You expect a lot from your sales team: ideal buyers and the resulting revenue, and you would like them to do it efficiently. But what can be done to ensure that they are working at the top of their game? Sales enablement can best be explained as the process of providing your salesforce with resources and tools to help them effectively close sales.
There are several attributes to sales enablement, and understanding each one of them is vital to your success at implementing a successful sales enablement program. Let’s walk through them briefly to provide you with a good foundation.
- The objective of sales enablement is pretty straightforward: provide tools and information to help your salespeople sell more effectively.
- Sales enablement is really about the buyer. The resources you use are designed to help the sales team target buyers.
- What sales enablement provides is information, including content the buyer wants to see as well as internal tools just for your salespeople.
- Once you have resources for your sales team, they need to be trained on how to use them effectively.
- Resources should be appropriate for your company; make them easy to use, and use over and over again for multiple buyers.
- Once you have tools the salesforce is using, its time track their use and effectiveness. Once you have data, you can optimize future efforts based on whether or not they were successful.
- Use a variety of metrics to measure success; examples are average sales cycle length, the number of sales people reaching their quotas, and the average sales amount.
Sales enablement is helpful because it enables all of your salesforce to be successful. There will always be those individuals who stand out as superior achievers, but with information and tools available to all players, the playing field is leveled. Additionally, you will be delivering a similar (good) experience to all buyers, no matter the salesperson they deal with.
Keep your content at the front of your sales philosophy. By creating resources for your buyer AND sales person, you will be delivering the right information at the right time to enable your sales team to move the buyer along in their journey. This is where marketing comes in; creating quality blog posts, white papers, and webinars allow your salespeople to deliver the same content to all buyers they pitch to. Create internal training tools, which help them deliver that content optimally.
Let sales enablement be part of your organization’s culture, the “way we do things.” When all members of your company are vested in your sales enablement success, your team will fully reap the benefits. You will see not only the benefit of a highly skilled sales team but long lasting customer relationships as a result of superior, consistent content presented throughout the buyer’s journey.
About Digital Impact Agency
Digital Impact Agency is a creative firm specializing in interactive media and inbound marketing strategies for manufacturing and technology companies, professional service firms (architectural, engineering, construction, legal and consulting), nonprofits and enterprise companies. We are a team of innovative entrepreneurs focused on creating the most strategic and effective communication channels for our clients.
