI.
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