Bridge the Gap: How Sales Enablement Fuels Business Growth
Equip your sales team with the tools, training and data-driven insights to effectively engage prospects and drive revenue growth for your business.
Sales and marketing are two incredibly important roles, and there’s also a fair degree of overlap between the two departments. However, all too often companies fail to bring the two together.
That’s a real loss because both teams have a lot to offer the other. Each has a unique set of insights about customers and access to a wealth of extremely useful resources that could help the other department do a better job.
That’s what sales enablement is all about - your marketing team providing your sales team with all the tools and resources they need to do their job as well as possible, and vice versa.
In this article, we’ll look at the benefits of sales enablement and show you how to get started in your company.
The Benefits of Sales Enablement
Done right, sales enablement can not only make the day-to-day running of your company much easier and more productive, but it can also generate serious results in terms of revenue and growth.
Here are just a handful of reasons to invest in sales enablement:
- Boosts Sales Team Morale: 73% of sales teams say collaboration across departments is absolutely critical or very important to their overall sales process. Sales enablement fosters this collaboration.
- Increases Revenue: Quota attainment is correlated with investment in sales enablement. Top-performing organisations tend to employ more full-time sales enablement staff.
- Improves Customer Acquisition: Leads are 67% more likely to become clients when sales and marketing teams are aligned. Sales enablement helps achieve this alignment.
Challenges of Sales Enablement
While sales enablement offers significant benefits, implementing a successful program comes with its own set of hurdles. Here are some common challenges to be aware of:
- Overcoming Departmental Silos: Breaking down communication barriers between sales and marketing is crucial for effective enablement.
- Content Ownership and Management: Ensuring clear ownership of sales content, from creation to maintenance, can be a challenge.
- Measuring ROI: Demonstrating the return on investment (ROI) of sales enablement initiatives requires a well-defined measurement strategy.
How it Works for Marketers
Marketers today have access to a mountain of useful materials and content. This includes things like:
- Blog posts
- Testimonials
- Conversations with customers, for example through chatbots
- Case studies from happy customers
- Product guides
All these materials (and many more) can be of enormous benefit to sales teams. They can help sales staff gain a better understanding of customers, address their problems more effectively, provide reassurance and evidence, and speak more authoritatively about the products and services they're selling.
As a result, the sales team can convert more leads into customers and generate more revenue for the company.
How it Works for Sales
Sales staff have a unique relationship with customers, one that marketing teams simply aren’t part of. Their one-on-one conversations, day after day, give them a special range of insights about what makes customers tick.
This can help marketing teams in several ways:
- It helps marketing fill in the gaps in their knowledge and gain a more complete understanding of customers, creating more relevant marketing materials
- They learn which types of content and materials are missing from the marketing process and what customers would like to see more of
- It can help them lay the foundations for future plans and come up with new ideas for campaigns and content
How to Do Sales Enablement
1. Build Sales Enablement into the Company Ethos
To really succeed with sales enablement, everyone needs to be on board. At the very least, your sales and marketing teams should understand the importance of the process and be committed to it.
This involves taking the time to highlight the benefits and ensure everyone is satisfied. It also requires continuous training to make sure your sales team has everything they need to do their job properly, and marketing can support them.
2. Prioritise the Buyer’s Experience
It’s important to instil the notion that sales is all about the customer. The customer’s experience — from the top of the funnel to the moment they hit ‘buy’ and well beyond — should be a priority for both sales and marketing teams.
This should influence every part of the sales enablement process. Marketing staff should be giving sales teams content that will help the customer first and foremost. It’s a shift in mindset that places the buyer at the forefront, always.
3. Give your Teams the Right Tools
To give your sales and marketing teams the best possible advantage when it comes to driving up your revenue, they’ll need the best technology available. That includes:
- Customer Relationship Management tools that bring together all the relevant buyer data in one place, for both sales and marketing teams
- Content Management Systems to help your teams keep track of all the content the company uses, organising it in a way that makes it easy to find whenever it’s needed
- Automation tools, for example, when sending out email sequences, using templates, or prospecting for new customers
- Live chat and conversational marketing software such as chatbots, allow you to contact your customers, solve problems, and even make sales without overwhelming human staff
4. Use Sales Content the Right Way
Content is something we tend to associate with marketing, but there is plenty of sales-focused content. This includes things like:
- Customer testimonials
- Whitepapers
- Case studies
- Sales email templates
All these types of content work best on customers at the very bottom of the funnel, those who are just about to make a purchase and need one final nudge.
5. Track, Measure, Report, and Analyse
This is a crucial part of sales enablement — the process where teams collect, analyse and act on all the data their customers give them. This can be an enormous amount of information, and if dealt with correctly can be a huge asset to both sales and marketing.
It’s important to standardise reporting across the teams. Sales reports — including things like product demos delivered, deals won and lost, and leads generated — can be of great value to other departments and should be shared.
Here are just a few important metrics to keep track of:
- Average sales cycle length
- The number of reps achieving their quota
- Average deal size
This is another place where software and tools play a major role, allowing teams to carefully monitor their sales and marketing activity and also gain a better understanding of how their customers behave.
Sales enablement is a way for companies to create a more cohesive and streamlined sales and marketing process, use their resources more effectively, and increase their revenue.
Conclusion
In conclusion, sales enablement isn't just a fancy term; it's a strategic approach that empowers your sales and marketing teams to work together seamlessly. By fostering collaboration, leveraging data, and equipping your teams with the right tools, you can streamline your sales process, improve customer experiences, and ultimately achieve sustainable business growth.
Ready to unlock the full potential of sales enablement for your business? Schedule a free consultation with our sales enablement experts today. We'll help you assess your current strategy, identify opportunities for improvement, and develop a customised plan to bridge the gap between your sales and marketing teams.
Together, let's fuel your business growth!
