Sales Enablement & Sales Enablement Strategy

Sales enablement is a function used across multiple departments in your company to improve overall sales efforts. It provides your team members with the proper tools, knowledge and guidelines to optimize every selling opportunity. Having an efficient sales enablement strategy will increase profitability and improve employee productivity.

The benefits of implementing a sales enablement strategy include:

• Optimizing how your company stays in touch with potential customers
• Gathering valuable insights into the buyers’ motivations, behaviors and concerns
• Providing high-quality sales conversations
• Building long-lasting relationships with consumers

There are four categories pertaining to the sales enablement team. They are broken down into the following:

• Recruiting/Hiring ─ Finding the right people for your sales team is critical. Your Human Resources department is usually responsible for locating the best candidates and bringing them on board.
• Training ─ Once you’ve hired the right people, the next step is to properly train them. Several departments may be involved in this process to ensure that the new sales representatives are as well-coached as possible.
• Providing Resources ─ Now it’s time to equip your sales team with the resources they’ll need to do their job well. Your marketing team can also assist with this by providing sales enablement tools including whitepapers, powerpoints and data sheets.
• Assessment ─ Once everyone is trained and armed with the proper sales enablement tools, you should conduct a thorough assessment to see how well the sales enablement team is doing. An evaluation of their day-to-day activities will give you an idea of how well they are performing and what adjustments may need to be made.

To execute an effective sales enablement strategy, you need to implement the right tools and resources. While there are numerous resources that can be of assistance to sales teams, we will cover a few of the most important ones. A few vital sales enablement tools include:

• Whitepapers – Whitepapers serve to describe the purpose behind a new product in great detail. In the case of sales enablement, they can go into detail about your target audience and their specific pain points and concerns. Whitepapers provide your sales teams with details about how to address possible issues or consumer complaints. Your sales team should be able to smooth over problems by familiarizing themselves with whitepapers.
• Videos – Videos can go a long way in helping your sales team learn more about customer interactions. Training videos are quite effective because they tend to excite the viewer. Your sales team will likely be more receptive to and engaged with information presented via video.
• PowerPoint Presentations – Slide decks created through PowerPoint can be an effective sales enablement tool because they can help your team create customized presentations that can relay specific messages your company wants to send.
• Datasheets – These differ from whitepapers because they include product information listed in a more summarized way. Your sales representatives can easily find your products’ features and benefits listed so that they can quickly differentiate your brand from competitors. This will make your sales reps seem like experts on the topic at hand, which can increase brand trust.
• Sales Enablement Software – Of course, you can always find sales enablement software to help automate tools and resources that your sales team needs. If you are looking for a digital automation company to help with sales enablement, you should look for one that offers a sales enablement platform that can keep everything organized for easy access.

SharpSpring, Inc. is a full marketing automation company that can provide your business with the tools it needs to develop a powerful sales enablement strategy. For more information or to request a demo, visit our website today.