3 Reasons Why You Should Use a Sales Enablement Tool

Marketing knows the customer, creates attractive sales brochures, and regularly conducts customer satisfaction surveys. Sales has solid appointments, presents the proposition, closes deals… Everything is running smoothly. But why does the competition respond faster? They use a Sales Enablement Tool. In this blog, we’ll share three clear reasons why you should consider doing the same.        

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It doesn’t matter if your product or service is the best in the world. If your sales team doesn’t have the right resources and training, you’ll lose sales.

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In today’s fast-paced world, you need to get your junior sales reps up to speed quickly. Relying on your seasoned veterans to “wing it” won’t cut it anymore. Maintaining a high-performing sales force requires a series of focused actions, executed at the right time and in the right order.

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Here’s the bottom line: if you want to drive sales results, you need a repeatable, scalable process that you can apply to your entire sales team. It needs to be supported by tools, support, and training.

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What happens if you don't have a sales enablement program?

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• Your sales training process will likely be ad hoc.
• There’s a good chance your sales team isn’t performing as well as it should.
• Deals are falling through the cracks because of an increase in sales conversations.

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Sales enablement isn’t just a trendy buzzword for an organization that will slow your sales reps down. It has become a key sales function that top sales organizations recognize as a strategic advantage. Just take a look at how much the role has grown over the past two years:

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What Does a Good Sales Enablement Program Look Like?

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Sales enablement is quickly becoming a priority for high-growth companies around the world. Why? Because they know they can’t sustain growth and compete without a consistent, cross-functional strategy that does the following:

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• Optimizes the onboarding process for new sales reps
• Delivers the right content to sellers at the right time
• Achieves alignment between sales and marketing

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3 Sales Enablement Benefits You Can’t Resist

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1) A sustainable process to increase revenue

Sales enablement isn't a one-time solution. A one-time training session might give your team a temporary boost in confidence and productivity. Research shows that without follow-up training, your reps will forget about 90% of what they learned within one week.

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Sales reps, like athletes, need to practice continuously to reach their full potential. If you don’t have ongoing programs that help reps learn and hone their skills, they won’t perform at their best.

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Now, let’s tackle a common myth head-on:

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“We only hire sales reps who are veterans in this industry. They already know how to sell, so they don’t need sales training.”

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Really? Do your sales reps know everything there is to know about selling? Do they consistently follow all sales best practices and avoid every sales mistake? Are they always up to date on your messaging, product offerings, and buyer personas?

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I didn't think so. That's like a world-class athlete saying, "We won yesterday's game, so I don't need to practice today."

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Past performance alone does not guarantee future results.

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The best sales enablement programs help you identify mistakes more quickly. Plus, they provide you with the data you need to make the necessary corrections.

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Start by reviewing your new hire onboarding process. Look beyond the boot camp and make sure you have programs in place to support your reps for months after they complete their formal training. Regular, short refresher sessions are a great way to ensure that knowledge isn’t lost or forgotten. This technique is called microlearning, and research has shown it to be more effective than traditional learning alone.

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With the right sales enablement technology, you can provide microlearning and timely refresher courses to your salespeople. For example, what better time to reinforce your negotiation strategy than when your sales rep is preparing for a pricing discussion?

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Dos and Don'ts

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Thu:

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• Create a dedicated sales enablement function within your organization, if you don't already have one.
• Provide ongoing training to your sales team. This could range from short quizzes related to different stages of the sales cycle to practice in handling objections through role-playing and video coaching.

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Don't:

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• Tell the sales and marketing teams that they need to launch a sales enablement initiative without a strategy, goals, or resources.
• Assume that everyone on your team knows it all, even your top performers. (Everyone can benefit from ongoing training.)
• Hold on to the belief that sales reps only need training when they first join your team, and never again after that.

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2) Shorter sales cycles

There are a number of ways sales enablement can help shorten your sales cycle. First, analysts estimate that the average sales rep spends nearly two-thirds of their time on non-sales-related activities.

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Think about how much time your sales reps spend looking for sales materials, tracking prospect interest, and entering data into your CRM. It’s no wonder they’re falling short!

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Adopt sales enablement best practices, and your sales reps will be able to share the right content with the right prospects much more quickly.

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Another way to shorten the sales cycle is to provide sales reps with coaching and knowledge exactly when they need it. They’ll be better prepared to deliver relevant messaging that highlights your value and moves the conversation forward.

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The best sales enablement tools can provide them with just-in-time training and targeted sales materials. That way, even if your reps don’t know something, they’ll be able to:

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• Learn it right then and there.
• Keep this in mind for future use.
• Be fully prepared for the opportunity at hand.

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Dos and Don'ts

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Thu:

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• Identify where your sales reps spend most of their time. Modern sales enablement tools can deliver the right content within their CRM, via email, on mobile devices, or across all three.
• Use a sales enablement platform as the single source of truth for all your content. Make it easy for your sales reps to find the right content instantly.

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Don't:

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• Let your marketing team continuously churn out large volumes of content without a way to measure its usage and effectiveness.
• Make it difficult for your sales reps to find content by scattering it across multiple, hard-to-navigate content repositories.

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3) Better alignment between sales and marketing

Time and again, we hear CEOs and CFOs express the same major pain point. When you get right down to it, a lack of alignment between two or more departments costs everyone time, resources, and money. A sales leader I worked with in the past used to say, “The enemy is outside the walls of our company, not inside it.”

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Unfortunately, in many organizations, sales and marketing just can’t seem to see eye to eye. When sales and marketing disagree on the quality of leads, follow-up on leads, and the suitability of marketing content, the blame game can bring productivity to a screeching halt.

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This is an area where the sales enablement function is critical to your team’s success. Sales enablement can act as the “glue that holds the organization together” and align your sales and marketing teams. When sales and marketing are aligned on strategy, goals, and metrics, here’s what happens:

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• Marketing stops wasting money on low-quality leads.
• Marketing receives actionable data and feedback on sales content.
• The sales team receives high-quality content and training to help them sell.
• Both departments should stop pointing fingers and start working toward the same goal.

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The key to achieving alignment between sales and marketing starts with planning. When sales and marketing are aligned, it becomes much easier to increase revenue by taking the right actions day in and day out.

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Dos and Don'ts

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Thu:

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• Marketing needs to know which content would be most valuable to sales, and sales needs to be able to find that content in fewer than three clicks. This is an ongoing conversation. First, identify your sales reps’ favorite content and make it more easily accessible. Then scale that process and highlight other documents similar to their top picks.
• Track content engagement from both sellers and prospects. Which content plays a role in closing deals? Which content is used only occasionally, even if it’s easy to find?

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Don't:

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• Rush the conversation between marketing and sales. This is a great way to waste time and create even more frustration.
• I hope your content is okay—simply because you’ve invested time, money, and energy in creating it. Is it helping you achieve the results you want to see? If not, you need to make a change. And shifting your attitude from ignorance to denial doesn’t count.

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Sales Enablement Is NOT Just a Nice-To-Have

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To stay competitive and grow revenue, you need a sales force that performs at its best every day. Sales enablement must be a vital part of your strategy if you want to fuel your growth.

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Here’s why you need to embrace sales enablement:

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• It provides you with a sustainable process for increasing revenue for years to come.
• Getting sales and marketing on the same page is the key to boosting efficiency and ROI.
• Sales enablement can shorten your sales cycle, thereby increasing efficiency and revenue.

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If you’re struggling to build your team, sales enablement can help. What if you already have a sales enablement program in place? Then use these tactics to accelerate growth even further. Want to know what TMC Media can do for you? Check out our success stories from companies that have gone before you, or contact us using the button.

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