What Is Sales Enablement?

The modern seller’s world is driven by data. But a constant stream of information can overwhelm sales reps and hurt productivity. Sales enablement professionals create systems to make data a true asset. Here are some ways of doing this:

1. Standardize Reporting

The most immediate way to derive valuable insights from business data is to agree on a set of standardized sales reports. Reporting needs vary from company to company but common reports include:

• Activities logged by salespeople
• Product demos delivered
• Deals won and lost
• Leads generated / worked

Sales leadership often has a high-level understanding of what reports are relevant to a business. However, they might lack the technical ability to create these reports. Sales enablement professionals can bridge this gap.

2. Review Sales Process

Often, company reports will highlight points of disconnect in the sales process that leadership should address. For example, if the sales team books a significant amount of demos every month, but few result in closed customers, the company should investigate its demo process.

A sales process audit is an in-depth, data-backed analysis of a company’s sales process to discover areas where sales performance could be improved. Many external sales enablement consultants begin service contracts with a sales process audit.

3. Qualify Leads

Modern salespeople are often overwhelmed by information regarding people who are actually a poor fit for their business. This is why qualifying leads is such a valuable use of time for reps. 

Sales enablement professionals implement lead scoring systems that assign positive or negative weight to contacts and companies based on data indicating how ideal of a fit a given lead is. Local businesses with limited geographic reach, for example, will negatively weight contacts that live in a different country. Similarly, a company that sells only to small businesses will assign positive weight to a company with 10-20 employees.

Businesses using a customer relationship management software (CRM) can surface good fit companies and leads to reps the minute they convert on your website. Less qualified prospects are moved to a CRM queue that salespeople can work on their own time.

Contrary to common assumptions, marketers are not the only people producing content. In fact, at some companies, sales produces just as much content as marketing. And, although every minute a rep spends creating content is a minute they're not selling, personalized content is exceptionally important to move leads through the buyer’s journey. Let's take a look at a few ways to optimize your sales content to ensure it's effective yet doesn't take too much time away from selling. 

1. Organize Sales Content

Conducting a full content audit is critical to the success of any sales enablement strategy. Many companies already have high-quality sales content on their website. So, by centralizing all existing sales content in one location, you'll ensure your reps can find these resources to share with leads quickly.

Examples of sales content that should be audited and organized include:

• Customer case studies
• Whitepapers and ebooks
• Product demo decks
• Pricing and discount information
• Competitive intelligence briefs

Content libraries can be hosted using tools such as Google Docs, an internal wiki, or a CRM, among other places. And remember while auditing and organizing your content: Times change and content that was once relevant to your target audience in recent years may not perform as well today. So, keep this document library up to date to enable your sales team to succeed.

2. Create Case Studies

Case studies are the most critical content in a sales team’s document library. Nothing speaks as strongly for a business as a previous customer’s success, whether these stories are about sales, marketing, or any other topic related to your business and the product or service you sell. 

In fact, within six months of launching a new product, your business should aim to have at least one case study highlighting the product and the challenges it resolves for your target audience. If your business is using a CRM, you can track usage of your new products to quickly identify potential case study customers.

Note: Using videos in your case studies is a highly effective way to reach your audience. Four times as many buyers prefer video to written content — however, it's no secret that producing high-quality video case studies takes time. For this reason, many companies find it helpful to outsource case study production to marketing agencies, while still acting as the liaison to featured customers.

Ten years ago, sales was a heavily manual business. However, this is not the modern seller’s reality. Many processes that used to be entirely manual can now be automated for sales reps, enabling them to sell better and faster. Here are some examples of ways you can use technology and automation to positively impact your sales enablement process: 

1. Create Email Sequences

Sales enablement professionals, reps, and other team members can craft follow up email sequences which automatically trigger if a prospect hasn't responded to their rep within a set amount of time. Your team can use personalization tokens for contact and company details in email sequences tailors the message to the specific prospect.

Remember: Your reps are likely sending dozens of follow-up emails per day. So, automating the follow-up process with set-it-and-forget-it sequences will save them hours of unnecessary work.

2. Automate Prospecting

Automated prospecting is a set of emails sent in a salesperson’s name that include direct links to their calendar. Prospects who are ready to buy can schedule a conversation with the rep using the calendar link. This will allow reps to simply open their calendars every day to find multiple meetings with qualified buyers already there saving them hours of prospecting time.

3. Implement Direct Messaging

There's no better time to chat with a prospect than when they're already on your website. Setting up live chat on your website allows reps the opportunity to engage with and close interested contacts in real time. However, to avoid wasting reps’ time with bad fit contacts, sales enablement team members can use filtering criteria to ensure live chat boxes are only surfaced to high-quality leads.

To assist with this automation, and to keep all of your sales enablement materials and work organized, you can invest in sales enablement software (which we'll talk about next).