Optimizing sales productivity is a long-standing issue.
It is on their productivity that their commercial performance, and therefore your turnover, partly depends.
Easy as pie!
Fortunately, there is no shortage of methods, techniques and tools to boost their productivity these days.
sales enablement is one of the (many, many) weapons at your disposal to increase their effectiveness.
What is it? How does it work? Why does it work?
Let me explain! Fasten your seatbelts!
Sales enablement : Definition & principles
1. Everything starts from an answer to a need (as often)
You have never heard of the term 'sales' or you have trouble understanding what it means?
Let's keep it simple. Basic.
Let's start with a basic premise: salespeople who have access to the right resources at the right time can do their jobs more easily and convert prospects better.
Why?
The reason is simple: they have all the keys to meet their needs and present them with the most relevant arguments.
The results? Increased sales, growing turnover and soaring profits.
Let it be said: this is the goal of us all.
It is also worth noting that teams whose core business is sales often spend too much time (half their day, according to a McKinsey Strategy meta-study) on activities that have nothing to do with sales: administration, follow-up, software, etc.
To be honest, from a personal point of view, this is not what I signed up for at Modjo.
Moreover, it is for all these reasons that sales enablement is developing.
2. The €1M question: What is sales enablement?
This is THE approach that aims to "Increase sales productivity by effectively providing the right content, data and training."
That's all.
According to Gartner, it is " the activities, systems, processes and information that facilitate and support informed business interactions with customers and prospects.
Forrester describes it as " a continuous process, a strategy, that empowers salespeople to systematically conduct quality stakeholder interactions at every stage of the customer resolution cycle and maximise the return on investment of the sales system."
Definitions as complete as they are complex, to describe something quite obvious and logical, if you ask me...
From being a privilege of some large companies to a prerequisite for any ambitious business, sales enablement has evolved in just a few years.
In concrete terms, this means :
- of methods
- oftools
- process
- of solutions
- of technologies
...for the benefit of sales staff.
A whole arsenal to help them gain in commercial performance (in addition to sales intelligence)!
The traditional routes of sales enablement are:
- Production of sales support content
- Sales forcehardware and software
- Organisational optimisation
- The training
And that's not bad.
No ?
3. Ambitious but very concrete objectives
The purpose of sales enablement?
Enable salespeople toengage their prospects more easily, thanks in particular to better collaboration with the marketing team, and obviously boost their conversion.
3 major aspirations are central to any iterative sales enablement strategy:
- Prioritise, allow sales people to focus on their core business: selling
- Aligning sales objectives with marketing and management objectives
- Ensure that the sales team has what it needs to succeed in its mission
Once the basics have been learned, you still need to understand the benefits of sales enablement for your company. Don't worry: it's quite simple, given its advantages...
Otherwise, it wouldn't even be worth it!
The benefits of sales enablement
If I had to summarize the 5 major assets of dirty enablement:
- Simplified access to relevant data and content
- Time saving for sales staff
- Increasing the efficiency of each employee
- Performance boost for commercial operations
- Significant cost reduction
In practical terms, this is largely because salespeople will spend less time searching for the resources they need.
It is also a cycle ofcontinuous improvement: the relevance of resources increases over time thanks to feedback loops and the data that flows between the marketing and sales teams.
Another important point is theautomation of repetitive tasks such as the creation of sales proposals.
Let's not forget the numbers either:
- Heinz Marketing reports that 53% of companies with their own dedicated sales team see asignificant increase in conversion figures
- Aberdeen claims that the most sales-enabled companies improve their sales by an average of 13. 7% per year
Improving the customer journey and your control over it involves many levers, but salesablement is a rather effective one...
(Otherwise I wouldn't have told you about it, you got it)
Implementing a standardised and, above all, optimised sales methodology allows for spectacular results thanks to regular iterations based on eloquent data.
How does sales enablement optimise sales productivity?
Let's get down to business: how it works.
Sales enablement is therefore a strategy that starts with an assessment followed by actions to optimise the content and use of sales data. Sales enablement tools are essential to the success of the approach.
You have now understood the "why" and "what" of sales enablement.
Then it's time to get to the "how"!
1. Customer-oriented content creation
Creating sales enablement content tailored to your buyer personas is a first step. Here are 5 examples of popular content:
- Client-centric case studies
- White papers addressing issues that are well known to prospects
- High value blog posts
(this one? I'll let you tell me by mail if it brought you value)
- Synthetic sales scripts to be adapted to each exchange
- Publishing on social networks where your target is located
It all starts with knowing your audience and understanding their needs to create content that will really help them.
2. Using the right tools
Ah, the tools... How could we forget them here?
In recent years, data and sales analysis have helped salespeople close more sales.
Technology solutions are another great facet of sales enablement. To maximize the productivity, efficiency and performance of your salespeople, certain historical tools are a must:
- Marketing/content automation
- CRM
- BI & Sales intelligence
- Lead qualification
- ...
But it is not over yet.
New tools are being developed around conversational intelligence, to go even further in sales enablement: this is what we are trying to do at our scale with Modjo.
The idea is to find the tools that are best suited to your structure, your market, your corporate culture and your resources.
Just because your competitor uses this or that solution does not mean it is right for you!
3. Dirtablement in practice
So, how is all this managed internally?
In a company, sales enablement can be a matter for the marketing department, sales or a dedicated department or individual.
Ideally, it's a 3-step process:
- Marketing develops content
- The sales enablement team or person drives the management of this content, customer engagement, performance analysis and training materials
- The sales department integrates the whole into the daily life of the sales staff
Be careful not to confuse the roles of sales enablement and the sales department, whose actions complement each other without overlapping.
Sales enablement is a very efficient and important way to improve your sales.
It is a pity that there is no satisfactory French translation of the term yet, but we can speak of "sales support".
If you have a better idea... I'll take it!
Best,
