How to Improve Sales Enablement
More and more companies are investing in better sales enablement. That's a good thing! Impactful enablement content can define an organization's success, helping teams sail past sales goals and drive revenue. A solid enablement strategy can align multiple teams while equipping your reps with the right tools and resources to create more winning moments.
While you might already have an enablement program in place, there's always room for improvement. Cut-and-paste enablement frameworks aren't enough to help your sales team reach its full potential. Here, we explain important steps to improve sales enablement for your company in three key stages:
Building a structure for enablement
Creating enablement content
Surfacing the right content at the right time for reps
Structure
Good sales enablement all starts with a well-established structure. Enablement intends to improve your sales team's success. But enablement's function can be relatively ambiguous, creating confusion among various departments regarding its goals and purpose. Strategically structuring your enablement program brings clarity to the mix, improving accessibility and ensuring that all teams involved in the sale process are aligned toward the same goal.
1. Ensure Resources Are Organized and Accessible
Disorganized resources can be more of a hindrance than a benefit. One of the biggest problems companies face when trying to increase engagement of enablement content is a lack of accessibility. When resources are challenging to find, most representatives aren't going to spend time sifting through the mess. It's an inefficient use of time and will only create chaos during a challenging sales situation.
Organization and accessibility are paramount. Your content should be centrally located and well-arranged to ensure that reps can find what they need on the fly. Customer relationship management and enablement platforms are a great place to keep everything within reach, eliminating the old barriers that prevent your team from taking full advantage of the support they need.
2. Build Enablement into Onboarding and Training Processes
Don't wait until your reps ramp up to introduce sales enablement strategies. It should be ever-present from day one!
Building enablement into onboarding and training can get your salesforce used to utilizing those resources from the jump. Set the expectations early and create a foundation for success. Implementing sales enablement early can make a significant difference, making those tools and resources feel second nature to reps when they join the sales floor.
3. Set KPIs and Milestones for Outcome-Based Enablement
Outcome-based sales enablement is an excellent way to demonstrate the success of your strategies (and your sales reps). When you set clear KPIs and milestones for your sales team, you can show how sales training and enablement impact the revenue metrics leaders care about the most.
The best practice for outcome-based enablement is to set KPIs and milestones. Milestones give your reps personalized goals based on their capabilities and performance. Meanwhile, KPIs let you connect overall enablement program performance to business-critical metrics that matter to your business. With KPIs and milestones, you can measure the success of your enablement efforts, spot areas that need improvement, and see how your strategies make a difference.
Create
Creating enablement content is just as important as building the proper structure. Your team will only have the support it needs, with enablement content at every rep's fingertips. Your company might already have tools available, but here are a few ways to improve them.
4. Review and Refresh All Existing Sales Content
Your sales environment is ever-changing. What worked years ago might not work now. Not only are you working with more informed prospects, but old strategies may not be as effective as they once were. If you're not frequently refreshing content, your enablement program will suffer.
Take time to review and refresh your existing resources. Ensure your salesforce has appropriate content for every stage of the sales cycle. That includes scripts for cold-calling, competitive battle cards, guides for closing communications, white papers, and more. Review what you have, fill in the gaps, and revamp anything outdated.
5. Focus on Your Customers and Their Buyer Journey
Customer-focused enablement strategies are always the best approach. You can have hundreds of resources filled with detailed information about a product. But none of that will be helpful if your reps don't approach the sales cycle from a customer's perspective.
Prioritize the buyer's journey. Map out a customer path and create curated content your sales agents can use at every point in that journey. Delivering the right content at the right time makes all the difference, and it pays to have enablement support from the initial cold call down to close.
Create customer profiles that let reps know who their customers are. Then, use buyer personas, sales touchpoint analysis, and more to deliver content that leaves a lasting impact.
6. Use Conversation Intelligence to Turn Top Reps into Content Engines
Conversation intelligence is an excellent way to gain insight into how your reps communicate with potential customers. A big part of sales is mastering the art of conversation. Your team needs to know what to say and when to move prospects further through the sales funnel toward closing a deal.
With conversation intelligence, sales managers can analyze calls and gain actionable insight. It identifies areas that need improvement and captures impressive winning moments you can turn into enablement content. It puts your top salespeople in the limelight and creates a never-ending source of enablement content creation.
Surface
The last stage of sales enablement improvement revolves around content surfacing. You can have a solid enablement structure and killer content. But if your team doesn't surface those resources at the right time, all your efforts can go wasted.
7. Use Enablement Software with Real-time Content Prompts
Enablement platforms are a game-changer. Not only do they provide easy access to tools whenever reps need them, but they can offer up real-time prompts that offer assistance at a moment's notice. It can be challenging to navigate a program full of practical content. It's a double-edged sword: Offering tons of content covers every sales scenario, but it also expands your library and makes specific content more difficult to find on the fly.
That's why real-time content prompts are so effective. Enablement platforms do the heavy lifting, delivering relevant information when your reps need it most. Eliminate the confusion and make utilizing your content a breeze.
8. Encourage Peer-to-Peer Learning and Mentorship
Some of the best enablement and training don't come from managers and leaders. Sometimes, colleagues are the ones to make a difference.
Peer-to-peer learning can create a collaborative culture on your sales floor. While sales can be fiercely competitive, everyone on your team works toward the same goals. Sharing strategies, knowledge, and innovative techniques unlock your team's potential.
Encourage your reps to share insights and foster collaboration and mentorship. When you do that, your team doesn't work as individuals. They become a strong unit that supports one another. Superstar sellers become on-the-ground leaders who work to pass their knowledge and act as boons to the entire team's success.
9. Use Analytics to Identify Areas for Additional Training
Every sales rep has strengths and weaknesses. While enablement resources can help everyone, some individuals struggle in some areas while others succeed. Pay attention to those shortcomings. When your enablement platform has built-in performance analytics, you can identify where and when your sales reps could do better.
That information is valuable. It allows you to focus training on areas that need work, creating individualized training and enablement resources that make a difference. It empowers you to support your team and help every rep perform their best.
The Perfect Platform for Advanced Sales Enablement
A successful sales enablement program can take your business to a new level of success. While having some support is better than having none, improving your enablement strategies can lead to significantly more wins for your sales teams. Upgrade your efforts with Flockjay.
Flockjay is a feature-rich enablement platform that puts the power of knowledge at your team's fingertips. Build a program that benefits your business, create content that facilitates better sales decision-making, and make your resources available for every sales cycle. With Flockjay, your sales team can take flight and experience more success than ever!
