Like any other successful sales leader, you want to enable your sales team – to make them more efficient, arm them with the right sales content, and, obviously, close more deals.
But how do you “enable” your team?
According to HubSpot, “sales enablement is the technology, processes, and content that empower sales teams to sell efficiently at a higher velocity.” That’s a great definition.
One of the best practices for sales enablement is using sales enablement tools to help you with that process. According to Harvard Business Review, companies spend $12 billion annually on these tools. But when you start searching for software, things begin to get complicated!
Why?
Today, every sales solution claims to be sales enablement software. But when you start digging into the term, you realize it’s an umbrella term encompassing several technologies.
You might be wondering:
How will I choose the right type of software for my organization?
According to G2Crowd, to be qualified as a sales enablement solution, a product must:
- Act as a repository of marketing content to be used by sales representatives
- Track prospect and customer engagement on content and sales pitches
- Allow users to upload a variety of collateral or build content directly within the tool
- Assist in the preparedness of salespersons during presentations or pitches by having easy access to relevant marketing content.
Wow, that’s a lot of functionality. Let’s break it down.
1. Sales content management
This is probably the most important functionality of a sales enablement solution. It significantly increases marketing and sales alignment.
Did you know that sales reps do not use 65% of content created by marketing? Or that 70% of reps said their lack of knowledge was why they lost deals?
You have to put the right content into the hands of your sales team for every selling situation right at the moment they need it. To achieve that, you have to accomplish two things:
- Make it easy for salespeople to find the best content to share from a centralized repository. This will allow sellers to spend time selling, not looking for documents.
- Guide your sellers with predictive, intelligent content recommendations.
Remember, sales success starts with the right content and relevant guidance in one place.
2. Sales content creation
Right, having easy access to sales content is important. But what about the quality of that content? Statistics show that 95% of salespeople want more content that will help them position themselves better and sell more.
But this is wild.
Your marketing team is already building a ton of content. Why do sales reps need more?
Isn’t it obvious? As we said, 65% of that content goes to waste, and only 5% is used frequently! Make sure that your marketing team channels their efforts into building effective sales content that your sales reps will love using.
But how?
Your sales enablement software has to make it easy for your marketing team to create engaging and memorable content with pre-built templates and tailored approval workflows specific to your organization.
3. Customer engagement
Now that you have amazing content that your sales reps can easily find, it’s time to send it to your prospects.
But after you hit the send button, you never know what happens on the customer side. Did they receive your document? Did they review it? Did they send it to someone else? Understanding how your prospects engage with your sales content is a huge part of sales enablement.
Sales enablement technology lets you get real-time notifications when prospects engage with your content. So you can see when, where, and how people engage with your sales documents.
These insights help you with so many things to close your deal:
- You can hit the perfect timing with your follow-ups every time.
- You can see who’s involved in the deal. So you know if you’re moving closer to a decision-maker or getting blocked by a hidden gatekeeper.
- With page-by-page analytics, you can find out what matters most to your prospects.
- You can gauge your prospect’s interest by tracking actions like forwarding, downloading, and printing your documents.
Context changes everything. You can have the right conversation with your prospects at the right time, every time.
Moreover, some solutions enable you to see precisely which team, rep, content, or even sales stage drives the most engagement. This helps you identify high performers and institute best practices across your sales team.
4. Presentation management
Sometimes, you don’t send your sales content, but you instead present it.
Indeed, an important and exciting aspect of a sales rep’s daily life is to make presentations and demonstrations to prospects. There are three parts to this process:
- Creating the sales collateral you will present. Your marketing team should typically handle this.
- Deciding which sales materials you will present to that particular prospect. Your sales enablement software should make that recommendation, as we explained above.
- Delivering an engaging presentation. Presentation management will help you with this.
Whether you deliver your presentation virtually or in person, you need technology. This includes video/audio conferencing, screen sharing, augmented and virtual reality, and the ability to present from any device (phone, tablet, laptop).
Although most sales enablement software prefers integrating with existing presentation management solutions, some have this functionality built in. The biggest advantage is that you can auto-log the meeting details and analytics back to your CRM, saving manual data entry hours.
5. Sales onboarding, training and coaching
Better sales teams start with better training. The success of your sales team depends heavily on how well you onboard, train and coach your sales reps.
Training and onboarding software helps newly hired salespeople learn the details of your organization’s sales processes, ramp up their selling abilities, improve their time to productivity, and get up to speed faster.
After a successful onboarding, coaching software allows salespeople and managers to analyze and collaborate on sales calls and emails to help refine techniques, establish best practices, and improve sales close rates.
This is a highly specialized area; some solutions focus only on training, onboarding, and coaching. Most sales enablement software prefers to integrate with these solutions rather than build this functionality into its own product.
6. Sales communication
Communication within your sales organization is critical to your sales success. You must keep your sales reps informed, connected, and up-to-speed with all the correct information in all the right places. We’re talking about delivering them the latest news and information on competitor intel, market insights, product updates, etc.
This is not one-way communication. You must enable your sales team to share assets and information among reps, regions, and managers so best practices can surface in real time. They should also be able to provide feedback to content creators, peers, and sales leadership on what’s working, what’s not, and what to do about it.
Some sales enablement solutions provide mechanisms to enhance business communication within your organization.
What do you need help with?
There you go. These are the six pillars of sales enablement software.
Every solution on the market covers some of these pillars, but typically, each solution is focused on one or two of them.
So, start by evaluating your biggest challenges and decide where you need the most help with sales enablement.
Do your sales reps waste too much time searching for sales content?
You may want to look into a solution with a strong content management component.
Do your deals fall into the black hole of sales, where you hear nothing from your prospects?
Then, you're looking for a sales enablement solution with solid customer engagement capabilities.
Understanding your business' biggest pain points and doing enough research will help you find the best sales enablement software.
