What is Sales Enablement?
Sales enablement is the process required for your sales teams to gain the support, knowledge, and tools they need in order to close more deals. By enabling a sales team with more training they can become more successful in their role, which will inevitably lead to higher revenue for your business.
This is an ongoing process that never ends. As markets change and the world of sales adapts, the sales enablement process will need to match it.
Benefits of Sales Enablement
A good sales enablement strategy will help your sales team constantly grow. It will also help ensure that everyone on the sales team is working with the same resources which will level the playing field.
No one will have an unfair advantage when it comes to training, and everyone will have the same baseline to fall back to. This will allow for best practices to be followed, and those who excel can take on mentor or leadership roles within the sales enablement process.
At the end of the day, a successful sales enablement strategy will ensure your sales team’s success. Without it, their tactics can become outdated, disorganized, and erratic. You want to ensure cohesion; best practices must be followed and updated as needed.
Sales Enablement Best Practices
To have a successful strategy, you should follow these sales enablement best practices:
Create engaging training material.
The point of sales enablement is to ensure your sales team has the resources and knowledge they need to be successful. Figure out what gaps they have or roadblocks they’re facing and tailor training to address these issues.
Have sales reps focus on the buyer’s journey.
They should know and understand who their sales prospects are, what needs they have, and how they can engage them in a positive way to build a relationship and close out a deal.
Make sure sales reps use their resources.
It’s one thing to put training documents together, but they must also be used. Managers should always reinforce training and ensure best practices are being followed, and re-evaluate as needed in order to make improvements.
Learn to collaborate.
Success requires teamwork; you can’t constantly rely on your top performers to hit goals and milestones. Ensure those leading sales enablement strategies are plugged into conversations with managers who are setting targets, as well as sales reps who are doing the groundwork. Understanding both sides is crucial, as is anticipating needs to deliver training that will make a positive impact.
Regularly re-evaluate and make improvements.
As mentioned before, the world of sales is constantly evolving, which means your sales enablement strategy needs to too. As sales reps work through deals, look for gaps that can be closed. There’s always room for improvement, and a good strategy will ensure that all staff, old and new hires, receive the resources they need to succeed.
Set goals.
To gauge the success of your sales enablement strategy, you should set measurable goals. How many employees have received training? How many product demos were performed? How many new leads were generated? Did those leads end up becoming customers? All this data will help fuel your process and pave the way for future success.