Optimizing sales productivity is a long-standing problem.

Their productivity is the key to their sales performance, and therefore to your sales.

Easy as pie!

Fortunately, there's no shortage of methods, techniques and tools to boost productivity these days.

sales support is one of the (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 seat belts!

Sales enablement: definition and principles

1. Everything starts with a response to a need (as is often the case)

Have you never heard of the term "sales", or do you find it hard to understand 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 job more easily and convert prospects more effectively.

Why?

The reason is simple: they have all the keys they need to respond to their needs and present them with the most relevant arguments.

The results? Increasing sales, growing revenues and rising profits.

Let's face it: that's the goal for all of us.

It's 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, and so on.

To be honest, on a personal level, that's not why I joined Modjo.

It's for all these reasons that Sales Enablement is growing.

2. The million euro question: what is sales support?

It's THE approach that aims to "Increase sales productivity by effectively delivering the right content, data and training.. "

That's all there is to it.

According to Gartner, these are " the activities, systems, processes and information that facilitate and support informed commercial interactions with customers and prospects.

Forrester describes it as " a continuous process, a strategy, that enables salespeople to systematically conduct quality interactions with stakeholders at every stage of the customer problem-solving cycle and maximize the sales system's return on investment."

Definitions that are as complete as they are complex, to describe something that is quite obvious and logical, if you ask me...

From a privilege reserved for certain large companies to a prerequisite for any ambitious enterprise, sales support has evolved in just a few years.

In concrete terms, this means :

• methods
• deoutils
• process
• of solutions
• of technologies
  

... for sales staff.

A whole arsenal to help them boost sales performance (in addition to sales intelligence)!

The traditional sales promotion channels are as follows:

• Production of commercial content
• Sales forcehardware and software
• Organizational optimization
• Training
  

And it's not bad.

No ?

3. Ambitious but very concrete objectives

What is the purpose of sales support?

Enable salespeople to engagetheir prospects more easily, thanks in particular to better collaboration with the marketing team, and of course an increase in their conversion.

3 major aspirations are at the heart of any iterative sales support strategy:

• Prioritize, allowing salespeople to focus on their core business: selling.
• Alignment of sales objectives with marketing and management objectives
• Ensure that the sales team has what it needs to succeed in its mission
  

Once you've learned the basics, you still need to understand the benefits of sales support for your business. Don't worry: it's pretty straightforward, given its advantages...

Otherwise, it wouldn't even be worth it!

The benefits of sales support

If I had to sum up the 5 major advantages of pollution empowerment..:

• Simplified access to relevant data and content
• Time-saving for sales staff
• Improve the efficiency of every employee
• Improving the performance of sales operations
• Significant cost savings
  

In practical terms, this is largely due to the fact that salespeople will spend less time searching for the resources they need.

It's also a cycle ofcontinuous improvement: the relevance of resources increases over time thanks to feedback loops and data circulating between marketing and sales teams.

Another important point is the automation ofrepetitive tasks such as creating sales proposals.

And let's not forget the numbers:

• Heinz Marketing reports that 53% of companies with their own dedicated sales team see a significant increase in conversion figures.
• Aberdeen claims that the most dynamic sales companies improve their sales by an average of 13. 7% per year .

Improving the customer journey and customer control involves many levers, but sales is a rather effective tool...

(Otherwise I wouldn't have told you about it, you get the point)

Implementing a standardized and above all optimized sales methodology delivers spectacular results thanks to regular iterations based on eloquent data.

How does sales support optimize sales productivity?

Let's get down to business: how it works.

Sales Enablement is therefore a strategy that begins with an assessment, followed by actions to optimize the content and use of sales data. Sales enablement tools are essential to the success of this approach.

You've now understood the "why" and "what" of sales support.

Then it's time for the "how to"!

1. Creating customer-focused content

Creating sales support content tailored to your buyers' personalities is the first step. Here are 5 examples of popular content:

• Customer-focused case studies
• White papers addressing issues that are well known to prospects
• High-value blog posts

(this one? I'll let you know by email if it brought you value)

• Synthetic sales scripts to be adapted to each exchange
• Publish on social networks where your target audience is located
  

It all starts with knowing your audience and understanding their needs, so you can create content that will really help them.

2. Use the right tools

Ah, the tools... How could we have forgotten them here?

In recent years, data and sales analysis have helped salespeople make more sales.

Technology solutions are another important facet of sales support. To maximize the productivity, efficiency and performance of your sales force, certain historical tools are indispensable:

• Marketing/content automation
• CRM
• BI and business intelligence
• Lead qualification
• ...
  

But it's not over yet.

New tools are being developed around conversational intelligence, to take sales support even further: that's what we're trying to do on our own scale with Modjo.

The idea is to find the tools best suited to your structure, your market, your corporate culture and your resources.

Just because your competitor uses a particular solution doesn't mean it's right for you!

3. Dirtiness in practice

So how is all this managed internally?

In a company, sales support can be the responsibility of the marketing department, sales, a dedicated department or an individual.

Ideally, this is a 3-step process:

• Marketing develops content
• The sales support team or person manages this content, customer engagement, performance analysis and training materials.
• The sales department integrates the whole into the daily life of sales staff

Be careful not to confuse the roles of sales support and sales department, whose actions complement each other without overlapping.

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Sales support is a very effective and important way of improving your sales.

It's a pity that no satisfactory French translation of the term yet exists, but we can speak of "commercial support".

If you've got a better idea... I'll take it!

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Better,

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