Increase revenue through Sales Excellence
The term Sales Enablement is used nowadays to describe these processes, practices, technologies and tools that improve the performance and productivity of the sales organization.
When analyzing the sales processes, Enablement is the lever for great performance at the phase when a sales consultant contacts current or potential customers. Most often is the step after prospecting, finding the right potential customer. (See my article, Prospecting: What’s next). It is the time when he/she tries to understand their specific needs and provides them with the right answers to the questions they have, share relevant case studies and finally offers the precise solutions to their needs.
It could include first time sales calls, managing key accounts, targeting top prospects as well as finding cross-selling opportunities.
Even if there is a fixed appointment, it is important to establish very early and quickly a trusting relationship. Understanding the needs of the customer and having at hand the right information to share and explain, is key. Today, companies have developed streamlined processes for each case of customer interaction, assisted by software tools and technologies, most often as part of a CRM solution.
All major CRM providers offer Sales Enablement tools but also specialized companies like SAVO, Seismic, Callidus Cloud or Qvidian.
What is right?
The notion of “Right” is an intriguing one. Right means “what is suitable for each specific case” but it also means “not too much”. In the case of sales content, it has been proven that much of the content created by marketing or sales is never used. Some estimate that in the US more than $ 100 billion worth of content is never used! Sales teams ignore 90% of the “selling collateral” that is provided to them.
Right also means the correct way to collect, structure, process, and report information about customers, a function often assigned to CRM.
Right SalesPerson means a well-trained person. Means a well on boarded person, in case of a new hire. That is why often enablement includes hiring, training and coaching. There are companies, like appical that are specialized in on-boarding new sales teams. Imagine a retail chain that expands its store network and needs to train new people, in its culture, in its products, in its way of approaching customers, how to cross and up-sell.
Right means the appropriate way of conveying that information, may that be email, video demo, access to live data or to white papers. Sharing the right information, in the right way, is becoming extremely important because buyers are better informed nowadays.
Finally Right, means comparing with the rest of the team and the KPIs set and assessing performance. Determining how well the salespeople and sales managers are performing their respective duties, replicating successful behavior and producing at their anticipated levels. Here, Sales Playbooks play an important role.
Is Enablement the only way?
Improving the productivity of sales organizations can happen in many ways, not necessarily through Sales Enablement: a software based method of introducing these processes, practices and tools. If is done through technology, it has to be done all the way, because it requires a major shift on the processes. Companies that have introduced halfheartedly, on top of their systems, have not reaped the benefits of their effort and investment.
Some companies assign Enablement to Marketing some others to Sales. Anyway, boundaries between the two disciplines are difficult to be defined; therefore the term Smarketing.
What to do next?
In your path to Sales Excellence, it is advisable to try to understand the way Sales Enablement functions and draw a path of integrating it in your sales operations. Start by sharing this article with your Sales and Marketing team and visit the website of some of the companies mentioned. There are so many resources available to make you familiar with the theme and prepare for the next step of moving forward into the new age of sales.