Need ideas to increase sales? Look no further than adopting sales enablement practices. Sales enablement as a practice has been on the rise in recent years and plays a key role in the lead generation strategies that I put together for clients here at RiseFuel.
A recent study from Velo Inc. found that sales quota attainment was directly correlated with organizations investing in sales enablement.
So whether you are a seasoned sales enablement expert or just getting started, there are a few key best practices and tips that you should follow when implementing sales enablement strategies within your organization. Here are a few tips that represent some of the first steps that I advise that all of my clients take.
Of course, individual recommendations will pertain to your specific situation. There is always a chance that you are doing or have done some of these things. Regardless, these represent some of the most important ideas to increase sales that any company can take to improve their sales enablement practices
Create a Sales Outline or Script
A sales outline or script is a critical asset for your sales teams. While you don’t have to follow a sales script to the letter, a general outline of sales conversations can help to provide your salespeople with a road map for each conversation. When things get off track, they can refer back to the document to help right the ship.
One mistake that many companies make is forcing their sales reps to stick to a strict script, which often sounds rigid and “salesy” to prospects. Rather, you should promote sales reps using the outline and translating it to their own words. It fosters a better connection and correlates with stronger relationships.
Your sales outline is a vital piece of collateral that you can use to increase sales immediately, if you don’t already have one in place. While every sales rep will have their own style and process it is a good idea to ensure that your reps are all on the same page.
Revamp Your Content Development Efforts
In sales enablement, your content isn’t just for your marketing efforts. Instead, you use content to enable your sales reps to make sales. That means that you should have content on hand to answer the most pressing questions that your prospects have, and gear that content toward every step of the sales process.
Sales enablement content is designed to arm your sales teams with assets and tools that they can use to be more persuasive, build trust with prospects, and ultimately develop stronger relationships throughout the sales process.
Specifically, content that answers common questions from prospects and deals with common objections are particularly powerful for your sales teams.
Right now, there is a good chance that you are either not creating enough content, or aren’t mapping your content directly to the buyer’s journey and the questions that customers commonly have throughout it.
Turning your content focus toward sales (without neglecting marketing) will facilitate sales and marketing alignment and help your teams to develop content that speaks directly to your most important customers.
Invest in Sales Training and Certification
Don’t just assume your internal sales training will be enough to move the needle. There are constantly things for your sales reps to learn and improve on, but they will never come face-to-face with those materials unless you invest in it as an organization.
Sales training should be an ongoing process. It should also be repeatable — just because a certain rep received training on a subject five years ago does not mean that they have retained the information and put it into practice.
Start by identifying the competencies, skills, and knowledge that your specific sales team needs to improve upon to be successful. Then, find training programs and courses that will help them to improve in those key areas.
The more interactive the training materials are, the better. If you have the time, you can put together your own training programs and hone in on the areas where your team needs a refresher.
Identify Gaps In Your Sales Technology Stack
Source: SalesForce
What kind of sales enablement software are you using? Have you invested in solutions and tools that will put your team in a position to succeed? There are a few key tool types that are necessary in sales enablement. These include:
- Customer Relationship Management Software
- Sales Training & Coaching Software
- Asset & Content Management Software
- Outreach & Prospecting Software
- Workflow Automation Software
- Meeting and Presentation Software
These key areas represent the bare minimum that high-powered sales organizations need for their technology stack.
These categories will help you to cover your bases and ensure that you have the tools on hand to succeed. Sales enablement just isn’t possible without tools to help you facilitate the process.
Measure, Test, and Optimize
Too often, sales processes are evaluated outside of a vacuum. Teams make a number of changes, see how those changes affect their overall sales performance, and then decide whether new changes need to be made.
While this makes sense for teams that don’t have all of the sales enablement best practices in place, it doesn’t make much sense for teams that are in a more advanced position.
Test changes to your sales processes individually, and measure them independent of other changes. Doing it any other way makes it difficult to measure the impact of individual changes to your sales process.
While this may slow down your sales optimization, it will provide more consistent and effective results in the long-term.
Increase Sales with Sales Enablement
Looking for ideas to increase sales? Look no further than sales enablement. Sales enablement puts your teams in a position for success by arming them with the tools, content, and outlook that they need to succeed and grow their sales internally.
Sales enablement is all about empowering your sales teams and aligning them with marketing to create a well-oiled, lead generation and sales production machine.
Improving sales enablement practices is often the first thing that I recommend to my clients who are looking to grow their sales and often implementing even a few of these best practices could have a profound effect on your overall sales success.
