The term “sales enablement” may seem rather redundant unless one understands the depth of meaning it conveys. Once you do, you’ll see that a sales enablement strategy is worthy of as much thought as other business strategies. So what, exactly, is sales enablement?
It’s the full suite of training, coaching, materials, tech tools, and content you place at your sales reps’ disposal to enhance their potential for generating sales. In a sense, it could be said that all businesses practice sales enablement in one or more ways. But there’s much more to effective sales enablement than placing a person behind a desk with a computer and phone.
To illustrate this, a look at the tools you’ll use for sales enablement will be a good place to begin.
Sales Enablement Tools
1. Sales Engagement Tools
Beginning with the basics, your sales team needs channels they can use to engage with customers. These could include phone, email, live chat platforms, and social media. This would make you a multichannel seller.
2. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Software
The average sale consists of several interactions before the deal is finalised. Keeping track of everything, joining the dots between the various engagement tools, and triggering workflows, your CRM software keeps you organised.
It reduces the chance of dropped balls and lost sales while allowing your representatives to pick up the conversation with customers without wasting time determining where they are in the purchasing process. With information based on interactions across channels brought together, you are now an omnichannel seller.
3. Call Centre Software
It will be important to direct customers toward the people they need to help them quickly and efficiently. Call centre software ensures they aren’t kept on hold and are connected with people who are qualified to deal with their enquiries.
4. Sales Content Management Tools
Some products aren’t straightforward to explain, and their benefits are best understood through content like informational diagrams, research and case studies. To provide the information that customers need, your sales team should have access to materials that answer customers’ questions and can be used to motivate a purchase. Content management tools keep the information customers need at their fingertips.
5. Sales Intelligence Tools
Whether you’re cold-calling or are contacting qualified leads, customers will want to know why your representatives have called them. For example, if you’re strategising for B2B sales, it makes sense to research the company you’re targeting and have a reason for contacting them. Sales intelligence tools can show your reps why you think the customers they’re targeting might benefit from the products they’re offering. This helps them to adjust and personalise their sales pitches.
6. Sales Training Tools
Naturally, the sales enablement software you use will only be as effective as the reps who use them. Your sales team’s training tools will range from sales pitches, and product knowledge training to videos and manuals that show them how to use the tools at their disposal.
What is a Sales Enablement Strategy?
So far, we’ve discussed people and the tools they might use to enable sales. But for them to work together effectively, you need a strategy. It will also guide you in choosing the tools you’ll provide, avoiding overlaps and redundancies.
As with all things sales-related, your strategy begins with a firm understanding of your customers – what they want, what troubles them, and how you can improve their situation through your products.
From here, you move to customer journey mapping: determining how customers navigate their way through your sales funnel, and all the touchpoints they’ll encounter in the process. Your sales enablement tools will help you to optimise each of these steps, directing your team to the areas where their intervention is needed and specifying how they would help move customers nearer to a purchase.
Once you’ve gone through this process, each enabling resource has a carefully-calculated place in the sales workflow. Now, it’s just a matter of training your personnel to follow the process and use their tools effectively. Follow up with regular reviews to see whether you’ve gauged customers’ needs well and are offering them the experiences they need to motivate purchases.
Sales Enablement Reporting and Analysis
Why do people buy your products? What makes them engage or disengage? How can you improve your sales enablement strategy? The answers are in the analytics. By taking a closer look at them, you can determine what works for you and customers in your target market and what doesn’t.
For example, if customers are leaving your sales funnel at a specific point, they may be in need of something you haven’t included in your sales enablement toolkit. It’s a point where your salespeople are struggling to overcome specific customer objections, and it’s up to you to provide the enabling materials that would allow them to do so.
Analysing the information your sales team gathers helps you to understand your customers better and address elements that are acting as obstacles to sales. Through a process of continuous improvement, you can optimise sales processes, serve your customers better, and boost your business’s sales.
In short, sales effectiveness is the measurement you’ll use to determine whether your sales enablement strategy actually works. Analytics help you to spot what’s not working and adjust your sales strategies accordingly.
Gaining a Competitive Edge Through Sales Enablement
Sales enablement allows your selling efforts to lead customers towards a purchase by offering them great experiences and compelling information. However, as so many businesses have found, it can come with a hefty price tag. The costs of employing and training the necessary personnel and integrating the best software for the task can be very high.
For some businesses, the costs of implementing a fully-enabled sales process are simply too high, and the time and effort required to make it work just don’t seem worth it. But some businesses look beyond the barriers and find solutions.
Outsourcing can be a no-compromise solution, and at RSVP, we’re proud of the results we’ve achieved for top brands through our outsourced sales solutions.
Yes. We realise that sales enablement is a specialised field. Yes. We know that even large businesses can struggle to achieve the focus it requires. But we are focussed on sales and service. We have the tools. We have the personnel you want representing you. The only missing ingredient? You. Contact us today. As your strategic partners in sales, there’s so much we can achieve by working together.