How To Create A Successful Sales Enablement Strategy

Value is a constant topic of conversation for every salesperson, regardless of their field.

“To generate revenue, you must always add value for your customers.”

But how exactly do salespeople add value?

By educating the customer and resolving their issues, sales representatives can add value. They place a greater emphasis on addressing the customer’s pain points rather than hard selling.

However, for sales representatives to gain a deeper understanding of the customer, they must possess sufficient resources and knowledge of the customer and the industry in which they operate. Only then would they be able to persuade customers and address all of their concerns.

That’s the whole idea behind sales enablement, too.

Let’s discuss it in detail.

What exactly is sales enablement? 

The process of providing your company’s sales force with the resources they need to close more deals is known as sales enablement. It gives them important statistical surveying and deals with resources, and instruments to support their exhibition. 

Sales are directly impacted by sales enablement. 

Sales have increased by 6% to 20% for businesses that have a sales enablement strategy in place. 

In addition, businesses that implement sales enablement have a win rate of 49 percent on anticipated deals, whereas businesses that do not enable their sales processes have a win rate of 42.5%.   

Isn’t that amazing?

But is “sales enablement” a separate system that needs to be incorporated into your sales process?

In no way.

Sales enablement is not difficult to understand. With appropriately arranged correspondence, content creation and dissemination, and furnishing your colleagues with the right arrangement of instruments, you can undoubtedly leave on a deals enablement venture. 

Some of these must already be done by you. Perhaps, but not in a planned manner. But how can you be sure of this? 

Let’s look at the warning signs that you need a sales enablement plan.

Signs that you need a sales enablement strategy

You’ll know something is wrong if your sales goals are hard to reach or your sales cycle is longer than industry norms. 

Therefore, identifying areas in which you are lacking is the first step in developing your sales enablement strategy. And how else but by asking the salespeople themselves could this be the best method?

We recently polled 74 sales representatives to find out what obstacles slow down their sales cycle.

25% of them said they didn’t have any relevant content to share with potential customers.

That alone indicates the need for a sales enablement strategy.

However, that is not it.

Groups frequently battle at pretty much every step of the deals interaction. We should check these exhaustively out. 

1. Lack of an up-to-date content library

Before making a purchase, customers need a lot of information. Did you know that before making a purchase, a B2B buyer reads at least 13 pieces of content? Additionally, if the buyer finds your content to be useful, they are three times more likely to opt for a larger deal with fewer regrets.

Case studies, white papers, blog posts, and e-books might be good formats for this information for buyers to consume. Your marketing teams likely spend a lot of time perfecting and curating this content. However, if the sales teams are unable to conveniently access it, these efforts will be fruitless.  

2. The performance of your team is below expectations.

You hired the right team. However, the outcomes show otherwise. The sales team may be having trouble meeting goals, closing deals, or building their pipeline. Your sales revenue is directly affected by this underperformance. 

It is essential to assist your sales representatives and locate the underlying issue. Providing them with a hands-on learning opportunity and a smooth sales onboarding plan is essential if they are new to your business. Even after the training, if you don’t see any results, you might need to rethink the sales process.

3. Salespeople are unable to comprehend the buyer’s issues

Because the requirements of the customer can change throughout the purchasing cycle. There may come a time when the salespeople neither comprehend the difficulty nor possess any content resources for it. 

You might be surprised to learn that 47% of buyers are more likely to purchase if the sales representative is familiar with the requirements of their company.

4. Client maintenance is low

Outreach groups shiver at the possibility of clients agitating. It is the team’s efforts to onboard new members as well as revenue loss. Poor customer engagement is the sole cause of poor customer retention. 

To create automated touchpoints to gather feedback, communicate product updates, and build long-term relationships with customers, sales teams need the right tools. 

5. The sales process is disorganised and dispersed.

It is challenging to consummate a deal when the sales process is dispersed across numerous platforms, which also results in reduced productivity and efficiency in sales. The salesperson must keep track of what work needs to be completed next because their time is being wasted. This leads to some misunderstanding and diverts attention from closures.

Consider sales enablement if you are dealing with any of the aforementioned issues.

The advantages of sales enablement 

Starting from scratch with a sales enablement team may necessitate time and money. However, these investments have a very high rate of return in a short amount of time. For example,

• Shorten the sales cycle and increase sales revenue.
• Builds chances to up-sell and strategically pitch. 
• enables a targeted marketing strategy and personalizes interactions with customers. 
• Better alignment between the marketing and sales teams. 
• fosters a positive work environment for all of the company’s teams. 
• improves sales performance through better monitoring of performance metrics and a clearly defined sales cadence.

Yes, businesses are aware of the significance of supporting sales teams. In the past two years, the number of sales enablement roles has increased by 200%. Furthermore, recruiting deals enablement specialists is the main concern for associations (considerably more than client care and deals operations jobs).

The 5 crucial elements to enable your sales team

In general, sales enablement strategies revolve around sharing information, creating content, and making use of productivity tools.

However, when viewed from the perspective of a process, integrating a new system into an existing one frequently proves to be challenging.

I’ll give you an illustration.

The sales teams receive an email from your marketing department that states:

“Hey, here’s the sales content repository. Here, you can find email templates, case studies, and proposal decks.”

Some will see, and some will not. Additionally, the issue of locating relevant content will not be resolved.

However, if you inform each new employee during onboarding that this is the location of all assets, they will never forget.

In this way, we should tackle the deals enablement issue all along.

Providing your representatives with resources during onboarding is the first step. 

#1 Onboarding

In sales onboarding, new hires are inducted, given training, and given resources to equip them with the skills and knowledge they need to perform in their new role.

At every stage of their careers, new employees need to find a way to advance and improve their skills. 

A 30-60-90-day sales onboarding checklist is provided here to ensure that your team is familiar with the resources and tools that can assist them in their sales journey.

#2 Training 

Getting the right team on board will help you get more sales closed. 

However, the sale is a battle that requires a lot of practice and training to win. 

Regardless of the diversity of your sales team, everyone needs to be on the same page before dealing with customers.  

Include these in your program for sales training: 

1. Product expertise: Every salesperson needs to be well-versed in their product. They must be aware of the product’s unique selling proposition (USP), feature details, and use cases. 

2. Process of sales: A sales rep requirements to make various touchpoints to connect with the client. 

According to our research, 54% of salespeople communicate with potential customers five to ten times before closing a deal. 

Each salesperson needs to be familiar with the appropriate stages of the sales process to ensure that prospects are being nurtured. 

The customer’s discovery of the product is the first step in the process, followed by the first conversation. The onboarding of the prospect, payment, and closing of the sale is the next steps. 

While the customer journey should be well-planned, the B2B and B2C sales processes and sub-stages differ. 

To learn more about enabling your sales team to improve buyer experience, watch our webinar

3. Making use of the sales tools 

Salespeople spend a lot of time monitoring and following up on the customer journey. The salespeople need to be knowledgeable in the sales tools, which can range from a basic excel to a comprehensive CRM depending on the team.

A data-driven approach is developed by sales tools for productivity, analytics, customer success, and marketing automation. To make the most of the sales tools, salespeople must receive training.

However, managers could mistakenly believe that sales representatives are capable of using the CRM systems on their own. However, sales users really anticipate receiving some kind of instruction or introduction to the tool.

For example, we found that more than half of the 3,061 CRM customers we surveyed prefer live training to self-paced training.

Most salespeople feel ready to go out into the field after receiving the right training. It’s critical to give them that extra push they need to work on their own. 

A pal component, where a friend or a supervisor upholds the sales reps in the initial not many calls, ends up being useful. 

Let’s move on to the next important part of sales enablement: creating and distributing content.

#3 Content 

Any effective sales strategy must be based on content.  

Sales representatives need the right content at the right time to engage with prospects and answer their questions.  

You won’t believe how much buyers want to interact with brands through content. 95% of customers select a vendor that provides the content to help them navigate the buying process.  

Content is typically curated by marketing teams in most businesses. However, the issue arises when the marketing and sales departments are not in sync. Either the content cannot be accessed anymore or it does not meet the sales representatives’ expectations.

So, what can be done?

You can see it right in front of you.

Align the marketing and sales teams to work together

One of the goals of sales enablement is to make the marketing and sales teams work together. To identify the questions that customers have at various points along the buyer’s journey, both teams must collaborate. They have to match those concerns and questions to particular customer profiles. Ideas for relevant content are bound to be exchanged when both teams work together. 

Marketing teams can comprehend customer inquiries and create content to answer them. Your sales team can also keep customers interested in the product by providing them with content. 

Sales and marketing operations in B2B companies that are closely aligned grow revenue by 24% faster over three years. 

For creating content, here are some suggestions: 

• Find out what the most frequently occurring issues are for your sales representatives at each stage of the buyer’s journey by working together. 
• Create a customer journey map that links the content you plan to use at various stages of the journey to each other. 
• Recognize open doors where the data can be shared as an infographic or video. 
• Social media posts should be planned and timed to market content directly to buyers.

#4 Customer engagement

Customer involvement should be the cornerstone of your selling approach since without the customers, there would be no sales. And since brands that provide a superior customer experience generate 5.7 times more revenue, the numbers speak for themselves.

Two essential components of a customer-centric strategy are personalisation and retention.

Personalization

In order to construct a specific profile, a lot of client data must first be collected. Customers prefer customised engagement with a relatable person over being treated like a number on a list.

The following is a quick fix to guarantee personalisation at each stage of the sales process:

Distribute leads to agents based on their preferences for products and demographic information. Divide customers into various categories and communicate with them based on where they are in the sales funnel.

Revenue and customer lifetime value (CLV) are both boosted by segmenting and identifying customer needs. Cross-selling, for instance, can be made easier by segmenting customers according to their preferences. It is simple to reach a large number of people by automating personalized campaigns on a large scale using customer segmentation.

Maintenance

Maintenance generally relies upon your organization’s capacity to give positive client encounters. The main explanation clients switch brands is that they feel neglected. 

The information must be conveyed promptly and responsively by customer service representatives. For future reference, all interactions between agents and leads ought to be tracked and recorded. Then only you can provide a superior customer experience.

You can help your representatives better interact with customers in the following ways:

• Create a sharable repository of frequently asked questions and self-help documents rather than making a customer wait for a response to a question.
• Make instructional videos. Make it simple to access these videos.
• Use self-service portals and chatbots to assist.
• Keep track of all interactions. For instance, suppose a member of your team engaged in a heated conversation with a customer, necessitating the manager’s intervention. If they knew the exact conversation and the context, they would be better able to handle the situation

Therefore, these are the actions you can take to enable your teams to retain customers. However, the sales enablement program as a whole will only take shape if you have the right tools for each stage of the sales process.

Let’s discuss them.

#5 Tools 

Software or a system that makes it possible for the sales team to access content that is relevant to their target customers makes up sales enablement technology. 

In addition, it ensures that managers and salespeople alike have access to learning, support, and analysis resources to help them develop over time.

You should be able to use your sales enablement toolkit:

Streamline the procedure: CRM software helps you manage leads, track interactions, and automate the sales process. This makes it easier for sales managers and users to get the most out of their day-to-day tasks.

Make leads and tasks a priority: The objective is to always complete as many transactions as possible. Salespeople frequently have a hard time deciding who to contact first when there is a lot of new business. For your representatives to concentrate more on selling, your tool should set priorities for them. Again, CRM software may be of assistance.

Automate routine activities: You can book meetings, reschedule them if necessary, and easily send reminder notes across time zones with meeting schedulers like Calendly. 

Calling: Cloud calling arrangements are useful to call leads in a hurry. Cloud telephony should be integrated with CRM to make it even simpler. Reps would then be able to call the prospect without having to manually dial the number. Additionally, the lead record will be refreshed consequently so no other individual hits up the lead for a similar reason.

Sales of regiments: Make use of sales tools that can help you organize the day of the salesperson. Particularly for field sales representatives, a regimented process is created by a detailed schedule. Managers can also use dashboards on a variety of sales tools to monitor performance metrics.  

Learn new things: Your sales teams can be motivated by creating insightful reports that show team performance in comparison, the number of new leads, and an estimate of targets met. It can also be used to determine which steps or processes need to be improved and which ones are working well.  

Useful tools: Reps frequently travel between the office and the customer’s location. Providing them with useful tools like Mobile CRM enables them to quickly access customer information, previous interactions, and other resources. 

We’ve talked about sales enablement a lot. I hope it gave you ideas for improving team performance.

Before we conclude, I’d like to talk about how Bytecasting Sales Enablement supports its clients throughout the sales enablement process. 

How Bytecasting Sales Enablement helped insurance advisory Ditto shorten the sales cycle 

Ditto helps buyers choose the best insurance policy by simplifying insurance policies that are full of jargon. The advisors wanted to provide customers with information at multiple points of contact. Maintaining the quality of their advisory calls and providing buyers with relevant content were Ditto’s biggest obstacles. 

Conversions began to be sluggish as a result of these obstacles as they increased their scale. Ditto decided to use Bytecasting Sales Enablement as a sales enablement tool at this point. 

Understanding your company’s inefficiencies is the best way to develop a successful sales strategy. You will be able to coordinate your efforts to overcome obstacles once you have identified them. The right tools are needed for every sales enablement strategy to help reduce manual labor and improve efficiency.  

A CRM is one such Software that offers different devices like lead conveyance, investigation, following, estimation of client ventures, and so on. Bytecasting Sales Enablement is a useful option if you’re looking for one of these systems. Try it free of charge!

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