Sales enablement is more than just a buzzword. When effectively crafted and leveraged, sales enablement materials can elevate your sales team’s performance, significantly increasing their deal-closing rate.
But what is sales enablement? Isn’t it just another fancy name for marketing items? And how does sales enablement empower your salespeople to close more leads? Find out the answer along with some expert tips on using sales enablement together with a sales CRM solution to hit your sales goals.
What Is Sales Enablement?
Sales enablement is a collection of resources designed to empower your sales team. This typically includes marketing materials, product knowledge, and sales tools (like sales CRM software), all curated by various departments within your organization.
It’s about giving your salespeople the right resources at the right time. When they have everything at their fingertips, they are empowered to close more deals faster and with greater results.
Pro tip: Check out our FREE CRM guide collection. We have a wide selection of sales guides, cheatsheets, and email templates to help you improve your selling games.
How Sales Enablement Is Different From Marketing
Although there’s some overlap, sales enablement and marketing serve differently.
Marketing’s content guides potential customers through the buyer’s journey, persuading them of your product’s value.
On the other hand, sales enablement emphasizes how to use that marketing content effectively. It equips salespeople with the tools, training, and resources to find and utilize the right content during customer interactions. This allows them to laser-focus on selling and closing deals instead of being busy searching for materials.
In short, marketing attracts potential customers, while sales enablement arms your team to convert that interest into sales. They work together to drive revenue.
Why Do You Need Sales Enablement?
Your sales team is your business’s frontline. They engage potential customers, explain your offerings, and showcase how they solve problems. During these crucial interactions, prospects will inevitably have questions.
For instance, your sales reps meet a potential client interested in your manufactured products. They inquire about your production process, but your reps stumble on the answer. This hesitation raises doubts about your team’s competence and ability to handle their request, potentially leading them to choose a competitor.
This is where sales enablement steps in. By equipping your salespeople with in-depth knowledge about your products, processes, and customer needs, they can confidently answer questions and address concerns. They become trusted advisors, convincing prospects that your company is the ideal solution.
Sales enablement doesn’t just prevent missed opportunities; it fosters smoother interactions, builds trust, and ultimately, closes deals faster.
5 Tips on How to Leverage Sales Enablement to Close More Deals
1. Gather All the Essential Information
Your CRM data is a great source for deciding what information should be included in your sales enablement. Start by looking at your communication history with prospects and list their questions and concerns. Next, decide who can help you answer them. This typically involves your marketing, customer service, finance/accounting, and product teams. More about this topic in the next sections.
2. Update Your Sales Content
When was the last time you refreshed your sales materials? Keeping them relevant to your products or services, the company’s goals, and the evolving industry landscape is key to ensuring your sales reps can answer prospect questions and make your sales pitch relatable to their conditions.
3. Make Them Accessible for Anyone, Anytime
Keep your sales enablement data on cloud storage and optimize the document sizes. This allows your sales team to easily grab and share them with potential customers whenever they are, even when communicating via phone. We recommend storing it on your CRM system for easy access and edits.
4. Run Regular Training
Your products and services are continuously updated, so why should your salespeople only receive one-time training? Schedule regular workshops or discussion sessions to keep your salespeople updated on every aspect of your business.
5. Improve the Material
Your first sales enablement material won’t be perfect. It needs constant refinement to make it a powerful one. Keep a running list of how it accelerates and slows down the sales process, and use this valuable information to create a better version of it.
What Makes an Effective Sales Enablement
A powerful sales enablement consists of the following factors.
Sales Training
Your sales training should include both internal and external data. It should give your sales team the A to Z information they need to produce expected results. This includes data on customers, prospecting, selling, and general information.
Sales Tools
One supportive sales tool for sales enablement is a CRM solution. It empowers your sales reps to:
Record all communication with prospects
Conduct accurate lead scoring as well as qualifying or disqualifying leads. This guide will teach you how to measure lead quality properly.
Automation and integrations for a seamless work ecosystem (e.g., lead generation with ZoomInfo and accounting work with QuickBooks)
Sales Process
What should a top performer’s day look like? How many customers do top performers talk to each day? How often do top performers follow up? Which customers are qualified candidates? How many deals do top performers close per day? Asking these questions is the first step to creating a systematic and repeatable workflow to optimize performance.
Hiring Salespeople
What are the attributes of the top 10% of sales professionals in your industry? Where do you find these professionals? What can you do to attract their attention? What’s your company’s compensation philosophy (e.g., salaries at your company lead, match, or lag the market)? You attract what you are; A-players attract more A-players, and vice versa.
Product Development
Does your sales team collect customer feedback regularly? Customer feedback is powerful because it gives you the leverage to convince managers and executives. The more feedback you have, the more persuasive your case is.
Who’s Responsible for Sales Enablement?
Many experts say sales enablement is a sales and marketing issue. The reality is that it’s not just up to your sales and marketing departments. Success requires a variety of teams.
Customer service: Support teams communicate with customers on the backend; they know (a.) why customers leave, (b.) what their biggest complaints are, and (c.) where to find the failure points in your products and services.
Marketing: They attract attention, create visibility, and generate conversions. Your marketing team can create a list of your best-performing content and campaigns (via analytics). They have detailed information on your customers, including demographics, psychographics, ethnographics, etc.
Sales: Your sales team sees customers on the front end. This means you have in-depth knowledge of your customer’s desires, goals, fears, and frustrations. You also have an in-depth understanding of customer objections, risks, and expectations.
Product management: Are your products and services demonstrably better or worse than those of your competitors? It’s a difficult thing for many organizations to be honest about. It’s easier for sales teams to face facts; it’s not so easy for product managers or service professionals. One perspective matters above all – your customers.
Accounting: You’ll want to contact the accounting team for specific financial data. Which products generate the greatest profit margins, the largest sales commissions, and the most revenue? Which products or services are viewed as important vanity purchases that management wants to push? You must make a list of the metrics and KPIs that are relevant to sales.
Powerful Sales Enablement Helps You Close More Deals
Sales enablement gives your organization the people, process, training, and tools you need to create rainmakers on demand. It’s a straightforward process, but it requires investment. With the right approach and a clear focus, you’ll discover high-performing sales reps are easy to find.
Give your salespeople the sales enablement tool they need to win more deals faster: Pipeline CRM. Customize the sales pipeline stages to match your sales team’s languages, and store all important documents in our unlimited file storage. Leverage our sleek mobile app to easily access sales enablement anywhere, anytime.
Try Pipeline CRM for FREE for 14 days! Sign up here.
