To succeed in today’s competitive business arena, your sales team needs the resources, tools and knowledge it takes to close more deals, achieve sales goals and boost the organization’s bottom line. Left to manage on their own, without this support, even the most productive sales reps may not be able to meet or exceed their sales quotas.
This uphill battle becomes more difficult as reps miss out on opportunities, grapple with inefficient workflows and scramble to find centralized resources to work with. This is where sales enablement tools step in and help team members more effectively engage with prospects, close deals and win customer trust, loyalty and repeat business. These tools take over where enterprise resource planning (ERP) platforms leave off, and work in harmony with enterprise systems to help reps convert prospects into customers.
“Today's sales professionals face a competitive environment and changing landscape in how buyers make purchasing decisions,” Swing Education’s Griffin LaFleur writes in TechTarget. “The internet provides buyers a venue to self-navigate the sales process, where potential customers research solutions to their problems, find vendor websites and do their initial information gathering.”
Some of the tools that help sales professionals truly shine include customer relationship management (CRM) platforms, sales automation solutions and content management systems that incorporate everything from sales collateral to product brochures to customer case studies. These and other enablement tools also help sales representatives quickly qualify prospects, decrease time to lead interaction and decrease time to close. For companies, these “wins” translate into higher revenues, shorter sales cycles and more efficient forecasting.
2. Content management. Sales content management systems give reps a single source of information to work with when developing presentations, bids and other customer-facing assets. Whether a rep is looking for a white paper to share with an engineer, a data sheet to send to a buyer or a customer case study within a specific industry, they can find what they need in the content management system. This is far more efficient than having to call or email the marketing department—or do random searches online in hopes of finding what they need—every time a need arises. These systems also incorporate analytics and CRM data to help marketing teams develop content that really hits home with the intended audience.
3. Digital asset management (DAM). Sales reps can use DAM systems to deliver the right content to the right user and track engagement with that content. Modern DAMs extend insight and functionality to sales agents. Using tags, artificial intelligence (AI) recommendations and tracking functionality, for example, sales representatives can deliver content that’s relevant to a buyer, TechTarget points out. Then, they can use those assets to track engagement right through to the sale.
4. Email automation. For every $1 spent on email marketing, the return on investment (ROI) is $36. Knowing this, most companies sent out 2-3 emails a day to the 4 billion people who use email daily. Managing this high-value sales and marketing activity takes a robust email automation system that automates workflows, triggers actions based on specific events and nurtures sales leads from start to finish. This allows sales reps to put repetitive tasks on autopilot, develop more tailored email content and come up with more targeted communications for specific prospects. Reps can track emails as they are opened and read, and then tailor their follow-up strategies accordingly.
5. Performance tracking and reporting. Sales managers need solid data that they can use to make strategic decisions for their organizations. If that data is stashed away in a spreadsheet on someone’s desktop, it’s of no use to that sales manager. Using performance tracking and reporting, sales managers can track key metrics like win rates, deal size and individual sales rep performance to identify potential areas of improvement. With AI, these sales enablement tools help managers and reps generate reports faster than ever and ensure that the team is on track and hitting its targets.
6. Appointment scheduling. This may seem like an obvious one, but allowing prospects to carve out time on your reps’ calendars without having to go back and forth via email to set up appointments is a powerful sales enablement tool. Look for a platform that offers a one-on-one custom scheduling page that reps can share with prospects and add to their email signatures. The scheduler should also integrate directly with your CRM, which means reps can schedule meetings with qualified leads right from that customer’s contact record (i.e., so that there’s no need to manually copy email addresses and/or try to align calendars).
With 80% of your company’s revenues coming from 20% of your customers, it pays to equip your sales reps with the tools they need to both attract new prospects and sell deeper into your existing customer base. “Sales enablement is about giving your sales team the tools and resources they need to have better conversations with their prospects,” Supernormal points out. “In other words, you’re enabling them to do their jobs better.”
By giving your sales reps the materials, tools and resources they need to convert leads, they'll close more deals and drive higher revenues for your business. When integrated with your core business system, the six sales enablement tools outlined in this article will help your sales staff access relevant information and data when they need it, collaborate and speed up deals.
Continue reading about the powers of Sales Enablement here.