A well-defined sales enablement strategy is essential to generating revenue and closing more deals. Your marketing and sales team need to be working in tandem to ensure a cohesive approach and consistent experience for your prospects.
A marketer’s job doesn’t end when a salesperson takes over. As prospects move deeper down the funnel, marketing’s role shifts toward nurturing leads and supporting the efforts of the salesperson. Beyond that, is your sales team walking the talk of your marketing team?
By ensuring your marketing and sales teams are aligned and enabling each other, there are three primary ways sales enablement can boost your win rates and prepare you to address the needs and challenges of your prospects.
Through Content
One of the most fundamental aspects of sales enablement is content creation. It can happen on an ad-hoc basis when a salesperson connects with the marketing team to determine what content exists to support their deal or can come as a cue to create something for future efforts.
Regular meetings and coordination between your marketing and sales teams can identify content gaps in your messaging strategy. Does your content preach the same message that sales is driving on calls with prospects?
If your content and your sales pitch are communicating the same message, you are more likely to build trust with your prospects. Alignment in these areas helps show that your brand is an expert in the field that can help address their needs.
Alternatively, if you have an e-book that dissuades leads from tactics that your sales team is recommending to them further down the funnel, your sales team can struggle to build credibility.
In addition to messaging, sales enablement through content also comes into play during the sales process. Is your sales team able to easily source existing content? Are there opportunities for teams to connect on what’s being produced or promoted?
The more time invested in these areas means less time spent by the sales team searching for content or the marketing team creating assets on an ad-hoc basis. Ensuring both teams aren’t scrambling to fill needs enables both teams to focus on strategic, high-value tasks.
Through Operations
The impact that improved operations can have by lightening workloads, streamlining communication and scoring leads also serves as sales enablement and enables your team’s success.
Ultimately, if any salesperson or marketer is overwhelmed, they’re not going to deliver the best experience or put the best message forward. Instead, they trend toward cookie-cutter approaches that while efficient, don’t drive up win rates.
Operational enablement can be as simple as a well-organized contact database or a comprehensive tech stack that enables salespeople to easily find and follow up with contacts.
Still, there are more advanced internal efficiencies that can be developed to greater enable your sales team. For example, marketers can use lead scoring to set up notifications that alert salespeople to hot leads who have engaged with certain content.
Enabling your sales team through internal operations helps them find efficiencies and takes menial tasks off their plate so they can spend more and more time doing what they do best — selling. With more time to sell, they can offer more curated, personalized experiences to prospects and improve their chances of closing.
Through Internal Efforts
While marketing and sales alignment is an important aspect of sales enablement, there can also be significant work done within the sales team itself, beginning with training and onboarding.
Offering the right resources and training materials to new members of your team is essential to setting them up for success. Having enablement operations and processes established with your marketing team means nothing if your sales team doesn’t know how to leverage those resources.
By incorporating these elements into your onboarding process, new team members will be prepared to hit the ground running with access to every tool in their belt rather than scrambling to understand how and why your organization positions certain products and services.
Continuous education and internal enablement also play a factor in improving your win rate. Are your sales reps sharing big wins or playbooks with one another? Are they working together to dissect what went wrong on a particular deal?
Through constant communication and review of successes and shortcomings, your salespeople can enable one another to constantly improve their win rate in the future.
Takeaway
While successful sales enablement is often defined by the relationship between your marketing and sales team, there is a lot you can do within each team to better enable one another for success.
With a comprehensive sales enablement strategy, both teams can spend more time focusing on what they do best, attracting more leads and closing more deals.
