Sales enablement works hand in hand with employees and prospective clients. This is because clients are given the tools to reach each touch point on the flywheel.
With the right resources and a robust sales enablement process, you can guide more leads through the customer journey. So, how do you ensure your sales team has the right resources? Use GROWL’s playbook to create a sales enablement that positively impacts business.
What Is Sales Enablement
Sales enablement provides your sales and marketing teams with the tools and resources they need to close deals, such as a social media outreach process, case studies, or demos of your product. These tools and resources range from knowledge about your product to the basic information necessary to guide prospective buyers into the flywheel. Integrating your sales and marketing team is important, as sales enablement is multifaceted, meaning the process relies heavily on those working in and out of sales. More specifically, sales enablement allows marketing to provide content and information to the sales department so both teams can work together to identify any gaps or missing materials throughout the buyers' journey. This strategy also allows the two departments to collaborate to determine when an MQL (marketing-qualified lead) can be handed off to sales as an SQL (sales-qualified lead).
Empowering Your Sales Team
By empowering your sales team with the right resources and tools, your team can sell a product more efficiently while making the prospective buyer feel confident in their decision.
When prospects turn into satisfied customers, it’s likely they’ll recommend your product or service to their colleagues with minimal sales nudging. The key is to provide the right content, resources, and tools at the right time.
A cohesive sales enablement strategy entails maintaining consistent messaging and sales tools across online channels and sales personnel, ensuring a seamless and frictionless customer journey. While not all prospects are ready for an immediate purchase, the aim is for your product or service to be top of mind when they reach the decision stage. Keep all sales resources readily available to foster a great customer journey, emphasizing understanding the potential buyer's pain points and showcasing how your offering can address them.
Throughout the development process, the essential question is understanding the job the customer is trying to accomplish with your product or service. Your sales and marketing team must collaborate to create a streamlined strategy, enabling potential buyers to communicate comfortably through various channels. These channels can include text, email, or phone calls, providing multiple options for interaction to cater to your potential customer’s needs and providing a smoother progression through the buying process.
Creating A Sales Enablement Strategy
Your sales enablement strategy should outline and highlight your business's approach to providing resources to your marketing and sales team. It is important to tailor your strategy to your specific team to accurately and effectively target your key audience to close more deals.
Here are a few tips for creating a robust sales enablement strategy for your team and potential buyers, broken down by the stages of the customer’s journey:
Awareness Stage:
- Chatbots: These can be used to engage with potential customers, answer initial queries, and provide information about products or services.
- Blogs: A blog provides informative and engaging content that addresses customer pain points, educates them about relevant topics, and establishes the brand as a valuable source of information in their industry.
Consideration Stage:
- Quizzes: Interactive quizzes can help potential buyers assess their needs, preferences, and requirements, guiding them toward suitable solutions.
- Diagnostic Tools: These tools can assess a buyer's current situation, identify pain points, and suggest potential solutions.
Decision Stage:
- Demos: A demo can showcase your product’s features and functionality, which helps the customer experience your product firsthand.
- Calculators: Buyers can use calculators to estimate costs, ROI, or other relevant metrics, aiding them in making informed decisions.
A sales enablement strategy forms the bedrock of your business's success, equipping your marketing and sales teams with valuable resources. Tailoring this strategy to cater to your team's unique needs and dynamics is critical in effectively captivating your potential buyers, leading to a surge in successful deal closures. Leveraging various sales enablement tools aligned to the customer journey can elevate your organization. These assets empower your team to effortlessly showcase benefits, address concealed pain points, and demonstrate solutions.
Owning Your Strategy
To truly own your sales enablement strategies, your organization must set forth clear objectives that align seamlessly with overall business goals. Collaborative efforts between sales and marketing are pivotal in maintaining a cohesive message, while tailored strategies in coordination with your buyer personas pave the way for success. Investing in sales team training, harnessing your tech's power, and implementing a reliable content management system (CMS) is extremely helpful for continued improvement. In addition, measuring key performance indicators, embracing a customer-centric approach, and appointing individuals or teams for ownership and accountability bring about a truly proactive optimization of the sales enablement process.
A robust sales enablement strategy reaches beyond communication options, it helps your buyers feel like winners. Understanding needs and potential pain points help align your sales team with the goals of the buyer. Then, proper solutions can be provided, which enhances the buyer’s experience and instills a sense of success.
Lastly, consider incorporating personalized approaches through leveraging data analytics to understand buyer behavior. With this data, you allow your teams to continuously adapt your strategy to evolve with marketing and sales trends. As buyers increasingly seek meaningful interactions and value-driven partnerships, owning your sales enablement strategy becomes a key differentiator in positioning your company as a leader in the B2B marketplace.
When creating a newly founded sales enablement strategy, it is imperative to keep the buyer top-of-mind. A well-crafted sales enablement strategy understands a potential customer’s preferred channels, possible pain points, and the problem they are trying to solve with your product. With proper implementation and communication across the marketing, sales, and service teams, these strategies can provide exponential improvements to your business’s sales processes.
Wanting more resources detailing sales enablement? Check out our “Funnel vs Flywheel” Growth Ops episode.