Sales enablement provides sales reps with what they need to successfully engage the buyer during the buying process. The goal of sales enablement is to make sales reps more productive and effective at closing deals, driving revenue growth.
Sales enablement aims to make the buying process quicker, easier, and more effective to free up more time for closing deals. This not only helps your sales team to achieve sales excellence and their reach targets but also will ultimately drive more revenue growth for your business.
Your customer-facing teams should always have the right information (content) for the right channel at the right time at their fingertips to execute their jobs in line with your commercial strategy.
What is the point of sales enablement? Sales enablement helps to scale the organization so that each sales rep has the know-how and information they need to sell more effectively. All salespeople (not just a few overachievers) should have access to the best practices, knowledge, tools, and resources required for success.
With the right content at the right time, whether in remote or face-to-face situations, sales enablement can help your team deliver a highly personalized experience to your buyers and improve mutual engagement throughout the buyer journey.
What is sales enablement good for? The reasons to implement or improve sales enablement techniques are vast. If your sales team is not performing as well as they could (or should) or if reps spend too much time on admin tasks, you'll want to look at ways to improve things.
If your team turnover is high and your organization has a hard time retaining salespeople, this can be a sign that your sales enablement is (either non-existent or) not working. In this case, you need to focus your efforts on onboarding and training your people. A practical sales enablement tool can help with this.
Like sales engagement, sales enablement can also help to close the feedback loop when your cross-functional teams are not working optimally together. In a best practice sales enablement scenario, your marketing, sales, CSM, services, support and field force teams feed into each other and share learnings along the way.
What is a sales enablement strategy? The first step in any effective sales enablement strategy is to closely examine your sales process and identify what's working and what's not. Once you have a clear understanding of your company’s unique pain points and bottlenecks, you can start to put together a custom plan of action.
Here are a few things to keep in mind as you develop your strategy:
What are you trying to achieve with sales enablement? Do you want to improve close rates, reduce time to close, or increase customer retention? Once you know what you want to achieve, you can start to put together a plan of action.
Where are you starting from? Do you have a sales enablement team in place? If so, what processes and tools do they use? Do your reps have access to the resources they need? If not, what's missing?
Know who you're trying to reach to help you develop the right content and resources. Are you targeting new or existing customers? What industries are they in? What are their pain points? Many sales enablement tools offer features that allow you to segment your content so that it's relevant to different buyer personas.
Your sales reps will need access to a range of content, from product information and data sheets to case studies and white papers. Developing a content plan will help you to ensure that you have the right mix of content and that it's organized in a way that's easy for your reps to find and use.
There's a wide range of sales enablement tools on the market, from simple content management systems to more comprehensive platforms that offer features like lead capture and customer relationship management (CRM) integration. Choose the tools that will work best for your team and ensure they're user-friendly and easy to use.
There's no easy answer to this question. In some organizations, sales enablement is the responsibility of the marketing team. In others, it's the sales operations team that takes the lead. And in larger organizations, you might find a dedicated sales enablement team.
The most important thing is to make sure that there's someone who's accountable for sales enablement and that they have the budget and resources they need to be successful.
Before you can improve your sales enablement, you need to closely examine your sales process. What's working and what's not?
Start by mapping out your current process. Next, identify ways to streamline it for sales optimization. Once you have a clear understanding of the steps involved, you can start to identify the bottlenecks and pain points.
After identifying areas that need improvement, you can start to put together a plan of action.
Every sales rep needs access to a range of content for online and offline sales enablement, from product information and data sheets to case studies and white papers. Sales content management aims to make it easy for reps to find and use the content they need when they need it.
An effective sales content management system will allow you to organize your content in a way that's easy for your reps to navigate and will give you the ability to track what content is being used and when. It should also offer features like lead capture and CRM integration.
Between content management systems, CRM platforms, and marketing automation software, the market is full of sales enablement tools. When choosing the right tools for your team, it's essential that you consider your specific needs and what you're trying to achieve.
Some important features to look for include:
The best sales enablement tools function like digital sales rooms. They enable your team to get the right, personalized message (content) to the right audience at precisely the right time. It will support the customer's needs and requirements and seamlessly assist them through the buyer's journey.
A sales enablement tool automates tasks for your sales reps, reducing distractions, mundane tasks, and overall complexity for agents thanks to less administrative work.
The ideal tool will provide your sales reps with an all-in-one solution where everything is conveniently located in one place (using one dashboard or interface). This way, they don't have to work with different tools in silos. Also, the sales enablement tool should give reps access to the best compliant digital content in the right context and allow you to track and measure how effectively your content assets are being used. In addition, it can also deliver onboarding techniques, training, sales coaching and enable the sharing of best practices.
So how do you select a platform that is suitable for your business? Get some key tips here.
Sales enablement tools complement marketing automation and allow you to personalize the customer journey from initial touchpoint to purchase, providing relevant content at the right time.
While there's no one-size-fits-all solution, there are a few things to keep in mind when choosing sales enablement tools. Here are a few things to consider:
When considering the needs of your sales team, think about what will make their jobs easier. Do they need a tool that will help them to close deals faster? Do they need a way to better manage their customer relationships? If you're not sure what your sales reps need, ask them! Every sales team is different, so it's important to choose tools tailored to your reps' specific needs.
No one wants to use a tool that frustrates them. Find a tool that will be easy for your sales reps to adapt and use daily. It should be user-friendly and intuitive. The last thing you want is for your reps to get frustrated with a tool and give up on using it altogether.
Of course, you'll also need to consider the cost of the tool. Always remember, however, that the most expensive option isn't always the best. Sometimes, the best tool is the one that's simply affordable and easy to use.
It's also important to consider how well the tool will integrate with your existing systems. You'll want to choose a tool that will play nicely with the systems you already have in place.
Successful sales enablement is always data-driven.
What if sellers could adjust how they engage with customers on the fly, with insight that would make them understand each customer and exactly where they are in their path-to-purchase?
Today, intuition-based sales strategies are no longer sufficient to close deals. As data becomes crucial to seller success, sales reps must learn to use data today to successfully manage tomorrow's more complex and consultative sales process.
Sales enablement tools complement CRM, BI and marketing automation, and allow you to personalize the customer journey all the way through to purchase, providing relevant content at the right time for the right customer and track it.
The best sales enablement tools will empower you to hold more impactful sales meetings. They'll give you the ability to easily share meeting agendas, meeting notes, and meeting recordings with your reps. They’ll also allow you to track which meetings are most effective so you can replicate them.
Sales enablement tools can help streamline your sales process and make your reps more efficient. Using a sales enablement tool, your reps can quickly find the content they need and use it to close deals faster.
When used correctly, sales enablement tools can give you a competitive advantage. They'll help you to better understand your customers and empower you to quickly adapt to their needs.
You can't improve what you don't measure. Sales enablement tools give you the ability to track the performance of your reps and see which content is used most effectively. This data will help you to make more informed decisions about your sales process.
As your business grows, your sales process should evolve. With sales enablement tools, you can easily change your strategy and ensure that your reps always use the most up-to-date content.
Grow your business with Pitcher, the all-in-one sales automation and marketing platform. With Pitcher, you can easily create and share content, track customer interactions, and measure your results. The Pitcher platform provides everything you need to close more deals and get a leg up on the competition.
Get started with Pitcher today!
Pitcher provides a single interface where you can manage all aspects of sales enablement. With Pitcher, there's no need for your sales teams to juggle multiple tools or worry about the risks of managing several user accounts and passwords.
The success of any sales enablement initiative hinges on adoption. That's why you should provide salespeople with what they need to engage your buyer successfully at each buying process step. Intuitive, familiar, and user-friendly UIs, coupled with integration with all operating systems and devices, will help to successfully onboard your commercial teams.
At Pitcher, we truly believe that intuitive technology is key to elevating customer excellence. Simple though it may be, if your people like it, they'll keep using it!
Independent research conducted by Forrester found that implementing Pitcher to power sales enablement resulted in significant savings in time and costs.
364% ROI on the Pitcher sales enablement solution
45 minutes per day saved by each field rep on admin tasks
71.5% reduction in annual print spend by digitizing marketing assets
50% boost in productivity for marketing teams creating content
An average organization moving to Pitcher could expect an ROI of 364% over three years with the solution becoming cost-neutral within 3 months (Forrester).
Every sales and marketing team needs a central place to manage their content, contacts, and deals. Unlike other sales enablement companies, Pitcher provides you with an all-in-one platform to do just that. You can easily create and share content, track customer interactions, and measure your results.
Pitcher comes with all the tools you need to streamline your sales and marketing process. Plus, it integrates seamlessly with the systems you already use. Even better, we're constantly adding new features and integrations to make Pitcher even more powerful.
The best sales reps are always learning! Never stop improving with Pitcher's Sales Coaching and Sales Training features. You can easily create custom sales playbooks, track rep performance, and give your reps the feedback they need to close more deals.
Data-driven decisions are key to success. Gain real-time insights into your sales process with Pitcher's reporting and sales analytics features. You can track which content you’re using most effectively, see which deals are in danger, and learn what's working (along with what isn't).
Are you worried about data security? Pitcher has you covered. All your data is safely stored in the cloud and backed up consistently. We also maintain strict physical, electronic, and procedural safeguards to protect your data.
Book your online demonstration of the Pitcher Super App today.
