There's nothing more important than reaching your prospects with experiences that are consistent and personalized. In fact, it's becoming more crucial as customers are starting to expect this behavior at every touchpoint with the brands they are purchasing from.
With sales enablement, you can do this and more as the marketing and sales teams work together to align their tools and information for a more in-depth understanding of your target audience and how to resonate with them.
According to Learn Hub, "Sales enablement's presence correlates with a 31% improvement in supporting changes in sales messaging and a 15% improvement in improving low-performing salespeople."
This means you will not only be helping your sales team by lifting up the ones on the bottom of the totem pole, but you will give everyone the tools they need to improve their sales pitch and reach your customers.
Once you know if your sales enablement is set for scale, dive into what your sales team needs to succeed.
WHERE DOES A SALES ENABLEMENT STRATEGY LIVE?
Sales enablement can live in many different locations within a company's organization, but many struggle to find the place that makes the most sense. Enablement can report to multiple areas depending on the company’s structure and its emphasis on the importance of sales enablement. For example, it can report to sales operations or directly to the CEO, CMO, or CRO.
Ultimately, the organizational structure between sales, marketing, customer success, and human resources will dictate where enablement lives. In most cases:
- Marketing creates most of the resources like guides, training, and content, with the help of the sales team to fill in some of the missing pieces.
- The sales operations team should take charge of bringing this information to all levels of the sales team to present the program in a strategic and easy-to-understand way — using it as the foundation for driving all decisions and recommendations needed for optimizing your sales funnel and process.
- Sales management concludes the process by ensuring the sales team is practicing the program.
Having this successful alignment and scope of enablement alleviates duplication of work and can allow companies to focus on progress.
HOW ENABLEMENT IS CHANGING THE SALES ROLE AND SALES TEAM
The sales process is a funnel, with the top half being owned by marketing and the lower half by sales, with the lower half’s primary focus being on closing deals and generating revenue. Enablement is transforming the bottom of the funnel, creating hyperfocus on the quality of customer engagements and providing sales teams every advantage and edge possible to close deals.
Sales teams are expected to be fast movers, objection handlers, and assertive. Now, with enablement tools and technologies becoming more common, sales teams have access to the right content at the right times in the buyers' journey, eliminating the days of trying to find the right collateral, increasing close rates, and shortening sales cycles.
This is so important because research provided by Salesforce reports that "80% of customers say the experience a company provides is as important as its products and services [and] 67% of customers are willing to pay more for a great experience."
As markets become saturated with competitors, sales teams need access to every tool possible to engage with modern buyers, hammer home their company's competitive advantage and value proposition, and win with the personalization of the product offering. In fact, 74% of buyers choose to move forward with the sales rep that's the first to share value and insight — make sure that is your team!
WHAT TOOLS SHOULD WE BE PROVIDING OUR SALES TEAM?
Sales enablement tools should be visible to the sales team for every step of the buyers' journey in an easy-to-navigate repository, portal, or centralized location. This will maximize their potential with consumers, allowing them to structure customer experiences in a more personal manner.
Centralized portals, in particular, provide a single point of reference for a sales team to find published materials, locate specific tools, and manage content. Within these portals, companies can provide enhanced content management, reporting, performance analytics, collateral, scoring, and a myriad of other effective tools to facilitate personalized sales experiences to their customers.
Implementation of sales enablement is critical
With that being said, how you execute your sales enablement matters, as well. The following tips will ensure you're maximizing your potential with sales enablement as much as possible:
- Make sure that proper leadership is in place to drive the effort and ensure cross-departmental alignment on goals, roles, and responsibilities.
- Set up regular check-ins, interdepartmental meetings, and communication vehicles to continuously monitor performance.
- Utilize technology to make these processes more efficient, easy to use, and effective.
Another important tip to keep in mind is the implementation of sales enablement into your company culture. According to Michael Rockford, CEO and Founder of Radial Spark, "Cultures that embody the free-flow of information and that pride themselves on providing the best tools to their employees pave the way for the greatest customer experiences."
He states that arming your employees with the right tools and knowledge for success by aligning sales and marketing not only ensures they can do their job better — but also makes them proud of selling your brand, confident they can close the deal, and overall happier to be doing what they're doing (and believe us, customers will notice!).
HOUSE OF REVENUE CAN HELP
If you are concerned you are falling behind with sales enablement or not sure where to start, House of Revenue can help. Sales enablement has made a significant difference for the companies that implement it into their business strategy, especially since research shows that Enterprise organizations lose over $2.3 million each year because of opportunity costs associated with underused or unused marketing content.
Our team of revenue experts will keep you caught up with the latest best practices and techniques, so you don't have to stress about falling behind again.
Schedule a consultation with us today or download our full methodology eBook for more insight and resources.
