There was a time when most businesses saw content as something that customers engaged with only during specific phases of the buyer’s journey. Today, companies realize that the concept of sales enablement is imperative for their success. As a result, more and more companies acknowledge the critical role that high-value content plays at every stage of the buyer’s journey, particularly the selling process. Recent surveys indicate searches for “sales enablement” have grown by 51% since last year and continue to rise despite all odds.
So, what is sales enablement anyways?
Sales enablement can be best explained as a strategic approach that aligns a business’s sales, marketing, and operations with equipping the sales team with the right resources, tools, and processes, which would lead to increased sales. It allows marketing and sales to create shared goals and interests. By working together, they identify the pressing concerns and questions of the customers that might be raised during the buyer’s journey and then involve the marketing team to create content that will provide the most benefit to your organization.
Why is having a sales enablement strategy so important?
Companies have been noticeably chasing goals more competitively with greater pressure to achieve sales than ever before in today’s aggressive business environment. If your sales team does not have the right tools, information and resources, the chances are that they will run into obstacles and challenges. To overcome this predicament, sellers today need readily available access to internal resources, data about the product they’re selling, and insight into their potential customers. Additionally, sales leaders need to understand how sellers use the information and what resources drive results. This is where an effective sales enablement strategy is beneficial.
Recent studies also indicate that the buying behaviours have significantly shifted over the past few years, resulting in significant friction while decision making and the resultant lengthening of the deal cycles. All this evidence has convinced sellers that their current sales strategies, content and tools may not be enough to get the job done. Revisiting and revising your sales enablement strategy is what needs to be done to increase sales.
So now that you understand the basics of sales enablement, let’s look at some quick yet effective tips for creating a modern and evolved sales enablement strategy so that you can increase your sales and improve win rates in no time.
Tips for creating modern sales enablement strategy
- Bringing sales to life!
The more buyers interact with a company, the more opportunity sales representatives get to outshine competitors. The trick is to bring the sales content to life. To ensure an engaging and successful buying experience, both the sales and the marketing teams need to be prudent with their content copy and design. Not only this, but sales reps must make sure that every interaction with the client counts. The content copy itself should reflect a high level of expertise and must speak directly to buyers’ needs by offering a challenge-based narrative.
The design of the content also plays a pivotal role, especially in today’s new hybrid business environment. Linear and static presentations just won’t cut it anymore. Your designs must be animated and interactive to draw the buyer’s attention and speak to them directly. Ease of access to pricing and other relevant information should be a priority!
- Effective Collaboration and communication
Developing a sales enablement strategy and implementing it works best if you have a dedicated sales enablement team. In fact, by doing so, companies have 67% more chances of becoming better at closing deals.
However, a successful sales enablement strategy requires the zeal and enthusiasm to collaborate and communicate proactively. There needs to be ongoing communication between the sales reps and the marketing team. Suppose your company’s sales enablement team doesn’t encourage teamwork, collaboration and feedback. In that case, the entire framework of the sale enabling strategy can fail, thus resulting in wasted time, money, and resources.
- The Importance of Differentiating Content
While sales and marketing are the two major players but revenue team of a company must also help in aiding and facilitating every step of the process. The best way to do this is by creating differentiating sales content. Companies must focus on creating content for buyers and personalizing it. They need to concentrate more on telling stories that buyers want to hear instead of sending across messages that the company thinks are important. More importantly, businesses must clearly and consistently communicate the value of their product to buyers.
Part of creating differentiated content is conducting manual audits at regular intervals. Companies and businesses must keep an eye on which content is working and what isn’t. They must determine whether the content is helping the team to move the deals forward or not and contributing to the revenue earned. If the content is no longer relevant or not enabling the sales team in any way, then it should be updated or discarded altogether.
- Delivering the right justifications
Since buyer executives and finance decision-makers need financial justifications. Thus, the sales enablement teams must leverage different ideas to keep them engaged. This may include customer case studies, ROI calculations, third party proof points etc., which demonstrate a clear influence on revenue, productivity, costs and risks, and by quantifying the value through the cost of inaction. Nonetheless, the buyer must understand and value the economic impact of the purchase in consideration to render it worthy and of value.
Moreover, Organizations, especially the sales enablement team and sales rep, must proactively look for opportunities to tout what would happen if buyers don’t act or miss out on sales. This could be anything from cost savings to process improvement to even risk avoidance.
The bottom line!
Remember! A successful sales enablement strategy improves the entire content process, increases collaboration, enhances alignment, and unlocks insights that lead to better-informed business decisions. Being interactive, value-focused content and creating a platform beyond just content management might sound a bit overwhelming, but it is vital for success. Sales enabling teams that can personalize and create an almost mesmeric and captivating buying experience are the ones who will own the future. Thus companies should try to harness the power of modern sales enablement strategies to differentiate themselves and shine through with larger buying committees.