Why do businesses need an effective sales enablement strategy? The short answer is that, without one, you can dilute your sales or marketing efforts and reach fewer customers. Sales enablement gives your sales team the information, tools, training and support systems it needs to generate better results. It helps sales convert leads into customers faster, close more deals and deliver more revenue.
With a sales enablement system in place, you can create a more unified sales approach. Your frontline sales staff will have a clearer understanding of the products and services they sell. What’s more, your sales and marketing teams will able to share field sales data so they can develop effective strategies. In fact, companies with an established sales enablement strategy feel the positive effects on their performance and, more importantly, their revenue.
In this guide, we explore why a strong sales enablement strategy is essential in modern sales. We’ll also share five factors your strategy should include.
The Importance of Empowering Your Sales Team
When a salesperson thoroughly understands their product, it’s easier to turn prospects into customers. Instead of parroting the highlighted features and benefits, informed salespeople can present products as solutions.
The frontline staff should be more than just sales associates; they should be ardent followers of the brand itself. A strong belief in the product inspires them to learn more about it and share the brand story exactly as sales and marketing teams intend.
A robust sales enablement strategy ensures an alignment between salespeople and the brand goals developed by the sales and marketing leadership. Sales and marketing teams should work together to create a unified and consistent sales approach to keep the brand intact.
For instance, the marketing team can conduct market studies and provide the resources the sales team needs to communicate with clients. The sales team can provide the inside information from its everyday dealings with customers. This enables marketing to develop materials tailored to actual customers. Salespeople can also share what information they need to help customers make up their minds.
Rounding out an effective sales enablement strategy is a summary of the performance and effectiveness of the tools and resources given to the sales team. This analysis can make sure the strategy covers all communication areas. More importantly, the analysis provides the hard data that confirms more deals are getting closed and revenue is rising. The collected data can also help weed out unproductive or inefficient processes or practices.
Why a Strong Sales Enablement Strategy Is Essential
Nearly all organizations have sales and marketing departments, but these groups don’t always work together in harmony. Each department has a unique goal. Marketing aims to develop a relatable brand identity and create an effective lead-generation program. It looks at the long-term picture. Sales efforts focus on closing the deal with individuals or businesses. This team will do whatever it takes to hit its targets for the current period.
If your sales and marketing teams operate in silos, you’ll start to see friction. Sales teams might complain that marketing plans don’t align with present field conditions. Marketing teams may accuse sales of ignoring their efforts.
At some point, something has to give. Demand Gen Report’s 2019 B2B Buyers Survey Report noted that aligned companies experience 15% better profitability and 19% faster revenue growth. A separate LinkedIn report also confirms the benefits of a strong sales and marketing alliance:
- Marketing efforts generate 208% more revenue.
- Sales close 67% more deals.
- The brand overall becomes 58% better at customer retention.
A strong sales enablement strategy shows your sales and marketing teams are working as a power couple instead of engaging in a power struggle. Of course, alignment is just the start of a massive, well-coordinated effort to deliver the tools and information sellers need to do what they do best: sell.
What a Strong Sales Enablement Strategy Brings to Your Business
The benefits of a sound sales enablement strategy go beyond closing more sales and generating increased revenues. Your sales team members will find a host of benefits that help boost their careers. In fact, salespeople who work for organizations with strong sales enablement tend to perform better and stay at their jobs longer.
Technology is essential to engage modern sales buyers. A company with an established sales enablement strategy has the tools and resources to provide sales with real-time information.
Not only does technology cover hardware such as smart devices, but it also covers sales enablement software. This includes platforms for customer relationship management (CRM), sales productivity, sales presentation and communication. When your salespeople have the right tools and resources available at all times, they can better engage clients and address their modern requirements.
Aside from continuous technology infusions, sales enablement also ensures the entire sales organization receives regular training as needed. This lets salespeople get the latest market updates and familiarize themselves with new products and features. It also encourages both flexibility and agility among sales teams so they can adapt as the market shifts. With the right tools, training and information, even new employees can update sales decks in time for a big meeting later that day.
Aspects of a Successful Sales Enablement Strategy
Developing and implementing a sound sales enablement strategy requires thorough preparation. Any organization can compile its sales techniques, product information and other data into a central repository and call it a day. But this haphazard way of collecting and distributing information wholesale can leave some sales teams vulnerable to inaccurate or unnecessary information.
Instead, careful planning and continuous testing can help you develop a program that actually works. Use these five elements to build a successful sales enablement strategy.
1. Start With a Framework
To develop a sales enablement strategy that everyone buys into, you must first establish a common ground. The entire organization should be completely on board with the various terms and references in the strategy to prevent miscommunication.
Remember, the finished product will ultimately serve as the brand bible. As such, there’s no room for ambiguous policies and open-ended information. Say your salespeople face an urgent task in which a closed sale is on the line. They can’t afford to use guesswork to complete the message. The sales enablement strategy should outline everything clearly.
In addition to setting the terms and references, the framework should establish a common methodology. The specific goals will determine the expected output and identify the tools and resources needed. Users can always refer to the framework to make sure sales and marketing content remains consistent with set goals and objectives.
A solid framework will be the foundational piece for your sales enablement strategy. Users going through this playbook should find the goals easy to understand and the steps easy to follow. When the process is simplified and straightforward, it becomes second nature for users to accept the assigned tasks and own the responsibilities. Once they know what the job entails, they can more easily communicate with clients and coworkers, execute the tasks and adapt to changes.
2. Identify Roles
Using the framework to develop the sales enablement strategy will require you to assemble a team. Companies come in different sizes, goals and operational priorities, so the composition of the sales enablement team can vary.
Small organizations that sell one or a few products might have the sales and marketing manager pulling double duty as the sales enablement team. But larger organizations and enterprises will need a dedicated team to establish the framework, develop the strategy, produce the content and manage the repository.
For the companies in between, determining the composition of your sales enablement team can depend on your specific sales enablement goals, your allocated resources and the availability of key stakeholders. Regardless, the following roles are considered crucial to ensure the success of any sales enablement team:
Sales Enablement Manager
Having a person in charge of sales enablement is critical. The manager is responsible for cascading goals, allocating the right tools and resources and supervising content creation. They’ll also make sure every produced piece aligns with the requirements, taking extra care that input from marketing reaches sales and vice-versa.
Throughout the entire process, the sales enablement manager will document and track progress. They also generate the data points that support a task’s success or failure. In short, the sales enablement manager will take on the role of conductor and direct the flow of information across all departments.
Sales Enablement Representatives/Coordinators
Sales enablement coordinators from sales, marketing and other support groups are needed to help guide traffic from one department to the team and back again. The coordinator keeps communication between their department and other groups open. They also assist the team with documentation, budget tracking, data analysis and other tasks.
In addition, coordinators regularly collect feedback from their assigned group. They then align with the sales enablement manager to see if goals are being met.
Content Specialists
While marketing teams have content specialists, their plates are often full with work for the organization’s other departments and priorities. Sales enablement content specialists are a welcome addition and can provide the needed content without disrupting marketing operations.
Content specialists will need to produce content similar to marketing’s other materials, or they may even edit existing marketing content. So, they should be experts on the same tools the rest of the marketing team uses.
But this role doesn’t just develop and produce content; it also stores and organizes the content library. In a pinch, content specialists can help access (or even modify) the collateral needed by sales for specific target audiences.
Sales Enablement Technology Officer
Think of the sales enablement technology officer as the group’s resident IT expert. They make sure the team has access to all the tech-related tools and the resources that the sales enablement strategy requires.
The officer will also make sure all related tasks such as software updates, hardware upgrades and communication devices are ready at a moment’s notice. Finally, the technology officer will collect analytics data and generate insights to share with the sales enablement manager.
Sales Enablement Coach and Trainer
Another critical member of the sales enablement group is the sales coach. They’re responsible for providing timely feedback and mentoring services to help sales individuals get back on track. With the help of the sales coach, sales staff can identify their strengths and weaknesses, enhance their skills and address challenges.
Coaches can also encourage sales staff to find their voice and improve their collaboration and communication skills. New additions to the sales team can especially benefit from engaging with the sales coach and participating in development programs.
Other Team Members
Other sales enablement team members will depend on the organization’s needs. For instance, a C-suite representative who oversees sales enablement strategy implementation can provide the management perspective and communicate shareholder expectations.
Project managers can take responsibility for each sales enablement program approved for execution. Cross-function managers can also help address overlapping functions and keep communication lines open between various stakeholder groups. The sales enablement team should remain agile and responsive to changes in the company and the market.
3. Establish Goals
With the framework and team in place, it’s now time to establish the specific goals of your sales enablement strategy. Before deciding on your goals, take the time to run each proposed goal through SMART parameters.
Make sure your goals are specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-bound. Any proposal that doesn’t meet all SMART parameters, no matter their relevance, can be safely junked in favor of better options. Otherwise, your organization will find it nearly impossible to quantify your accomplishments and replicate any results.
Applying SMART parameters to your goals gives your teammates a clear mandate to work on. They’ll know that while success is achievable, they have to act within a given time limit. More importantly, the company will use established benchmarks to fairly and objectively assess the sales team’s achievements.
Top Sales Enablement Strategy Objectives
The sales enablement goals you choose will depend heavily on what your organization needs at the moment. Some brands have an excellent lead generation system in place, but their conversion rates remain low. Conversely, some companies have high closing rates, but their bottom line suffers from a shortage of leads. Then, there are brands with abysmal customer loyalty rates, which signals poor after-sales or unresponsive customer service.
Sales Enablement Pro’s 5th Annual Sales Enablement Study sheds light on the top sales enablement goals. According to their 2019 survey, the top sales enablement goal was to increase win rates of forecast deals, followed by increasing new account acquisition. The least popular sales enablement goals were to reduce sales force turnover rates and reduce the cost of sales. Based on these findings, it seems that closing more deals remains the top priority.
4. Decide Which Metrics to Focus On
A hallmark of the right sales enablement strategy is its ability to be measured. If you can’t track and rate your given strategy, you can’t determine its success rate.
Of course, each sales activity can generate plenty of metrics that won’t necessarily align with each other. For this matter, sales enablement teams should carefully choose which metrics to use when determining their goal success. More importantly, make sure these sales metrics align with the stated goals. If the objective is to increase conversions, you’ll need to focus on performance metrics such as win rates, sales cycle rates and content effectiveness.
Let’s look at some common sales enablement metrics that help determine whether your sales performance is on the right track:
Sales Cycle Length
Measuring the time between prospecting and closing the deal is a good indicator of how your team performs. A longer average time frame can suggest the sales team struggles to provide timely information or handle objections.
In this case, the sales enablement solution can aim to shorten the average sales cycle length by providing tools to access real-time data for improved response times. Additional training and sales literature can also equip sales with the means to address concerns or objections.
Sales Closing Rate
Compute the success ratio between proposals submitted and closed deals to determine the salesperson’s closing skills. This rate can also suggest the effectiveness of sales and marketing collateral to convert prospects. Sales enablement plugs both gaps. It reviews existing sales presentations and checks to see if target audiences can relate to the content. Additional sales coaching and enhancing sales presentations are also great ways to close the sales gap.
Customer Lifetime Value
Customer lifetime value (CLV) measures the total revenue individual customers contribute over their relationship with the brand. A higher average suggests increased loyalty to the brand, while a lower score can mean a high churn rate (also an important loyalty metric). To address this issue, look into after-sales outreach and customer service to spots gaps that cause customers to leave earlier.
Knowledge Retention
A salesperson’s stock knowledge about the product they sell can determine their success in closing the deal. Too many unanswered questions can lead to a longer sales cycle, which then increases the risk of bouncing. By measuring each salesperson’s knowledge retention rates, sales enablement can determine if the brand needs to enhance its training modules. Or it may need to introduce modern methods such as active learning or even gamification.
5. Determine What You Need
A key part of sales enablement is the provision of tools and resources to make the sales team more agile and responsive. This includes the hardware and software needed to send and receive real-time data. It also means having cloud-based software that allows salespeople to store, create and customize materials such as sales presentations for specific clients.
Sales enablement platforms are designed to help help sales go about their regular activities and then track and monitor their performance. Some of the most common tools are:
- CRM: CRM software holds everything salespeople need to know from their customers and prospects. This trove of information enables your sales team to stay on track with each customer’s current status and their immediate concerns.
- Sales Management and Productivity Software: This software helps sales keep track of where clients are in the sales pipeline. It also automates routine tasks such as schedules, follow-ups and reporting so your team can spend more time selling.
- Content Management Systems (CMS) and Content Creation Software: A CMS allows sales enablement teams to manage the various pieces of content the sales team needs to share with clients. Cloud technology gives them easy access no matter where they are. Content creation software enables sales to make one-page information sheets or custom sales presentations.
- Analytics and Insights Platforms: Analytics software can keep track of each salesperson’s performance, which eliminates the need for unreliable anecdotal reports. Modern artificial intelligence (AI)-powered analytics software can break down data and generate insights that management can use to determine their next move.
Give Your Team the Right Tools for an Effective Sales Enablement Strategy
A well-designed sales enablement strategy implements the right objectives, provides the right resources and produces the right content. As a result, your salespeople get what they need at the right time. Successful implementation starts with developing a stable framework. It continues with the identification of relevant objectives and ends with measurable accomplishments.
A key part of a successful sales enablement strategy is to give salespeople the ability to deliver presentations on demand. Choose the right presentation software to ensure the timely delivery of highly engaging marketing collateral.
Ingage is a cloud-based presentation software that delivers dynamic content that keeps clients engaged. Interactive features enable users to share stories that expand or compress depending on how much information the clients want. Collaboration features mean entire teams can help build the presentation via remote access. Once completed, users send an online link that clients can open anywhere at their convenience. Powerful analytics track audience reactions and provide users with insights to help them improve the next version.
Learn more about how Ingage helps customers create more than 100,000 presentations every month. Contact us today to schedule a free demo and see what your sales presentations might be missing. Start your own Ingage interactive presentation today.
