What’s the most valuable role within an organization? As someone who has spent many years as head of marketing, of course I'm biased to say it's marketing. But, while marketers focus on attracting and growing leads, it is really the sales department that focuses on growing sales, and in turn revenue.
So it should go without saying that sales managers and Chief Revenue Officers (CROs) are very focused on finding ways to help their sales teams increase sales with a focus on sales enablement.
Sales enablement is the discipline of providing your business’s sales team with the resources they need to close more deals. These resources may include content, tools, knowledge, and information to effectively sell your product or service to customers.
The discipline of sales enablement encompasses four core competencies:
- Sales Process
- Sales Content
- Sales Technology
- Sales Training
Sales Process
A sales process is a set of repeatable steps a salesperson takes to move a prospect from awareness to a closed sale. Don’t let your salespeople flounder, wondering what to do every step of the way. Defining as many steps as possible in the sales process enables your sales team to be more effective and confident in their jobs.
Your sales team will be far more efficient in their jobs by having defined positioning statements and scripts that can be consistently used across the organization. These statements should match up with the material that is on the website and all sales content. Not only does it provide more authority to your sales team, but it lends credibility when a prospect hears the same thing from a salesperson that they read on your site.
Other sales processes that should be defined are each contact stage in your inbound and outbound lead generation process, standardized ways that your sales team logs sales information in your CRM or customer database, a standard way of presenting information, and so much more.
Ensuring consistent processes are in place allows for sales metrics to be set up and established. Then a sales manager can build reliable reporting that can monitor sales trends. This reporting process gives the sales manager valuable insight into their sales team and can allow them to more efficiently manage their team.
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Sales Content
Sales content covers a wide range of content and collateral to help a salesperson move a prospect from initial awareness to a closed sale and on to a satisfied customer. The amount and types of collateral can vary greatly across organizations but often include:
- Sales presentations
- Case studies
- White papers
- eBooks & guides
- Product guides & brochures
- Pricing and discount information
- Competitive intelligence briefs
- Lead magnets / content offers
- Sales videos
The goal and objective of sales content is to provide the prospect with additional value-added information that can help advance them through the sales process.
Sales Technology
Sales technology covers Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platforms and other customer databases, along with any other technology that improves sales department efficiencies, standardizes the sales process, and improves sales reporting.
There are a rising, varied, and ridiculous number of sales technology platforms available to help you improve your sales enablement. But, key sales tools include social media platforms, email research and collection tools, video email software, webinar software, and countless prospect and lead research management tools.
Sales Training
Implementing new sales processes and sales technologies can be challenging for all involved. So you want to ensure the success of your sales team with constant training. Training for sales teams should be an ongoing process.
Sales people need to be trained on how to follow defined company sales processes with routine follow up training to review and practice process and sales techniques. Set up processes that define how your sales team works with other departments, especially marketing. Establishing clear communication and defined processes can go a long way towards making the sales and marketing partnership successful.
Sales people need constant training on sales technology. Making an introduction to your sales technology and then turning your sales team loose on it is not enough. That is a recipe for disaster. Constant refresher sessions demonstrating how the technology benefits the salesperson is the key to more consistent buy-in on their part.
Improve your Sales Enablement efforts with
The Guide to Sales Prospecting
Free Download!
Sales Enablement is Valuable
Organizations that focus on improving sales enablement will have happier, more productive sales teams, sales managers, and in-turn increased sales revenue. Sales enablement across each core area of process, content, technology, and training can lead to vast improvements in your sales efficiencies and capabilities.
Need help improving your Sales Enablement? Contact CycleWerx!
CycleWerx offers a wide-variety of Sales Enablement offerings and is skilled in helping build out standardized sales processes and crafting impactful sales content. We are Certified HubSpot Solution Partners that can set you up with a powerful CRM and marketing automation platform. We are sales and marketing technologists that can find the right sales technology to improve your sales efforts. And, we can help you with the sales process and technology training so your sales teams can become more effective and efficient in their jobs.
Scotty Smith : Mar 2, 2023 12:00:00 AM
Scotty Smith