Build a Sales Enablement Strategy You Can Be Proud Of

When’s the last time you learned a new skill? If you’re like most, probably very recently. Statistics show that learning is at an all-time high during the pandemic. We’re trying new crafts, new recipes, new exercises—not to mention everything we’ve grasped about working remotely.

You probably used a lot of different tactics to learn these new skills: taking a course, watching a video, asking a friend, practicing until you got it right. You probably relied on your phone, laptop, or tablet to find out more and help you improve.

Using today’s technology in the pursuit of learning has become second nature. But only at home. For many of us, the tools we use in our personal lives aren’t available at work. But that’s changing. Modern technology is disrupting sales enablement—for the better.

Empowering Your Team With The Right Strategy

By the year 2020, customers will manage 85% of the buyer’s journey without interacting with a single human being. (Gartner)

Think about that. Even before the pandemic, B2B buyers were spending more time doing their own research before ever sitting down with a seller. Today, when 90% of B2B sales are virtual, many more customers will have looked at your website, read reviews, visited competitors’ sites, and downloaded white papers and eBooks before they speak with your reps for the first time.

It’s more important than ever to support the modern buying experience with modern sales enablement. This means empowering your sales organization with the right tools, content, and information to sell successfully.

It’s not just sharing the latest presentation deck and hoping the sales team will use it. It’s about supporting your sellers with the best assets, the deepest, most up-to-date insights, and the infrastructure to ensure they have the materials they need to succeed, exactly when they need them most.

Modern sales enablement leaders use all the tactics that are available today to support their sellers with a 360-degree process:

• Provide mobile access to content whenever sellers need it.
• Make sure reps understand how and when to use each asset.
• Get qualitative data on usage and quantitative feedback on whether collateral is succeeding.
• Connect sellers, managers, and SMEs with prospects and buyers along the entire sales cycle to nurture and close deals.

If your strategy doesn’t let you do this, you’re using an outdated enablement approach that will eventually hold you back, if it isn’t already. Why not build a sales enablement strategy you can be proud of and one that gets you the results you need in today’s ultra-competitive environment.

The use of sales enablement solutions has grown by 567% over the last three years. (Smart Selling Tools).

Elements of a Modern Approach

If you’re not using today’s innovations, you’re going to be left behind. Modern sales enablement is built on four pillars: learning, content, collaboration, and insight. Here’s how these capabilities work together to form a holistic enablement solution.

Pillar 1: Learning

Today’s sales enablement professionals must provide transformative experiences that encompass foundational training and reinforcement to just-in-time learning at the moment of need. Instead of relying solely on courses and exercises, modern approaches empower reps with learning that bridges the gap from training to behavior change.

Learning In Action > A rep has completed his or her formal training, but needs some critical competitive analysis before a pitch. With a modern sales enablement tool, he or she can pull up the most recent insights from colleagues and get the latest intel to handle objections.

Pillar 2: Content

The ability to create, manage, and track sales and marketing collateral for reps to access and share on any device is the next pillar of modern sales enablement. Equipping sellers with relevant content in context, discoverable at the key moment to move business forward, is essential. Modern approaches also empower enablement managers to activate sales collateral with messaging, talk tracks, and win stories to highlight the best use of the content, and recommend deal-specific content based on sales stage, competitors, and other factors.

Content In Action > Before a prospect meeting, a rep can differentiate herself by recording and sending a personalized video message along with a PDF, explaining why the asset is helpful and increasing the likelihood the prospect will show up to the meeting.

Pillar 3: Collaboration

Modern sales enablement supports rich and engaging collaboration without the hassle of travel or scheduling live meetings. It fosters communication between reps, managers, subject matter experts, and buyers. The best solutions allow peers, experts and coaches to exchange and develop strategies and best practices to drive deals and improve results.

Collaboration In Action > Reps in different time zones using modern sales enablement tools can collaborate asynchronously using video messaging to harvest intel from meetings, inform other deals in progress, and share insights.

Pillar 4: Insight

The most effective sales enablement is data-driven. It integrates platform dashboards, visualizations, and analytics from learning, coaching, collateral usage, and call performance for a single view into employee performance drivers. It also measures buyer engagement throughout the process to tie actions with outcomes. Sales enablement professionals gain insight into which sales content pieces are moving the needle, as well as which sales conversation topics, learning content, and exercises are correlated with success.

Insight In Action > Managers with modern sales enablement tools can review calls and practice videos to identify coaching opportunities, while reps can track prospect activity on collateral to understand engagement and buying intent.

Investing in Your Sellers’ Success

Mastering sales enablement means investing in the tools your sellers need. You could cobble together multiple platforms with a range of capabilities, but the most efficient approach is having learning, content, collaboration, and insight all in one place. When you implement a robust sales enablement platform, you save time and resources and gain the ability to scale across your organization.

Empower your organization with mobile, interactive technology built for the way today’s virtual teams work. Don’t get left behind by relying on outdated training and enablement approaches. Build a solution you can be proud of and master the new world of virtual selling.

Learn More

To learn how to accelerate your results with modern sales enablement, download our eBook: Demystifying Sales Enablement: How to Plan for the Next Normal.