Sales Enablement

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Sales enablement allows firms to equip their sales teams and channel partners with the messaging, tools, techniques to effectively sell and acquire new accounts.  Well-constructed sales enablement programs include elements such as digital content, knowledge management, and learning & development.

Learning and development

New message development is an ideal launch pad for renewed sales training.  Armed with effective messages and techniques that appeal to target customer personas, salespeople can be provided with the skills and tools required to deploy the message in the post-COVID market.  With a programmatic approach, sales teams can reorient towards new business development, and firms can radically increase the number of new conversations with new customers during current volatile markets. 

According to Harvard Business Review in 2015, US businesses spent $15B on sales training, less than 2% of the $800B spent on total sales force compensation. As businesses constantly strive to do less with more, a 1:50 ratio may indicate an imbalance and possible opportunity. As the selling game has changed, the need for updating and modernizing sales skills and capabilities has become all the more important. 

Proper learning and development methods should be used; proven pedagogical techniques encompassing the right messaging and impactful content. Best practices from the current organization can also serve as standards to bring up the rest of the team. Trainings should focus on effective selling practices and content, including virtual prospecting and selling techniques and modernizing sales’ capabilities. With sound learning protocols are employed with the right messaging, content, and tools, sales teams can level up and effectively engage customers, especially in virtual space, where precision and impact count.

Increasingly, sales must be prepared for various environments, including virtual and face-to-face. Consultative sales teams must become more sophisticated and be prepared to pivot discussions in various directions depending on customer needs, equipped with the right content to support the conversations. B2B sales normally isn’t a standard, one-dimensional racetrack anymore, and sales must be more like a Humvee than a Formula One car, prepared for any terrain. Coupled with the right learning and training, digital tools can help sales be prepared for a variety of circumstances and to sell to a variety of personas, with different decision-making criteria. 

Digital content and knowledge management

Many firms’ digital marketing content is scattered across the sales team, on internal drives, behind-the-wall sections of websites, or other unorganized and perhaps siloed hiding spots. And good luck finding the best, current, and most impactful assets, including sales presentations. The current and impactful marketing content must be organized, up-to-date, and easily accessible. How else can firms assure that their front lines are using the right ammunition? This is where software can help.

Easy access to and validated use of the right content gives the firm their best chance of success with new customers. However, not only does hard-to-find or wrong content cause effectiveness issues, like lower conversion rates, but also efficiency gaps. According to IDC, a data analytics firm, when sellers can't find what they need to engage with a customer, they often spend time customizing materials even though what they're looking for may already exist but was simply not known or easily found. The researchers found that on average, salespeople spent over 2 hours/week searching for marketing collateral, nearly 6 hours per week searching for customer-related information, and over 6 hours/week recreating presentations that exist elsewhere.  Software firm Kapost similarly found that 65% of sales reps say they can't find content to send to prospects. Not only are these huge time drains, but they also act to diminish sales and channel engagement and build undue frustration.

While sales teams today are most likely to benefit from sales enablement via improved virtual selling capabilities, face-to-face calls are still an imperative in the B2B space and can also greatly benefit from sales enablement investments.