What Is A Modern-Day Sales Enablement Strategy?

If your sales team doesn’t have access to the tools and assets they need to effectively market and sell your product, then don’t expect effective sales and revenue.

In growing and competitive markets, having top-notch sales enablement processes can be one of the single biggest differentiators when it comes to edging out competition. 

So let’s talk about what that is and how your team can have one.

First, Let’s Define Sales Enablement

Sales enablement is the process of equipping your sales team with the resources (like content, information, and collateral) they need to turn a prospect into a closed deal. Good sales enablement tools and content places the focus on the customer, helping sales reps target the right buyers and increase engagement using relevant content.

With a real sales enablement approach, individual sellers are better equipped to provide their customers with information and offer timely value that guides buyers into purchasing decisions in your favor. Your team becomes trustworthy resources that buyers rely on for the long run.

Aberdeen found that companies with excellent successful Sales Enablement programs have:

32% higher team sales quota attainment,

24% better individual quota achievement, and

23% higher lead conversion rate.

Developing an Effective Sales Enablement Strategy

There’s more to creating an effective sales enablement strategy than just combining current marketing efforts with a bit of training. To really create an effective strategy, consideration should be given to the target audience for the sales push and which features or assets they are most likely to be interested in.

This requires thoughtfulness that highlights the parts of the business that will inform your sales staff about not just selling the product but selling it specifically to the target audience. Your enablement strategy can train, support and provide guidelines to sales as they take inbounds, draft outbound emails, and use resources in the middle of the funnel to bring in real revenue.

Ultimately this entire post depends on buy-in. Rogue leaders and processes crush sales enablement, and everyone has to fight for a team-wide approach.

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Start “Team Selling”

Team selling is the process of involving other departments or teams within an organization in the active sales cycle with a prospect or customer. The specific departments that can be involved can vary greatly from organization to organization and are also dependent upon the characteristics of the sale. But by default, having at least two internal people on a sales call introduces new perspectives. New ways of selling, explaining the product, connecting with a prospect. 

Most importantly, team selling with a colleague increases your chance of making a genuine connection with your audience. It’s amazing to watch two people present the exact same thing and have a completely different reaction from their audience.

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Ensure Marketing Is On Board

Even though it has “sales” in the name, this is just as critical for marketing to be aware of efforts. Here are four areas to emphasize to your marketing leaders:

Aligned Content

The content team can boost sales enablement by filling the top of the funnel (TOFU), providing individual sellers with relevant case studies, tutorials, and other materials that get prospects in the door.

Product Expertise

Product marketing usually contains the industry landscape experts when it comes to positioning, messaging, and ultimately the final sales teams need help closing business.

Marketing Operations

Marketing operations efforts can bolster your strategy by making data more legible, increasing win rates, and so on.

The Brand

With more sophisticated buyers, especially when moving into enterprise cycles, an elite PR campaign can make an enormous impact as prospects near their final decision. This is primarily achieved by having top media coverage and greater influence in the industry.

Have a Competitive, Lean Tech Stack

Whether it is rolling out for the first time or deciding where to optimize, you must have a streamlined sales enablement tech stack. The ability to collaborate and train will set the tone that your organization is always up to speed and constantly communicating best practices and playbooks. However, this doesn’t mean adding tools to solve every issue that arises. Platform consolidation makes sense from a financial and mental perspective, and with fewer tools to learn and manage, your team can see greater adoption.

Sales Data 

Digging deep into your sales team’s data isn’t the sexiest activity, but it will eliminate all the gut feelings that can send operations off the rails. If you can find what aspects of your program are helping the team win and meet quotas, you can tailor your training to emphasize those aspects over others. Ultimately find trends and don’t get caught up in finding every data point imaginable, then make the confident decision from there. 

Moving Forward With A Sales Enablement Strategy

At some point you have to create a system that helps your team. It’s a task that will take time but be the secret sauce that keeps your sales engine humming. Remember to:

• Streamline, automate, and consolidate your processes.
• Understand how to effectively “team sell”

• Make sure marketing is right there with you.

• Providing sales with the content they need to close deals faster. 

• Track performance to improve performance. 

We would love to talk to your team about implementing or improving your sales enablement strategy. It’s what we think about night and day here at Demoflow!