Maybe you’ve heard the term sales enablement bandied around but aren’t quite sure what it means. Maybe you get the basic concept but aren’t sure how to apply it to your business. Maybe you’ve ended up here by accident, but you’ve got a business, and you’re always looking to improve sales, so you’re going to stick around.
Understanding the Importance of Sales Enablement
The following will break down the idea of sales enablement and what it means to use it within your business. Of course, every industry is slightly different, so the data inputs and other factors might be slightly varied.
What Is Sales Enablement?
In a broad sense, sales enablement is exactly what it sounds like: it’s a methodology that allows for more sales. In practice, it’s much more intricate. The basis of sales enablement involves giving people what they need in order to make sales. Given the additional safety concerns associated with the coronavirus pandemic, members of your salesforce need support and enablement more than ever.
How Does It Work?
Sales enablement is an overall strategy that starts with collecting data. The more information you have on the current situation, on what’s working, on what’s not working, on what is changing, on what customers are asking for compared to what they used to want, the more accurate your first strategy is going to be.
With all the data laid out before you, it should be easier to see when and where you’re falling short. Where are you losing the most customers? At what point in your pipeline do your leads tend to run cold? Are certain times of day or days of the week more effective? Are there certain questions all your customers are asking that don’t have good answers?
One Tweak At A Time
Identify one area of improvement and address it at a time. This might feel contrary to your instinct (especially if your sales audit described above revealed several problems that need to be tackled), but making a single change at a time ensures you know which tweak is bringing which results. you might not notice the sales you’re losing as your overall revenue is increased.
Train Teams For Flexibility
As you begin to enact your sales enablement strategy, you need sales team members that are able to adjust to the new tweaks. A part of your training program for fast-growing teams should include the emphasis on continual improvement, on things developing over time, and present your staff with methods to help them incorporate new techniques and processes whenever they’re required.
There should also be a clear pipeline for sales team members who want to be able to present ideas or pain points to your sales enablement team.
Have Team Members Practice
Whenever you’re changing up how things are done, you can bet that people are going to better implement the new tactics if they’ve had time to practice. It’s crucial that you make the training rounds harder than real-life sales (not easier) and that you practice the full sales cycle, not only that first call or point of contact.
It’s also vital that there’s no favouritism at this stage of the game. You want your top performers practising just as much as you want your newer employees—everyone has room for improvement, right?
Revisiting And Readjust
Of course, all strategies need to be tweaked on a regular basis in order to maintain growth and sales; the world and your clients within it are always changing. Keep detailed records of your changes and growth and continue to look for areas where improvement could be made. You’ll likely want to do an audit of your growth and progress every season, if not more often than that.
The above exploration of sales enablement is only the tip of the iceberg. Once you set off on a sales enablement journey, you’ll find the sky’s the limit—there will always be areas where your sales funnel, tactics, approaches, or systems could be improved. This being said, once you see how effective it is to gain a bird’s eye view of the sales data and continually ask yourself how you can make it easier on your sales team to sell, you’ll be shocked by how fast you can grow. Don’t forget to celebrate your wins!