Tag: Sales Tools

Sales Enablement – Everything You Need to Know

Sales Enablement in simple terms is any technology, process, or software that helps the sales team increase their efficiency. This may vary from giving your sales team the right information to move the sales acceleration forward, tools to handle their leads better, tools that help the sales team reach the prospects in a better way, or even the tools that help in sales training. If you have been following the stock and crypto markets lately, you know that something unprecedented has been working its charm. Nobody in their right mind would have predicted that a global shutdown in the 21st Century would ignite an investment frenzy that would put the Tulip mania of 1637 to shame. Total global equity traded in 2020 alone stood a whopping $137.64 Trillion, a steep 54.8% rise when compared to 2019 (according to Statista). So what made investors jump onto the money wagon? It takes a keen eye to understand all the factors that contributed to this bullish growth: The pandemic caused massive behavioral changes due to lockdown and free time. People were spending way less due to no social life and saving more. Relief packages from governments left them with some extra cash. The proliferation of digital apps and devices has made trading child’s play Growth in support ecosystems, such as digital banking and online media, has contributed to superior accessibility. In other words, it takes an entire ecosystem working in tandem for any major market movement to flourish and sustain, a prerequisite that Key Account Managers should aim for in the context of Sales Enablement. There is no denying that if you create the right ecosystem for your sales reps to succeed, they will naturally close more deals and drive higher revenues. But where do you begin? How do you find the right sales tools that foster sales enablement to the point that you can have a revenue squeeze of your own? Today’s blog aims to answer all this, and more. What is Sales Enablement? Sales Enablement is a framework that provides the sales team of the business with the necessary tools and resources that they require to close more deals and, in turn, drive more revenue. Let’s start with the basics and understand what it is about and the importance of Sales Enablement. The tools and assets that are leveraged can include knowledge, key information, content, and anything and everything that makes the sales process more optimized and geared for better conversions. It is a great practice for Sales Enablement to be owned by both Sales and Marketing teams as a function. While the marketing team often contributes with collaterals such as blogs and product guides, sales teams leverage them to the maximum by driving more contextual conversations with prospects. What is Sales Enablement Strategy? A Sales Enablement Strategy is aimed at helping sales reps to add more value at every customer touchpoint by defining a framework through which they can acquire all the necessary resources they need to effectively sell. In practice, it defines and lays down the entire path of reaching the target sales figures with the best change management and process adoption strategies. 5 Ways to Track and Measure your Sales Enablement Efforts If you look at the Sales top down, you will see that things are pretty measurable. As you travel down the funnel, things don’t seem so clear. We talk about increasing the sales pipeline, about white space opportunities, traffic, leads, warm, hot, cold but once we get to those numbers, no one can tell how to prioritize the projects on hand. This is the Sales Enablement Measurement conundrum. Organizations are uncertain about how to measure sales enablement efforts. How do we measure the alignment between marketing and sales? We have tried to resolve your conundrum here to some extent, using both, qualitative and quantitative methods of measurement. These are at best taken as indicators but will help your sales enablement efforts stay on track. 1. Track the lead-to-deal rate or lead-to-conversion rate ‍The Sales Enablement team should be more focused on the bottom end of the sales funnel. This means tracking the lead to conversion rate. This is what will indicate the impact of your sales enablement strategies. Although not entirely, because the conversion rate depends on the number and quality of the leads. Besides this, this can be a good measurement index that also helps to identify trends over a period. Ask yourself the question “Will this project help me close more deals?” If the answer is “yes”, put it on priority. The others can be taken up later or delegated. 2. Measure win/loss rates against key competitors ‍Sales is a race to the finishing line for every lead to be cracked. Your sales team needs your help and support all the time as they face the toughest of competitors. Monitoring your wins and failures and comparing them with your competitors’ wins and losses, will help you identify the gaps and fill that in. It will help you even further to know where you need to put your energy. Your CRM system will help you with this metric. 3. Amplify your content so that it influences a decision to buy ‍Content is a universal weapon in the sales arsenal; right from the top end of the funnel to the bottom end. Supply your sales team with the right documents and decks but also, leverage the online medium to publish content through visual media. Then monitor it to see which one is more influential as the buyer is in the last stages of his buying decision. Scaling up online with content is good as you can measure the results of what works and what doesn’t. A good CMS and an analytics tool will help you in this task. This will be a perfect time to go for a sales enablement tool. Also, keep a track of and measure your content production – how many pieces of videos, infographics, newsletters, blogs, etc. produced in what month.