Marketers tell the world about your business. Salepeople close the deal. Wouldn’t it be great if they could work together so they can both do their jobs more effectively?
That’s what sales enablement is all about. The core concept is simple—but putting it into practice can be complicated. If you’ve tried getting your sales and marketing teams to work together effectively, you know what I mean.
What if I told you that you could make this process not only easier, but automatic? Wouldn’t that be great?
That kind of collaboration is absolutely possible. We’ll show you the right tools, strategies, and best practices you need to close more deals with sales enablement. And at the end, we’ll look at three concrete steps you can take to start enabling sales in your business.
What Is Sales Enablement?
Before we get into the details, let’s make sure we’re all on the same page regarding sales enablement. In short, sales enablement includes the systems, processes, and tools that help sales departments sell more.
You’ll find more complex definitions, but that’s what it comes down to. In this particular case, we’re talking about sharing information between marketing and sales teams so salespeople have the information and tools they need to be better at their job.
And it works.
A study conducted by CSO Insights found that 28% of companies that instituted sales enablement content management systems saw increased win rates. That’s not a coincidence
.And what’s driving those improved sales numbers? Increased sales rep efficiency, easy access to content, best-practice sharing, improved sales training, and similar improvements in other foundational aspects of successful sales.
One of the most astounding findings from the study is that “[m]ore than 27 percent of sales professionals reported spending more than six hours a week creating their own content, and another six [or more] hours per week searching for content to use with their prospects.”
That’s twelve hours not spent on selling.
Even though sales enablement has been shown to be effective, many companies aren’t putting it in place. Content creation at 20% of businesses is a complete free-for-all. And that’s not good for anyone.
Getting marketing and sales on the same page is clearly beneficial—but lots of companies aren’t taking advantage of it.
Let’s take a look at how you can start reaping the rewards of sales enablement.
It’s a simple idea, really. And it comes down to sharing more information.
Even though sales enablement has been shown to be effective, many companies aren’t putting it in place. Content creation at 20% of businesses is a complete free-for-all. And that’s not good for anyone.
Sales Enablement Strategies and Best Practices
Putting a sales enablement system into place seems like a complicated undertaking at first. But if you stick with these four strategies and best practices, the process will be much easer.
1. Encourage good communication.
This is the number one best practice when it comes to sales enablement. It seems too simple to be true, doesn’t it? But effective communication is the bedrock upon which sales enablement is built.
One of the most fundamental things that you can do to improve your sales and marketing alignment is to simply give your sales team better access to marketing materials. Which means they need to know when marketing has created new materials, where they are, and any other information that will help the team take full advantage of those resources.
Has marketing created a new whitepaper? Tell sales about it. Did they improve upon a previous one-pager that salespeople have used in the past? Make sure the sales department knows where it is.
This goes the other way, too. If salespeople are getting the same question over and over from potential customers, marketing should create content that addresses that question. Or if sales is finding that a particular type of resource resonates strongly with the customers they talk to, they should let marketing know, because marketers don’t always see the effects of their content on the ground.It works both ways. But if you can go one step further, you’ll hit sales enablement gold.
What’s that next step?
2. Make sure that marketing is creating materials that sales can use.
Sure, your latest blog post on how a customer used your product to cut their costs by 37% is great. But is a salesperson going to read all of your blog posts? Probably not.
So how can you make that content useful?
You might create a sheet of talking points that includes the 37% figure and a little bit about that company so salespeople are ready to use it as an example when talking to decision makers at similar companies.
Materials created by sales teams are—perhaps unsurprisingly—used much more frequently by sales teams than materials created by marketers. But the marketing department often has more training in creating effective content. Using those skills on behalf of the sales team can be a big help.
The form that this takes will vary between companies. Maybe your marketing department can create one-pagers on all of your products that emphasize the benefits like your website does. Or they can provide shortened versions of blog posts that salespeople can read in a minute or two to help them see what sort of messaging is going out into the world.
Your marketing team is creating materials that hook leads, and while it’s the sales team’s responsibility to convert those leads into customers, sharing materials can be a huge help.
But you also need to know if sharing those materials is helping. How do you do that?