Sales enablement accelerates revenue growth. Providing client-facing teams with access to resources like a robust content library that educates and influences prospects or revenue platforms that eliminate or minimize manual processes has the following benefits:
- Shorter sales cycles
- Larger deal sizes
- More predictable pipeline
- Higher rates of customer satisfaction, renewals, and upsells
- Productivity gains
Empowering Reps
Access to collateral and tools gives all sales reps the opportunity to succeed and accelerates the speed at which newer reps are onboarded.
With adequate training material and quality content, the disparity between the sales of junior level sales reps and veteran account executives can be bridged faster. Senior reps do have the experience needed to use the collateral to their best advantage, but junior reps learn quickly when they have access to the same resource library.
All members of the sales team are best empowered when they have access to the following:
Reporting Systems
Teams need to make sense of the data that is available to them, and being able to do so at a glance helps revenue teams know if their activities are on the mark, or if they need to make a quick pivot.
Standard reports include:
- Leads generated and worked
- Deals won, lost, and in the pipeline
- Discovery calls completed
- Product demos landed
- CRM activity for the sales team
Reviewing Sales Processes
Sales enablement is an ongoing process. Pipeline reports should detail when prospects tend to advance or fall from the pipeline. Examining these reports will show you where there may be weaknesses or gaps in your sales process.
For example, let’s say you see that there are enough leads from marketing going to the sales team, but only 3-5% of them are going to the next stage and/or converting. After examining the data, the sales enablement team:
- Determines that prospects are dropping off at the demo stage
- Arranges to sit on demo calls to see what needs improving, and
- Sets up training with reps to improve the quality of demo calls
Sales Collateral
Building and maintaining a library of sales collateral is a necessity of sales enablement. Content creation is often seen as a responsibility that belongs solely to marketing, but many sales teams produce their own content, such as personalized and targeted messages for different types of outreach.
These are the different ways that sales enablement manages sales collateral:
Organizing Existing Sales Content
Doing a complete content audit is essential, as it provides a clear picture of what you currently possess. This can include anything, from:
- Case studies
- Whitepapers
- Ebooks
- Blogs
- Product demo presentations
- Competitive advantage briefings
- Pricing information
Creating a content repository gives sales reps and leadership one point of reference for all the materials they require. Organizing existing content will also expose gaps the team needs to fill and inform what content they should prioritize creating.
Creating Case Studies
Case studies demonstrate for customers how your product can be beneficial to their specific needs. Testimonials from industry peers also instill confidence in customers. Whether these stories are about a feature of your product or overall customer success, this is one of the most effective ways to build trust.
Creating Competitor Analysis Reports
Another way to help your sales team is to offer an at-a-glance reference that highlights the competitive advantages of your product. It doesn’t need to be exhaustive — just a simple sheet showing the different areas in which your product performs better or has an advantage over the competition.
These reports are useful since your prospects are likely considering your competitors as well. Letting your prospects know from the get-go how your solution stacks up helps them with their buying decision and helps them understand why your solution may be the strongest fit for their particular need.
Automation
Sales reps are responsible for carrying out a lot of tasks, some of which can be time-consuming and tedious and steal time that would be better spent on customer outreach. Tasks like email nurturing, sending simple replies to completed web forms, and updating contact information are just a few of many that can be automated.
Email Outreach
Email outreach is important for gaining and keeping the attention of lower-intent prospects, but it can be a time-consuming process. Creating email templates can help your reps craft messages for a variety of circumstances, like announcements for events, information on new features, and reminders that keep your solution top of mind.
Automated emails can be personalized based on customer characteristics like industry, region, role, and much more, and can be triggered to be sent when certain criteria are met. Setting up automated emails can save reps hours that are better spent engaging high-intent accounts.
Direct Messaging
There is no better time to reach out to your prospects than when they are engaged with your website and learning about your solutions. A chatbot enables reps to do exactly that by initiating conversations immediately and advancing hot prospects to next steps.
