Sales Enablement: you may have heard the term before, but what does it truly mean and, more importantly, how does it apply to your business?
Sales enablement is a strategic approach aimed at improving the efficiency and effectiveness of your sales team. It involves providing your sales team with the necessary resources, such as content, tools, knowledge, and information to sell more effectively. These resources empower your sales team to engage the buyer throughout the buyer's journey effectively.
But how do you accomplish this? The answer lies in creating a dialogue between the sales and marketing teams, understanding the sales team's needs, organizing your resources, and creating and iterating on the necessary content.
The Importance of Open Dialogue
The first step towards effective sales enablement is fostering an open and honest dialogue between your sales and marketing teams. This dialogue is crucial to understand the sales team's needs and identify gaps in the current sales process.
Each team brings unique insights to the table. The marketing team has a deep understanding of the market trends and customer personas, while the sales team has firsthand experience interacting with customers and understanding their pain points. By leveraging these unique insights, businesses can create more targeted and effective sales strategies.
However, open dialogue requires an open mind and, sometimes, a thick skin. Sales teams will provide feedback that may be difficult to hear but is essential for growth and improvement.
Once the dialogue has been established, the next step is to stay organized. This means outlining what sales enablement collateral needs to be created and putting it in a format that makes sense for both the project manager and the team members working on it.
Tools like Google Drive or Dropbox can be beneficial for storing and managing this information. Having a centralized location for all your sales enablement resources makes it easier to track progress and ensure all team members are on the same page. Moreover, it ensures that the collateral the sales team is using is always up-to-date and accurate.
After the organization, the next step is creating content. This involves identifying gaps in your current sales strategy and creating content to address these gaps. The content creation process can be an iterative one. Often, people don't know what they want until they see what they don't want. Therefore, it's important to create content, get it in front of the sales team, receive their feedback, and then refine it based on their input.
The Marketing Perks of Sales Enablement
Sales enablement does not only benefit the sales team; it also provides several benefits to the marketing team. Firstly, it provides direct feedback from the sales team about what's resonating with customers. This information can help the marketing team refine their messaging and create more actionable assets.
Secondly, it provides more data points in the sales process. In the era of data privacy, marketers often struggle to track customer interactions. However, by housing sales enablement resources like webpages or PDFs on the website, marketers can track how often these resources are accessed, providing valuable insights into customer behavior.
Sales enablement is not a one-time event; it's a continuous process. It's essential to maintain regular communication between the sales and marketing teams to ensure continued alignment. This could take the form of monthly or quarterly meetings, depending on your business's needs.
Sales enablement is a powerful tool for businesses looking to improve their sales effectiveness. By creating an open dialogue, staying organized, creating content, and maintaining the momentum, businesses can empower their sales team and drive revenue growth.
