5 Sales Enablement Best Practices

Sales enablement is essential for the success of your sales teams. Keep reading to learn more about the top five sales enablement best practices and how you can implement them in your organization to boost revenue and improve efficiency.

What is Sales Enablement?

Sales enablement refers to the process of sharing tools and resources with your sales representatives to allow them to close more business. For example, your sales enablement team may create content or develop tools and knowledge resources to increase the effectiveness of their sales efforts.

The strategy behind this depends on the specific needs of your sales team and target audience. Sales enablement requires the marketing and sales teams to work together since they impact your overall sales.

The Benefits of Sales Enablement

So, why is sales enablement valuable? The key is to allow your sales representatives to create a more effective process and achieve better results. This strategy involves coaching, training, and developing content that will enable them to be successful — which, when done correctly, will boost the success of your organization as a whole.

Similarly, a sales enablement strategy can enhance the performance of your sales team. For instance, establishing formal processes can eliminate the trial and error most employees go through. It provides a learning curriculum that helps them understand best practices right away and ensures that each representative has the skills they need to deliver consistent results. Here are the top 5 sales enablement practices:

1. Optimize your Technological Resources

The first thing your organization must do is optimize the use of technology you have available. This includes everything from your CRM system and chatbots to collaborative communication and all-in-one sales enablement tools.

Use a CRM

Your CRM system should be the center point of everything your sales team is doing. It should track your sales pipeline and include information like which activities you completed and where you stand concerning achieving your goals.

Every employee should manage and update the status of their sales within your CRM system, and this should be the single source of information for your business. All sales representatives should be saving contacts and noting conversations in this tool as well!

Chatbots

Chatbots are a great tool to help you engage with potential customers and personalized conversations. Ensure that the bot uses natural language and seems casual since this will help you connect with your customers on a deeper level.

Collaborative Communication

Sales efforts involve many different departments working together to meet the needs of your customer. Eliminating silos and communication barriers can enhance your ability to close deals, so make use of technology that encourages collaborative communication and makes it easy for different groups to share information.

All-in-One Sales Enablement Tools

All-in-one sales enablement tools can help automate some of these processes. They provide real-time visibility into how teams are performing and integrate easily with your CRM system. This integration will allow you to track sales behaviors that can allow you to gain insights into what is working for your sales representatives.

Consider investing in tools like LevelEleven that make this simple!

2. Content Development

A valuable best practice for sales enablement is developing content for various stages of the sales process. You should also develop case studies, share your successes, and create templates to make processes more efficient.

Create Content Throughout the Customer Journey

You should have tailored content accessible throughout the entire customer journey so that your sales representatives can overcome objections, educate prospects, and boost their credibility.

Each step in the sales process has hurdles that you must overcome, so confirm that the content you provided each step relates to that. Consider things like testimonials, product demonstrations, and other conversation starters that help your sales team succeed.

Case Studies

Case studies are an effective way to advocate for your brand. It can show prospective customers how your products and services help them overcome challenges and highlight specific customer successes.

Create Templates

The content you create for your sales team should include templates that they can use to save time when writing communication to potential clients. It should eliminate a lot of busywork while still allowing them to personalize their messages based on the individual.

3. Talent Management

Managing the talent you hire to drive revenue for your business is another crucial aspect of sales enablement. Conduct performance analysis to reduce the time they spend on non-sales activities and invest in the proper training.

Reduce Time Spent on Non-Sales Activities

According to Forbes, sales representatives spend almost 65% of their time on activities that do not generate revenue. Your sales enablement team should find ways to partner with these employees to eliminate the burden of administrative tasks that take away from their time making sales.

Incorporate this into your onboarding and training practices so that your sales team knows what they should be focusing on.

Training

Training should be a top priority for your sales enablement team because you want the entire sales force following the same methodology and strategy. Your sales reps should know how to use the technology they have available to make their jobs more efficient and facilitate the sales cycle.

4. Enhance the Buyer Journey

The buyer journey is one of the most important things to understand when you are in sales. If your customers are not happy, you will not be able to make a sale, so conduct interviews and run NPS surveys to measure their satisfaction.

Conduct Interviews

Interview your sales reps and take advantage of the knowledge they have as subject matter experts. Use the insights you gain to create content and publish it on your website so that potential customers have access to a wealth of knowledge on your company blog.

Run NPS Surveys

The Net Promoter Score is a great way to quantify how likely your customers recommend your products or services to someone else. These results can loosely translate into their overall satisfaction with your brand, as well as company loyalty.

5. Collaboration is an Ongoing Process

It is necessary to remember that collaboration is an ongoing process, so you need to incentivize teamwork and sharing of best practices and standardize reporting, so everyone is on the same page.

Incentivize Cross-Team Communication

Aligning your internal organization can be complicated, but if you can manage this, you are on your way to maximizing your sales enablement strategy. The sales funnel involves various departments along the way, and these groups should share insights to manage leads and improve the customer experience.

Encourage Sharing of Best Practices

Your employee should also be sharing best practices, and as an organization, you should be encouraging this. Reward the employees who are willing to share what has worked for them with the rest of the team and carve out dedicated times to exchange this information.

Standardize Reporting

Creating standardized reporting will help you ensure that all of your sales representatives follow the same process — the ones that work. Have your sales enablement team create activity logs, lead trackers, and performance reports that the entire sales organization can use.

This will allow you to compare what is working and what is not in the same context across the sales Department.

Originally published at https://www.knight.capital on February 25, 2021.