If you could give your sales team everything they need to succeed, would you? It seems like a silly question, but the fact is many sales teams are lacking in resources. Sales enablement changes that. In the most basic sense, sales enablement is a process that provides your sales team with resources that allow them to sell your product or service more effectively.

With sales enablement tools, you can put the power in the hands of your salespeople. You can give them the best chance to make the sale, the information they need to understand customers and the tools they need to improve the sales process.

So, how does sales enablement work? How can it benefit your sales team and optimize their strategies? Read on to find out. 

How Does It Benefit Sales Teams?

Sales enablement connects marketing teams and sales teams in an organic way. Typically, these two teams aren’t able to communicate effectively enough to take advantage of each other’s findings. Sales enablement tools give them the means to do so.

With sales enablement tools readily available, marketing teams are able to create dynamic content that helps your sales team sell. This includes sales content, infographics, video marketing materials, one-sheets, explainers, and more.

Sales can then utilize these materials and communicate to the marketing team what’s working and what isn’t. They’re also able to help marketing teams understand what’s missing during the sales process, so they can build them better content and resources.

With these departments firing on all cylinders, your sales team gets better content, clear reporting on performance, actionable insight into your customer base, and much more. Marketing teams learn how to better refine strategy according to the needs of the sales team. It’s a win-win for both. 

Examples of Sales Enablement in Action

Knowledge is power, and this is especially the case when it comes to developing a sales strategy. Below, we’ve outlined just a few examples of the sales enablement process in action and what it can do for your salespeople.

Improve and Expand Sales Content

Sales content is highly useful for sales teams. Especially in the digital age, where it’s easy to share content with reps and customers, giving them the details they need. With sales enablement, you can expand your sales content and optimize it. 

Sales enablement tools allow you to centralize your sales content all in one hub and see where you’re lacking and where you’re doing well. You can conduct audits on your content to quickly find areas of improvement. It also makes your content more accessible to your whole team. 

With a more complete and well-rounded sales content library, your team will always have materials that are useful to help them close their sales. 

Reduce the Length of Sales Cycles

Sales enablement tools can give your team insight into every stage of the sales cycle — from discovery to closing. Your sales enablement data will allow your team to see where inefficiencies and objections are in the sales cycle, giving them data-driven strategies to shorten those phases. Integrated automation tools also allow many phases of the sales cycle to be streamlined, giving your sales team more time to focus on closing customers and negotiating.

The sales cycle is also streamlined when your team can focus more on qualified leads, instead of spending time on leads that aren’t interested in buying. More on that in the next section.

Analyze and Maximize Prospect Engagement

One of the most significant benefits of using sales enablement tools is the valuable knowledge your team can learn about their prospect. They’ll be able to get a better understanding of the specific demographic, what they like to engage with, and what doesn’t appeal to them. With detailed reporting tools and analytics, your sales team will understand their prospects like never before.

In addition to better engaging prospects, your team will also be more effective at lead collection and sorting. The tools and resources they have access to will allow them to get more high-quality leads while helping them avoid wasting time on leads that won’t convert. 

Improve and Simplify Sales Coaching

Sales enablement software also gives you tools for sales coaching. These platforms make sales coaching much simpler for you and your team. They can easily access resources for training, view their performance, and view your feedback.

Sales coaching should be an important throughline for your team from the minute they’re onboarded. With sales coaching tools, the onboarding process can be optimized, putting your sales team members in the best place possible when they start out. You’ll be able to continually keep up with their performance, help them see areas they can improve, and provide them insightful strategies to become a better salesperson. 

Sales enablement also allows you to use data analysis tools to monitor conversations between reps and customers. Using conversation intelligence, your team can get insights into what your customers respond to and what they aren’t interested in hearing. You also learn objections and obstacles that commonly come up. Using this information, you can establish best practices and train new sales reps and sales reps who need more support to utilize these techniques.

Better Oversight for Sales Managers

Sales enablement helps every level of the sales department. Not only will it make things easier for your salespeople on the ground, but managers will have actionable insights that allow them to help their teams. The level of oversight they have will let them fine-tune sales processes and strategies, support high performers, and fill in the gaps for salespeople who are needing more resources.

Sales managers shouldn’t have to guess when making strategies and setting goals for their team. With the right sales enablement tools, they don’t have to. They’ll have data and information to back up all of their decisions, so they can move forward with more confidence.