Sales enablement is a strategic process for your B2B startup that is designed to train your sales team. It provides your team with the right content to engage with their customers more effectively. Sales enablement is essential to the success of sales operations. It saves sales and marketing teams time by keeping them informed and connected to content performance. 

The way a customer evaluates and makes decisions has changed. Buyers have become more independent, which means traditional sales and marketing techniques may no longer captivate them. A buyer is more likely to prefer sellers who help him make purchasing decisions. 74% of buyers choose the seller who has given them the right advice. In this article, we'll discuss the top 5 sales enablement best practices. 

Understanding sales enablement

The need for sales enablement emerged in the late 1990s, when digital and content came online. There are different approaches to sales enablement depending on your company. For a B2B startup, sales enablement can be defined as a strategic and better approach to bringing together sales, marketing and operations stakeholders around a common goal. It promotes business interactions based on knowledge sharing.

This objective involves providing sales teams with resources, content, information, processes and technology. The team needs these resources to interact with customers through the buying journey and it enables the team to sell more effectively. Sales enablement also provides training and coaching services for your team.

Why is sales enablement important for your company?

Your sales team doesn't have time to scour different systems to find the content they need. If teams can't easily find the resources they need, they risk wasting time recreating existing content. On the other hand, there's your marketing team. They have virtually no visibility of what's going on within the sales team. The various content systems isolate them from each other during the sales process. 

That's why sales enablement is important for your company. To solve these problems, salespeople have started to develop a sales enablement strategy. This enables your sales and marketing teams to access the content and data they need when they need it.

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Benefits of implementing a sales enablement strategy

Sales enablement allows your teams to work more efficiently by saving them time. According to Value Selling Associates, salespeople spend almost 36% of their time on administrative tasks. Let's take a look at the benefits of implementing a sales enablement strategy.

• Sales reps can quickly and easily access the content they need throughout the buying process.
• Marketing teams have the data and information they need to produce content that helps sales reps close more deals.
• Sales reps can use a single platform for all their sales enablement needs : from training and coaching to statistics.
• With sales enablement, sales and marketing teams are aligned with their revenue-generating strategy.
• Sales content is available in a single database, improving consistency, accuracy and speed of execution for all your teams.

Top 5 sales enablement best practices

In this part of the article, we'll look at the best sales enablement practices, their benefits and their potential impact on your company. 

1. Alignement between sales and marketing

To ensure the success of your B2B company, it's important that your sales and marketing teams work together. Your teams need to have aligned objectives and strategy. To achieve this, you need to provide your teams with the right tools and guidelines. This includes meeting regularly and creating a collaborative platform where they can share content and analysis. Your teams need to set common goals and organize sales enablement resources.

You can take time to listen to your sales team's calls. This is an excellent coaching experience. This allows you to become part of your sales team and learn how they illustrate the business. Using shadow sales calls is a great way to get ideas for future content. To do this, you can use collaborative call libraries such as the one offered by Praiz.

2. Continuous training and development 

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As a sales manager, it's your responsibility to provide training to your sales team. To do this, you could follow certain recommendations like: listening to demo and presentation calls, providing personalized training, reviewing won and lost deals, pairing experienced sellers with new employees and offering them the right tools.

It's essential to use the right tools to train and support your sales team. Every seller is different. Some sellers learn best using visual content like videos. Others prefer shadowing other sellers. Listening to recorded sales calls and meetings is one of the best ways to continually train your sales team. It allows them to highlight what's working and what can be improved. 

3. Utilization of technology

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To thrive in the competitive, digital landscape of B2B purchasing, you need to invest in technology. Technologies interface with CRM technology. These tools are designed to help your sales team: 

• data entry;
• send emails to customers;
• share content, notes and collaborate on tasks;
• scheduling and recording calls and meetings;
• localize content or files.

Each of these tasks can be completed by artificial intelligence (AI) technology. According to global surveys, the percentage of sales teams meeting their annual quotas fell from 63% to 57% from 2012 to 2019. In 2021, Harvard Business Review surveyed more than 500 sales organizations. As a result, they observed a more efficient cycle: the more AI tools are applied to a process, the more data they generate. 

With Praiz, for example, you'll have an AI-powered meeting assistant. Your meetings will be automatically recorded so that you and your teams never miss any important information. Book a demo to discover Praiz.

4. Content creation and distribution

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Your sales team needs high-quality, relevant content to support their sales efforts. This content includes product guides, case studies and testimonials. In fact, 65% of the most successful marketing content have a documented strategy. 68% say it helps their team allocate resources to optimize desired results. By using a collaborative platform, your team can easily upload and share content.

5. Performance analysis and feedback

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Regular review of sales performance metrics is essential for the success of your company. These metrics can include:

• the average length of your sales cycle;
• success rates and number of closed deals;
• buyer retention rates;
• customer retention rates;
• buyer engagement by channel (email vs sales all) and by content.

Constant feedback is essential to help sales reps improve their skills and techniques. 

Implementing sales enablement practices

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Implementing sales enablement practices can be strategic and demanding. From creating sales content to tracking engagement to rapid reorientation, it requires a unique combination of empathy, flexibility and strategic vision.

Practical steps to implement sales enablement practices

 Let's take a look at the practical steps involved in implementing sales enablement practices:

• Step one: create a culture of alignment;
• Step two: define the responsibilities of each team;
• Step three: align sales and marketing teams;
• Step four: establish regular operational processes;
• Step six: integrate the right sales enablement tools;
• Step seven: establish performance measurement for sales and marketing alignment.

The common challenges when implementing sales enablement practices

Depending on your company, you might face certain challenges when implementing sales enablement practices.

Communication problems with your sales and marketing teams

Sales reps want the marketing team to find leads, and the marketing team wants sales to close more deals. If both teams are having communication problems, you can help them by getting them to work together. Organize a meeting so that they can determine or refine your company's target audience together.

At Microsoft, for example, marketing and sales teams worked together to create customer profiles. This resulted in a 16% increase in the number of closed deals and a 15% increase in the speed of sales cycle.

CRM or other technological tools are not used properly

You shouldn't overlook the importance of your CRM or sales enablement tools when implementing sales enablement. Indeed, proper use of these tools will help your company. You can easily track your customer activity, calls, emails, or meeting notes. 

For example, IBM implemented AI in its sales processes to predict customer behavior. This has made it possible to personalize the customer experience, resulting in a 50% increase in sales.

Your marketing content doesn't reach your customers

You need to think about how your content will be accessed and how it will be distributed. Your marketing team has worked to create compelling content, and your sales team needs to know how to use it. HubSpot, for example, regularly creates and distributes high-quality content like blogs, guides, and webinars, to help its sales teams maintain contact with potential customers.

You don't analyze data and provide feedback to your teams

Reporting back to your teams on how potential customers are progressing through your marketing and sales funnels can help highlight any areas for improvement. Amazon uses a tool called 'Leadership Principles' for performance review and feedback, which helps their employees improve their performance.

You put aside the training and coaching your teams

As we've already mentioned, your sales team needs continuous coaching and training. This will help them to progress and close more deals. Why not do what Google does? This company uses a method called 'g2g', where employees train each other on different topics. This ensures continuous development and learning.

Tools for successful sales enablement

Technology is an essential part for your sales enablement strategy. Call recording and videoconferencing software are also important for boosting sales. This software can help your company increase its revenue. Full access to discovery calls, demos and negotiations will help you find areas for improvement.

Thanks to these sales enablement tools, you can improve another important aspect of sales enablement: coaching and training. In fact, you can turn every conversation a salesperson has with a customer into a training opportunity for sales reps. Video conferencing improves communication and collaboration within your teams.

Now is the perfect time to adopt the best practices of sales enablement. Align your sales and marketing teams, improve your sales performance and, above all, offer your customer a quality experience.

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Photo: Campaign Creators on Unsplash