Become an Expert on Sales Enablement Strategy

Within a market increasingly competitive looking for consumer attention, it is not enough to offer a better quality product or the best price.

To get people interested in your business and, as a consequence, sell more, it is essential to create a sales enablement strategy.

After all, with so many resources and tools available in the market, it is necessary to take advantage of each one of them to meet the goals and demands of your business.

The main objective of developing a strategy is to prepare the sales team, in order to create the most favorable scenario for conversion.

However, do you know what it takes to create an efficient sales enablement strategy for your business success and what skills are needed to play a productive role in that process?

Keep on reading to get all your own on the subject and boost your sales performance!

    What is sales enablement and what are its benefits?

    Before we show you how to apply a sales enablement strategy, it is essential to understand what it means.

    In practice, it’s a collaborative planning that involves different areas of the company to create content and materials that facilitate the work of the salesperson.

    In a widely contested market, consumers increasingly value a positive experience in every single contact with companies.

    Therefore, the objective of applying a sales enablement strategy is to facilitate and bring closer together the relationship between the two parties, empowering the sales potential of the team.

    The main benefit of this strategy is to increase the effectiveness of your company’s actions. The idea is that the salesperson has as much information as possible about the lead, because of the integration between the Sales and Marketing teams.

    The alliance between the two areas tends to generate more useful information for your company.

    It aims to avoid wasting time and resources on useless content, which, according to a SiriusDecisions survey, represents 60% of what is produced by companies.

    Thus, you can offer content that is relevant to the consumer and, in addition to the lead generation work, facilitate your team’s negotiations.

    What must a sales enablement professional bear in mind?

    The sales enablement professionals need to keep in mind their main challenges and tasks. The first of these is to create content that is relevant to the audience and that can be used by the salesperson.

    In addition, it is also up to them to prepare the professionals involved in the process to use the solutions correctly.

    Regarding the tools, they are essential to the efficient sales enablement work, as they will allow your team to get more practical information about the consumer.

    It’s also the job of this professional to find and use strategies that increase the chances of doing new businesses, such as cross-selling.

    What skills are needed to succeed in this job?

    Some characteristics are fundamental for the professional who assumes this position, so he must be trained to improve the performance of the sales team.

    Therefore, we will present the five most essential skills for those who want to succeed in this position. Check them out!

    Be a good communicator

    Communication is fundamental for the professional responsible for implementing a sales enablement strategy to be successful. After all, he needs to deal with numerous professionals and make the connection between different sectors of the company.

    Communication, therefore, must be as transparent as possible to ensure that everyone understands their roles.

    Develop organizational skills

    Another critical point is the organization, since professionals will have this kind of demand in their work routine. It is necessary to organize all the required functions, so the sectors work in an integrated way, avoiding rework and planning errors that harm the whole strategy.

    Be data-driven thinker

    It is essential to rely on technology and the enormous amount of information generated by a company.

    Therefore, a necessary skill to succeed in the function is to be data-driven, that is, to use data to take more precise and efficient decisions, always based on detailed studies and analysis.

    Get along with the team

    Whether onboarding a new member or getting the most out of each salesperson, it’s essential to know how to deal with who is part of your team.

    The professional responsible for implementing the sales enablement strategy needs to manage the professionals well.

    Always look for improvements

    Another important skill is always looking for ways to improve your work. In other words, it involves not being satisfied with the achieved results and always looking for tools, solutions, and ideas that can make the work done even more efficiently and accurately.

    In such a competitive market, this is a very important skill.

    How to create a sales enablement strategy from scratch?

    How can you create and apply an efficient sales enablement strategy within your company? To help you do that, we will present below a step-by-step approach with all the tips and points to look at if you want to start your own strategy from scratch and get more sales.

    Step 1 — Set goals

    The first step in implementing an efficient sales enablement strategy is to determine your objectives with these actions.

    In other words, do an in-depth analysis and find out errors, failures, and difficulties. Then, think about the situations you intend to improve.

    Step 2 — Talk to the sales team

    Next, it’s time to understand the difficulties of the department that will be benefited most from the implementation of this strategy: the sales team.

    Thus, talk to them and identify what you can do to improve the sales approach and, of course, to increase sales. They will give you insights to make your strategy really efficient.

    Step 3 — Understand your audience’s behavior

    Understanding the behavior of your audience is another fundamental point. It involves not only demographic data and information but also what they’re looking for and their main difficulties.

    Thus, find out what can help to get their attention, which will increase the chances of selling.

    Step 4 — Don’t forget the customer journey

    It is also important to set up your sales enablement strategy in synchrony with the customer journey. Analyze the sales funnel and bear in mind your leads’ needs at the moment.

    As a consequence, you will also be able to identify more precisely which contents are the most appropriate.

    Step 5 — Select content

    Now it’s time to determine what content you will use in the sales enablement strategy. What will be efficient at each touchpoint?

    How will the salesperson use this content to further the conversation and increase the prospect’s chances of making a purchase?

    Step 6 — Prepare the team to work

    When the strategy is defined, it is necessary to prepare all professionals to put these actions into practice. Marketing professionals, for example, must create content with a specific objective.

    At the same time, the salespeople need to understand that they should always be analyzing their conversations to identify areas of improvement.

    Step 7 — Take your tools

    The next challenge is to gather all the tools you’ll need to put your sales enablement strategy into action. What resources and solutions can be used to facilitate human work?

    These points need to be carefully evaluated, especially to choose useful tools for your goals.

    Step 8 — Analyze

    Even when the strategy is in place, the work is still far from being finished, since now is the time to regularly monitor the results.

    What difficulties came up? The analysis needs to be constant.

    What formats of content can be used in sales enablement?

    Now that you know what sales enablement strategy is, why it is important and how to implement it, how about checking out some formats of content you could use?

    To inspire you, see some examples that your company can use for different purposes, always aiming for more sales.

    Lead generation

    To enhance lead generation, you can use in blog posts, white papers, and case studies. The goal at this stage is to get the user interested in your company and help them to solve their problems.

    Team support

    As we’ve said, it’s important to prepare your team to handle sales, once only 16% of salespeople say they’re prepared for the job, according to IDC research, which shows you need support.

    To do so, the most appropriate type of content are forms and spreadsheets containing information about competitors’ performance.

    Sales conversion

    When it comes to making sales, the ideal option is to invest in really interesting content. A growing trend is interactive content, which can be produced with the help of tools such as ion interactive.

    It can drive better sales results.

    Creating a sales enablement strategy is essential to boost the performance of your whole team. Since there is so much competition, you need to do everything you can to ensure that users will always have a good experience with your content and, most importantly, that your sales team will be prepared to deal with these solutions.

    Interactive content not only captures the user’s attention but also provides the information the salesperson needs to take a more accurate approach and have better chances of driving conversion.

    So how about getting to know Sell-Side, Ion Interactive’s sales enablement tool?

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    Rod P. Curi Rock author vector
    Strategic Account Manager

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