The What and How of Sales Enablement

The What and How of Sales Enablement

Sales enablement is linchpin that a business uses to bridge
the gap between their sales strategy and how they execute this on social media,
the phone or face to face. In a fast moving digital world, common sales
challenges (buyer interactions, longer sales cycles, declining win rates,
slowing customer acquisition and shrinking deal sizes ) can be mapped back to
the same source — the conversations between sales people and buyers. 

The challenge for sales leadership is to equip the entire
sales team(s) with the ability to consistently and systematically have a
valuable conversation either online or offline with the right set of customers
at each stage of the buyer’s journey to optimise the results of the selling
system.

The goal of sales enablement is to ensure that every sales
person has the knowledge, sales skills and behaviours to maximise every
interaction with buyers.” In other words, how can sales leaders create the
environment to “get all your ducks in a row to give the salespeople the best
chance of closing a deal?”

A sales
enablement framework for the digitally connected buyers should include:

Targeting
the Right Prospects

Reports show that only 3% of buyers are in a purchasing
cycle when contacted by sales. This blunt sales effort can be extremely for all
stakeholders when lead nurturing is directed at the wrong buyers, who are not
ready to buy, or worse just are not interested in what you have to offer.

Sales productivity is impacted due to sales people’s efforts
not being focused on buyers who are middle of the funnel or already in the “I
may have a problem” mindset. A better use of social selling and social data
combined with sales intelligence as part of a sales enablement program will go
a long way to helping this challenge.

Aligning
the Sales and Marketing Teams

Sales enablement cannot be correctly implemented without
aligning marketing and sales. Both departments need to work together to arm the
sales teams with the right assets to have the right conversations with the
right buyer profiles at the right time and in the right channels.

The reality today is that sales people need to be engaging
and holding conversations with buyers throughout the whole journey, even while
the buyer is in status quo mode (not yet aware that they may have a business
issue that needs solving). It is about bringing a level of consistency to the
whole sales process as both marketing and sales work together to interact with
customers across the entire buying journey.

A consistent approach from sales and marketing will help
assess the sales cycle, identify problem areas, fix them, and achieve the sales
goals.

Understand
where content fits In

This involves developing relevant content to specific buyers
during a specific stage of the buying process. Content is a “must-have” asset
in successful sales enablement roll-outs. This includes blog posts, white
papers, infographics, eBooks, videos and reports which are deployed to engage
customers and potential buyers. During the sales process, the sales team need
to understand when to use each type of content and how to position it with
their buyers and prospects

 Ask and answer
questions like:

What are the online personas each prospect will display?

How do we create content that aligns with that persona?

How do we deliver content to the sales people?

Who will produce and supply this content to the sales team?

How will all sales people be trained to use content effectively?

Which is the right combination of company-created, curated
and shared content?

How to match the content to the stage the buyer is in?

The role
of social selling

For a whole host of reasons (which you can read in other
articles on this blog), social selling is crucial for a sales enablement
initiative in the sales 2.0 world. Once the content strategy has been mapped
into the sales process, sales people can use these assets as 2nd click content
to qualify prospects through the funnel. They can leverage the content to share
with and engage buyers, showing that your company is already aware of their
concerns and is ready to answer their questions.

A successful social selling program takes time to listen,
share, post, nurture, engage and convert. Sales and marketing should work
together to form concise messaging and offers that targets issues that buyers
may be addressing now.

Measure your Results with KPI’s

If you
can’t manage it, you can’t measure it, still holds true even if large parts of
the sales conversations has moved online. Rather than try to measure too much,
it may be more beneficial to focus on a small set of key performance
indicators.

A tip is to separate the sales enablement metrics into
two parts:

Performance metrics: How
did we do?

How many new connections did we make last month or how much content did the
sales teams share last week? How much reach, interest or engagement did we
ignite?

Diagnostic metrics: Which
is working/not working?

Which activities are working? What needs to be improved? What
types of content are the salespeople sharing and with who? What content is not
performing or which set of prospects are not responding?

These metrics will help all stakeholders make the right decisions;
decisions which help the buyers engage and drive revenue.

Always prioritise
the prospects

Too many times, businesses are thinking about “Me” and not
“Them”. The focus can be solely on the company, the product, the messaging, the
key differentiation, etc. They hone in on themselves and relegate their target
audience and the audience’s needs. This internal focus impacts on true sales
enablement.  So rather than helping the sales
teams understand the buyers, the focus can be entirely on helping the sales
team understand the products. Helping buyers through the buyer’s journey should
the core of all sales enablement programs, from awareness to decision.

A quick
summary

Sales enablement is critical as the business world in which
we function has fundamentally changed. Out with the explaining the companies’
products and why buy messaging.  In is assisting
prospects evaluate alternatives, helping and educating buyers. The focus
becomes truly enabling the sales team to engage throughout the whole buyer’s journey,
on their grounds and in the channels they choose.

The modern buying process means that different criteria have
to be introduced. Using sales enablement as the guiding principle, sales organisations
everywhere can set themselves up for success. The end result will be empowered and
productive sales people, skilled in helping prospects across the buyer’s
journey and bringing in more revenue, faster than ever.