6 Tips for Sales Enablement
Strategies in 2023
If you’re the right hand in the marketing department of any company, your thirst for new ideas will always be running high.
The one aim you walk with into the office every day would be – How do I sell more today? How do I make the business boom? How do I increase sales? If you can relate to this and you’re aspiring to boost your sales number, then you’re in luck.
A Sales Enablement Strategy is a vital aspect to pay attention to when promoting your business. It acts as a catalyst in your marketing and also improves your overall process.
It doesn’t matter whether you’re a new business or an age-old company. A good sales enablement strategy can always open many doors by providing your sales staff with the tools they need to close deals and build long-term relationships with clients.
Below, we’ll show you how to create and use successful sales enablement strategies.
What is Sales Enablement?
First things first- what even is this thing? How can it enhance a business? Can it help in marketing? Can I use it to boost sales? One thing at a time: let’s understand what Sales Enablement is first.
Simply put, it is to improve your sales team’s turnover. If you’re a business owner, you’d definitely have a sales team that takes care of ensuring and maximizing the profits.
No matter how big the scale of your company is, a designated person or department for his purpose always proves to be a valuable part of the team. Sales Enablement is just training strategies that help them do their job better.
It can be anything from workshops to training and mandatory guidelines. This can improve their research skills, data management, and tool navigation, all at the same time.
Think about how a teacher helps her students with homework: first laying out the general instructions, then telling the do’s and don’ts, and finally spilling out some tips and tricks. This is precisely how Sales Enablement works: a helping hand to your sales team.
Why is Sales Enablement Important?
Simply put, it is to improve your sales team’s turnover. If you’re a business owner, you’d definitely have a sales team that takes care of ensuring and maximizing the profits.
No matter how big the scale of your company is, a designated person or department for his purpose always proves to be a valuable part of the team. Sales Enablement is just training strategies that help them do their job better.
It can be anything from workshops to training and mandatory guidelines. This can improve their research skills, data management, and tool navigation, all at the same time.
Think about how a teacher helps her students with homework: first laying out the general instructions, then telling the do’s and don’ts, and finally spilling out some tips and tricks. This is precisely how Sales Enablement works: a helping hand to your sales team.
Finally, a good sales enablement strategy can help to create a more efficient sales process, leading to increased sales and profitability. In short, a good sales enablement strategy is essential for any company that wants to maximize its sales potential. By putting in place a comprehensive and well-designed plan, you can ensure that your company is able to realize its full selling potential.
Globally, more than 60% of companies have made enablement a top priority. Be it a person, a team, or a program, these companies have made sure that this area is well-taken care of so that their sales increase every day. Previously, this figure was not even 20%, making it evident that adapting to these methods has proven to be a game-changer over the years.
In fact, according to Highspot, more than 75% of companies that used sales enablement tools reported that sales increased in the preceding 12 months. Of those, 40% indicated growth of over 25%. And 23% reported their conversion rates increased by at least 20%.
5 Tips for Sales Enablement Strategies
1. Create Crystal Clear and Goals
It doesn’t help anyone if your ideas are a jumbled mess. For maximum output, make sure you have carefully prioritized your goals and have your aims listed down. Focus on one thing at a time so that your team can give it a 100%, as opposed to being mediocrely invested in many things at once.
A good sales enablement playbook will be your best friend in this case. It helps to align teams by providing a common understanding of the sales process, customer journey, and product offerings.
It also includes key information on how to use sales tools and technologies, and how to effectively engage with prospects and customers at various stages of the selling process.
By having a sales enablement playbook in place, organizations can ensure that their sales teams are properly equipped to drive revenue growth. In addition, a well-designed playbook can also help to improve team alignment, morale and motivation, as it provides clear direction and guidance on what needs to be done to succeed.
Make sure your sales team consults the book for every step of the process so that there are minimal chances of mishaps. ROI and scalability goals should specifically inform your strategies because they help in cost reductions.
If a sales enablement strategy has finally made it to your company, you should clearly understand its parameters. Why it’s necessary for you, what are you expecting from it, and how is a plan going to be carried out; these are all questions that need to be solved beforehand in order to derive a purpose.
Here’s how having a clearly defined mission can help your sales enablement strategies:
- Intertwines multiple departments such as sales and marketing, ensuring better trade of work between the two
- Generates specific ideas for your brand, skyrocketing sales
- Preparing your team to deal with all kinds of situations, from client handling to exploring new ideas every day
- Streamlining lead generation output for improved loop closures
2. Equip Your Sales Team with the Right Tools
A good team isn’t just made up of hardworking individuals; they also need to have appropriate gear under their belts, which in this case would be tools and training.
You can build up a team that only soars high by inculcating a deep understanding of areas such as product information, industry knowledge, and customer interactions. Email templates and sequences help a sales enablement strategy, but they’re just a tiny contribution.
Your sales representative shouldn’t be just blindly sending emails to anybody and everybody; he should be aware of exactly where to hit, having built intentional email lists. He should be able to differentiate between marketing emails and transactional emails and send them to the relevant audience.
Think of it from your perspective: you’d straight up ignore the tons of ‘anniversary discounts’ if you’re unmarried, right? The organization would still have a mediocre reputation in your eyes, even when it sends an email that is useful for you.
A good tip is arming your sales team with the best cold email outreach tools and relevant training to boost their performance. And don’t forget to train them to use the sales software, so that each sales rep is using it in the most optimal way.
This is why a sales representative, or any employee for that matter, should receive the right amount of training and resources before he begins to work. Think of all the tools and workshops as an investment for your organization!
3. Designate Specific Roles Within Your Team
Defining responsibilities for each employee is a tactic followed by many organizations to ensure a uniform workload. Not only does it keep your employees happy, but it also formalizes strategies and prevents screw-ups.
You wouldn’t want your team to run amok before a client meeting. It also becomes important to draw a line between sales and marketing teams’ responsibilities.
Because of their very similar nature, there might be a gray area between and nobody feels responsible. To avoid clutter between your sales and marketing work, ensure that your sales enablement strategy includes defined roles and responsibilities for everyone. Below are some domains that can have a few people grouped separately to avoid confusion:
- Navigation of Tools and inculcation of new Technologies
- Extraction of relevant data from Playbooks
- Generating practical and helpful content
- Setting the right strategies and working with the software which enables them
- Researching developmental methods
- Sales Process and Methods
If you’re concerned about how to define roles within your organization, a sales enablement agency could be just the perfect way of solving it. You can lay down all your aims and objectives in front of them, and they’ll help you divide your team appropriately.
4. Encourage Leaders and Create a Culture of Learning
If you notice a couple of people doing exceptionally well in their jobs, stop and acknowledge them in front of the entire team. Ask them how their methodologies are so successful. Convince them to interact with and teach their juniors.
Promote them to higher positions, but beware – a great sales rep might not necessarily be a good team lead.
Train them to be trainers themselves. This will not only create a community spirit within your organization but will also improve the performance of all your employees. Of course, each worker’s nature of the job is different, but the intention here is not to replicate your senior.
Instead, the learning outcome should be based on understanding how he uses his skills. What are his behavioral tactics? Once an employee has understood all these parameters, his work will automatically have a better outcome.
5. Capture Leads with Engagement Tools
Having a live chat is an excellent way to capture leads from your website. Leads who are considering buying, but want to know more about some features or possibilities. The best CRM software platforms have built-in live chat capabilities.
A direct messaging option on your website should be a part of your sales enablement strategy at all times. The amount of connectivity a visitor suddenly feels because of this one tiny option is definitely bound to increase your sales by a large margin. Keep your site simple to navigate, and always have a chat representative that can assist your customers.
6. Be Prepared to Address Any Objection
When you’re in the latest stages of contract negotiations, and it seems like your prospects is all in. After all, they have agreed verbally. However, keep in mind that in sales nothing is final until the ink is dry.
Even if your prospect has agreed to sign the deal, things can still change. In enterprise sales, closing a deal takes time. And often there are several alternatives that are being researched in parallel.
As you’re negotiating the sale, these are 3 best tactics to arm yourself with:
- Know your prospect’s problem deeply. The better you understand their unerlying business problem and “where it hurts”, the better you can suggest a remedy or a solution.
- Arm yourself with answers to objections. Brainstorm any kind of objection a prospect might have. Think of the objections you’ve encountered in the past. Write them down. Learn the answers to these objections.
- Reduce friction wherever possible. It might mean making the process more smooth for the customers. It might mean making the contract easy to read and easy to sign. You could use free PDF signing tools to make it as easy as possible.
Summary of Sales Enablement Strategies
You can invent the most amazing product in the world yet fail to make it famous because of the absence of a sales enablement strategy. As a company, it becomes essential for you to build substantial grounds; to do that, you need to have some robust strategies up your sleeve.
You have to ensure that your vision is clear and make sure you provide the right tools and resources for your team to be successful. Each member of your team needs to have a designated role and responsibilities they fully understand, and along the way you’ll want to recognize and reward those who show initiative by grooming them for leadership roles.
Don’t overlook the necessity for real-time engagement tools on your site for capturing leads. By following these tips and putting together a well-designed sales enablement strategy, you’ll increase customer satisfaction and maximize your sales potential.