Digital Sales Enablement 101

Sales teams are a key part of any business. They drive success by creating opportunities for revenue growth and strengthening customer relationships. However, a proper system must be established for them to effectively approach prospective leads and reach their sales targets.

Challenges that sales teams face

One of the many reasons that a sales team may not be generating as many deals as desired or keep getting “ghosted” is because they are not being led in the right direction or given the tools that they need to succeed. 

The content that salespeople have to distribute to potential customers must be easily accessible, up-to-date and relevant. The sales representatives should not have to search through a large number of files on their computer or shared drives to find what they need.  Insights on the performance of their sales materials is also necessary, which is particularly lacking when content is delivered as attachments via email. Without engagement analytics, it is difficult for sales reps to forecast their next move. 
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What is Sales Enablement?

Sales enablement allows salespeople to connect with prospects and form customer relationships, while receiving the proper guidance, material and insights to do so. It brings transparency into the sales process and puts your salespeople in the best position to achieve their short-term and long-term objectives. 

In order for salespeople to generate sales, they must present material to prospects that will aid in demonstrating your company value. Without the proper content, it will be unlikely that the sale moves forward.

Salespeople and marketers work hand-in-hand and must collaborate closely during the sales process. Marketers need to create and provide salespeople with the necessary materials to present to potential consumers during the buyer’s journey. Content should be targeted to the individual requirements of the prospect. Case studies, white papers, decks and client testimonials are examples of content that can be utilised to educate prospects about your company’s offerings and build relationships.

How Sales Enablement Helps

Central Repository

A centralized repository of approved content is provided to the sales team through sales enablement. This enables teams to stay organized and easily find content that is needed. All content in the repository will be updated to the most recent version, preventing sales reps from sending outdated materials and avoiding compliance issues. This will also assist in  streamlining the process of onboarding new hires with all the content they need. To ensure optimal organization, the content in this location must be correctly labeled, tagged, and named. As a result, sales representatives will spend less time looking for materials and thus more time selling. ‍

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Insights‍

When sending out marketing content, sales reps, in return, will receive detailed insights on how the material is performing. These insights can include the amount of downloads, views and total time a user spent on the document. This information can be critical for the sales rep to determine  an appropriate time frame to follow up. They can also give marketers feedback  on how well the content is performing, and what may need to be changed moving forward. All of this information will help to determine whether a sale is worth pursuing. ‍

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Content‍

With the data provided by tracking engagement, marketers can better understand the content that performs well and works best in closing a deal. The content provided to sales people is extremely valuable. They must be well executed and provide the consumer with the right information to sell. For sales enablement to work, everyone in the organization must work together. Customer success must provide information about consumers so that content may be more personalised and pain points can be addressed.

Sales enablement should be a top priority for a commercialized company. Setting up your sales team for success ensures the success of your company as a whole. Without a good sales system in place, sales professionals may be required to perform long, repetitive tasks and may become overwhelmed as a result of not meeting their sales goals. Sales enablement will make their job easier while ensuring revenue growth for the company.