Do you know anything about sales enablement? The concept is gaining in popularity and experts are constantly extolling its virtues, but it's sometimes misunderstood. So, what is it really?
It's not just another technological gadget, far from it! Sales enablement is a global strategy, an art of war, that boosts the potential of every salesperson. Its aim? To enable our teams to highlight the uniqueness and strength of our products in a clear, coherent and persuasive way.
If we want to stay in the race and outperform the competition, we need to be at the top of our game. We take you on a (re)discovery of sales enablement, a key concept for boosting our performance and making a success of our sales strategy.
Definition of sales enablement
Sales enablement encompasses everything that enables us to sell more, better and faster. It's a multi-faceted concept, encompassing technologies, tools and practices. Above all, it's a global strategy, implemented throughout the company. We tell you all about it!
What is sales enablement?
Sales enablement is like the fuel in our sales engine. Simply put, it's a set of processes, practices, technologies and tools designed to improve the results and productivity of our sales team.
According to Sales Enablement Collective, 60% of the companies surveyed have been implementing this strategy for less than 3 years.
It's a fairly recent phenomenon, and every company has its own definition. Basically, however, it's a strategy for improving the techniques and tools available to sales people, so that they are better informed and more effective.
This strategic approach brings together everything salespeople need to make a successful sale.
This translates differently depending on the company's objectives. In general, it's based on knowledge sharing and the circulation of information between different departments. It enables sales reps to appropriate and master the company's narrative, adapting marketing content to the context of a sale. Sales reps are able to mobilize the elements they need in a fluid way, enabling them to continue to be the driving force throughout the sales cycle.
Sales enablement aligns company departments towards a common goal: optimizing the sales cycle. Marketing, operations, customer service: all these stakeholders have a role to play in delivering relevant, high-quality sales content. Their aim is to help sales people get to know their customers and prospects better, and to improve their relationship with them, in order to sell more effectively.
Sales enablement includes the company's entire sales organization, as well as the training and tools made available to sales reps. But it doesn't stop there! It's not a question of proposing a single tool: it's a set of processes.
Why use it?
His ultimate goal, however you define sales enablement, is to turn us into true selling machines. We're focused on delivering the perfect customer experience. Because a satisfied customer is a returning customer, who talks about us to others and helps boost our sales.
When executed correctly, this strategy has a clear impact on various metrics: time spent on a sale, success rate and average basket. It's a tremendous growth lever for companies!
By optimizing our sales efficiency, sales enablement contributes to increasing our sales and improving our profitability. According to Forrester, 75% of B2B sales teams will have a dedicated salesablement function by 2021.
But be careful, it's not just about increasing sales figures.
The real aim of sales enablement is to optimize the interaction between sales reps and customers. It's an approach that aims to deeply understand customers' needs and expectations in order to offer them an exceptional experience.
Our customers are constantly in demand, and are spoilt for choice when it comes to the solutions on offer. As a result, we have to redouble our efforts to capture their attention, win their trust and close the sale!
Sales enablement is the key to meeting this challenge. It helps us know who our customers are, anticipate their needs and offer them an unforgettable shopping experience. We can adapt our approach and our discourse to be more relevant and more convincing.
It's what sets us apart from the competition and enables us to build strong, lasting relationships with our customers.
So why use sales enablement? Quite simply because it's a win-win investment for us, our company and our customers.
What are the advantages of sales enablement?
Adopting sales enablement is like turning on the turbo. For us, it means being better prepared, more efficient and more aligned with our customers' expectations. For the company, it means higher sales and greater customer satisfaction.
Improve sales team performance
For a start, sales enablement gives our sales team a serious performance boost. How do we do this? By giving us the tools and resources we need to focus on what we do best: selling.
Sales enablement equips us with the valuable resources we need to move a sale forward in the pipe. No more hours wasted searching for information or creating sales materials from scratch! Everything is at our fingertips, ready to be used.
So we can spend more time interacting with our customers and closing sales. And because we're better prepared and more efficient, our conversion rate improves. In short, it's a win-win situation for us and for the company!
This strategy also (often) includes training courses to help us improve our skills and expertise. They represent a real goldmine to help us perform better. In particular, training enables us to :
- Learn new sales techniques
- Keeping abreast of the latest market trends
- Understanding the specific features of our products
It's a real secret weapon when it comes to supporting change management programs, for example! It enables salespeople to position themselves quickly on a new product or service.
This strategy also boosts sales team motivation. By giving us the tools and skills we need to excel, it boosts our self-confidence and job satisfaction.
Better meet customer needs
Ah, our customers! They're at the heart of our business, and sales enablement is there to help us serve them better. So, how exactly does it work?
Firstly, sales enablement helps us to understand them better.
It puts tools at our disposal, to be more effective in our interactions: CRM to manage our customer relationships, analysis tools to understand their purchasing behavior and track the history of our interactions with them, find out their preferences and anticipate their needs, etc.
Gone are the days when we had to rely on guesswork or impressions. Today, we have concrete data to guide our actions!
Secondly, sales enablement gives us the means to personalize our approach.
Thanks to a wide range of easily adaptable sales aids, we can create customized presentations for every customer. Whether it's to highlight a particular product, present a relevant case study or illustrate the benefits of our offer, we have everything we need to convince our customers.
Finally, sales enablement enables us to be more responsive.
Since we have all the relevant information at our fingertips, we can quickly answer our customers' questions, solve their problems and offer them appropriate solutions. It's a way of showing them that we're there for them, ready for action and committed to their satisfaction.
In short, sales enablement processes enable us to put our customers at the heart of our sales approach. And since we all know that customer satisfaction is the key to business success, this translates into more sales, more loyalty and more referrals. In other words, it's a virtuous circle for the company.
How do you set up a sales enablement program?
So how do we put sales enablement to work for us? We start with a phase of introspection: first and foremost, we need to know where we're starting from and where we want to go! We identify our needs and objectives before choosing the right tools.
We'll tell you all about it!
Key stages in implementing the strategy
1. Reporting and analysis
No matter what anyone says, the world of sales is driven by data. Our enablement programs need to mobilize the right data, without drowning salespeople in a ton of irrelevant information.
Turn your data into real sales assets by creating systems.
Standardize reporting across teams. Define the fundamental data and make it available to all teams. This could be activities carried out by sales, demos delivered, leads generated, opportunities won or lost, etc.
Reporting on this relevant data saves sales reps valuable time, allowing them to iterate on what's already working.
Next, carry out a sales process audit. What can be improved? This will enable you to take stock and better direct your sales force on the actions they need to implement, or on the contrary, those they need to abandon.
This stage is crucial for assessing the effectiveness of our strategies. We follow up regularly to see where we are, what's working and what can be improved. Based on these results, we adjust our strategy.
2. Organizing content to optimize sales
As mentioned above, a sales enablement program allows you to (among other things) personalize the sales experience for our prospects. But to do this, you need to organize all the content at your disposal.
And this content comes to us mainly from two sources: data (which we collected and organized in the previous step) and marketing content.
Important information: it's essential to carry out a complete audit of available content. Centralize all relevant elements, which may include :
- Case studies
- White papers and ebooks produced in-house
- Your demo decks
- All the information about pricing
- Your internal content libraries (e.g. Google Doc or your CRM)
Don't forget to check the production date of this content: if it's out of date, it may not be relevant to reference it!
What's more, if there's one piece of content you need to produce regularly, it's a case study. Nothing has more impact on a prospect's psyche than proof that your solution delivers what it promises!
What tools and resources do you need?
To carry out our sales enablement program, we need resources. Training, of course, but also the right tools. To reap the rewards of a sales enablement program, you need to be prepared to invest time and a little money. But with the right organization, it's well worth the effort!
1. The key to success: skilled human resources
It's essential to have a dedicated sales enablement team made up of competent, motivated professionals. This team is responsible for designing, implementing and monitoring the program.
2. Appropriate training
Of course, sales enablement isn't just about training salespeople. But it remains an essential element: the program can't be effective without proper training. And we want our team to be at the top of their game, don't we? So we set up training courses on products, sales techniques, customer knowledge... We can tailor training to meet the specific needs of our team. We make sure that everyone is on the same wavelength and ready to give their best.
In fact, that's one of Modjo's raisons d'être. Our platform enables you to create customized training courses based on analysis of salespeople's best practices.
Whereas just a few years ago, you'd have to sit next to sales reps to get training. Today, with conversational intelligence tools like Modjo, you're able to analyze hundreds of your teams' interactions at scale, to identify only those moments worth sharing and duplicating (or not) to all salespeople.
To take things a step further, Léa Hennequart, Head of Account Management at Modjo, shares 5 tips for a successful sales enablement strategy.
3. Technological tools
To facilitate the sales team's work and optimize its performance, it needs the right tools. Depending on our needs, this can include CRM software to track our interactions with customers, training platforms to keep learning, marketing automation tools, or analytics tools to measure our performance.
In short: we choose the tools that match our needs and objectives. We can also opt for sales enablement platforms, which provide us with everything we need to implement an effective strategy.
These resources are all essential for a successful sales enablement program. They enable the sales team to be more effective and deliver a better customer experience, which translates into improved satisfaction - and therefore higher sales.
How profitable is sales enablement?
Obviously, you don't set up a sales enablement program just for the fun of it. It's all about improving sales productivity, selling better and boosting company revenues.
So, to check that we're moving in the right direction and that the program is working, we measure our success by looking at ROI. Because let's face it: sales enablement is an investment. You invest time, money, human and technological resources. And if it's properly managed, it should be extremely profitable.
The ROI of sales enablement can be measured according to 3 factors:
- Improving sales performance
It's a no brainer: if the program is well designed, sales teams perform better. By training sales people and giving them the tools and information they need, we reduce wasted time and increase their efficiency. This translates into higher sales, shorter sales cycles and improved conversion rates. And this ROI is measured in euros.
- Customer satisfaction and loyalty
Thanks to sales enablement, sales staff are better prepared to meet customers' needs and expectations. Customers are naturally more satisfied, and therefore more loyal. And ultimately, customer lifetime value (CLV) increases. They can also spread the word, creating a virtuous circle around the company. In all cases, the ROI is positive.
- Attracting talent
And finally, ROI is also measured in terms of the company's attractiveness. If we perform well, we grow. And if we're growing, we need talent. Attracting them is one of the measures of success of our sales enablement strategy. If sales people know they'll be well taken care of, that they'll become more efficient, productive and satisfied with what they deliver, they'll want to join the adventure. As a result, a company that invests in sales enablement is often more attractive to sales talent. It helps attract and retain the best sales professionals!
You've got it: sales enablement is a strategic combination. The right people, the right technologies and the right tools, to create an ironclad sales process.
By focusing on the buyer to deliver the best possible experience at every point of interaction, we improve our efficiency and increase our sales.
