Sales enablement is a strategy that can empower the sales team to become more productive and successful. It’s vital to be aware of your company’s specific needs and how you can get them met with minimal investment of time or money.
What is Sales Enablement?
Generally sales enablement is the process of educating your sales team on how to sell products and services. It can also be defined as the general idea of making it easier for salespeople to achieve success, which is done by providing them with all of the necessary tools to do so. These tools are usually provided through training modules, online webinars, or other materials.
Sales enablement can be broken down into two categories: Internal Sales Enablement and External Sales enablement. Internal Sales Enablement efforts are aimed at providing information to employees in the company about products, services, and best practices used in selling those items. External Sales Enablement seeks to provide information to customers about what your company offers and how they can use your products or services.
Sales enablement can be used for a variety of purposes, such as:
- Training new sales hires
- Providing support for the activities of the sales team
- Improving customer service by providing handovers from one department to another
- Helping with the onboarding process for clients into a company’s CRM or ERP system.
Who does Sales Enablement apply to?
It is a concept that applies to a wide range of professions, ranging from marketing and customer service representatives to account executives and outside and inside sales representatives.
The term applies mainly to professionals engaged in persuasive intellectual endeavours on behalf of the company and an integral part of the sales process.
It’s a relatively new field of study that is aimed at providing valuable knowledge and tools to professionals in the sales department. The goal of Sales Enablement is to help these professionals better meet the needs of their customers.
Why use sales enablement?
Sales enablement programs take a holistic approach to sales, encompassing sales skills, marketing, leadership and more. It offers various resources and tools to help maximise the team’s performance without increasing overhead costs. The ROI is impressive as well; organisations with sales enablement achieve a 49% win rate on forecasted deals, according to Learn.G2.com.
Sales enablement is a set of digital tools, processes, and training programs that help salespeople identify and capitalise on opportunities.
There are many ways you can use Sales Enablement, including:
- One way is via the use of a CRM. This will allow your company to track when a potential customer has signed up for a demo or even when a salesperson has contacted them through phone calls or email in the past few months. These records will then be stored in your CRM, where you can see if this customer has been contacted by other salesperson who may have seen them as an opportunity that was not pursued at the time.
- Another way is to distribute high-quality content such as case studies, white papers, webinars and presentations which show off your product or service.
Download Now: The Ultimate Sales Playbook – A Step-By-Step Play To A More Robust Sales Strategy [Free Download]
How to get started with sales enablement
Sales enablement is a sales team’s opportunity to empower the salesperson with everything they need to know about their product, company, and customer base.
If you are new to sales enablement, here are some tips on how to get started. Before anything else, read up on the basics by researching frameworks and best practices.
Once you’ve done that, you can take your first steps onto this journey by asking your peers and colleagues for advice and information about what they would do for their teams.
Successful sales enablement starts with a great environment that fosters collaboration and accountability. This is because there are many stakeholders that need to be involved in the process of creating and executing a strategy for sales enablement.
The first step is to create a team that has members from all levels of the organisation. They should also have representation from various departments such as marketing, product, and customer success teams.
The next step is to establish goals and quotas for the team, along with metrics for progress monitoring. It’s also essential to develop a strategy and make sure it has buy-in from management and other decision-makers.
The top 8 tips for sales enablement
Sales enablement is a crucial aspect of any business as the sales team is responsible for establishing and maintaining customer relationships.
With that said, here are some points that can help you with your strategy:
1) It’s important to note that CRM systems will need to be updated regularly to keep up with the latest trends and best practices that are emerging in this quickly changing industry.
2) Create a list of your top customers and keep track of their buying habits. This will help you to serve better these customers, who are willing to buy from you again.
3) Creating a personal connection with your customers has never been easier. By sending them updates on your latest product releases, social media posts, and blog articles via email, you provide them with the information they are interested in. Plus, receiving these emails will remind them of your brand.
4) Always go back to the value of the customer and prioritise communication with those that are most valued. For example, if a customer has been a loyal member of your organisation for over 10 years, place them at the top of your priority list for communications.
5) Ensure that your team has a deep understanding of the customer journey and can guide them through a variety of touchpoints. They should have an in-depth knowledge of the various touchpoints and be able to guide the customer through them in a smooth, confident manner.
6) Create shareable content for salespeople to use when they are in conversation with customers. These materials should highlight the benefits of a product while also giving context on why a customer should choose your product over a competitor’s you can do this by implementing some kind of content management system.
7) It is essential to plan ahead with content creation staff and identify what type of content they will need for you in the future. This will allow them to plan accordingly and will help eliminate any delays in meeting your publication needs.
8) Lastly, the sales and marketing teams must work together so nothing in the buyers journey is missing.
Conclusion
Sales enablement can be a complex topic to cover because it has so many different aspects. To summarise the key points of the article, it is composed of three essential parts:
1) The content that is being used as a resource to educate and train salespeople
2) The tools that are being utilised to help salespeople engage with their prospects and customers
3) The process that companies use to inform the sales team of all the information they need
Sales enablement has become an essential component of the sales process, and it is critical for sales leaders to invest in this area.
