There’s always a hot buzzword in marketing and the term ‘Sales Enablement’ has been for some time now. So, What is Sales Enablement?
Let’s look at what leading analyst firms have to say about Sales Enablement:
Gartner defines Sales Enablement as – “The activities, systems, processes and information that support and promote knowledge-based sales interactions with client and prospects”
CSO Insights defines Sale Enablement as “A strategic, cross-functional discipline designed to increase sales results and productivity by providing integrated content, training, and coaching services for salespeople and frontline sales managers along the entire customer’s journey powered by technology.
SiriusDecisions definition for Sale Enablement is as follows- “Sales enablement’s goal is to ensure that every seller has the required knowledge, skills, processes, and behaviors to optimize every interaction with buyers.”
Finally, the Inbound marketing firm – HubSpot says: “Sales enablement is the iterative process of providing your business’s sales team with the resources they need to close more deals. These resources may include content, tools, knowledge, and information to effectively sell your product or service to customers.”
From the above definitions, Sales enablement can mean different thing to different organizations and to put it in simple words ‘Sales enablement helps sales teams win by removing obstacles and delivering valuable resources’.
When we say removing obstacles, below few common obstacles sales reps face!
- Missing or incomplete demographic data on a prospect
- Lack of clear direction in the sales cycle
- Unqualified leads making it too far down the sales funnel
- Misalignment between marketing strategy and sales strategy
- Disorganized repositories for internal and external sales content like case studies, webinars, etc.
These obstacles waste the time and efforts of sales reps and prevent them from doing actual sales. This in turn results in companies to suffer from
- Conversion rates have plateaued or declined
- Inconsistent sales scripts and service
- Ineffective sales process/funnel
- Failure to meet quotas
- Inability to accurately track performance and analytics
The need of the hour for companies with the above signs is Sales Enablement!
Are you Sales ‘Enabled’?
Depending on the specific organization and its implementation framework, Sales Enablement may have different sets of functions. The goal in Sales Enablement is to align the intersecting elements of sales, marketing, customer care, product/brand management, and human resources to improve seller productivity and enhance the buyer experience. Sales Enablement empowers the Company and Sales teams with
- Optimization of technology resources such as CRMs (sales orchestration)
- Content development (sales communication)
- Talent management (onboarding, performance analysis, enablement, and coaching)
- Customer happiness (buyer journey optimization)
- On-going process efficiencies (sales collaboration)
In a sense, Sales Enablement focuses on the seller-buyer dynamic and the tools, different systems, methodologies, and processes that enhance engagement. It optimizes value for both buyer and seller over time which is usually expressed in terms of ROI.
We at VAST Tec strive to help companies achieve a lot of the above goals with our dedicated team of professionals who are helping the client with –
- Data Enrichment
- Prospecting
- Filtering out noise/unqualified leads
- Lead Qualification
This has resulted in a notable increase in lead conversion at an attractive ROI to the clients.
To conclude, the most constant function of Sales Enablement is to help fine-tune an organization’s sales process so that it aligns perfectly with the journey of its prospects and customers. Once perfect alignment has been reached, prospects and customers become more emotionally invested in a brand (company, sales team, and product). Thus, win rates, repeat business, referrals, sales cycles, and customer success improve significantly.
Is your Company Sales ‘Enabled’?