Imagine you are asked to sell tea to your customers. You are taught how to make it, but you have not been provided with a cup to pour the tea in and take it to your customer. How do you sell it then? You may have made the best tea in the world but if you do not have the right resources to sell it, you may not be successful!
This is a common occurrence across organisations where the frontline salesforce does not get the right sales enablement tools to sell effectively and fill the gap between an organisation’s sales strategy and execution. So how do you ensure that your frontline salesforce has the right resources to engage the buyer and sell effectively?
The answer lies in Sales Enablement.
What is Sales Enablement?
It is the process of providing resources, technological support, coaching, learning etc. to your sales reps to help them in achieving their sales objectives. Sales enablement has grown dramatically over the past few years. According to the 2018 ‘Sales Enablement Report’ by CSO Insights, the percentage of salespeople achieving quota improved by 10.6%, which is an improvement of 22.7%. Sales enablement is helping organisations improve their sales results but that is not all.
Sales enablement is also known to be correlated with strong client relationships, increased buyer engagement and a more motivated workforce. We’ve listed down four critical ways how a sales enablement platform can help organisations to enhance sales performance & capability.
1. Sales enablement brings universality: Sales enablement platforms ensure that sales support is provided not only to the frontline but to everyone who is involved in customer interaction such as the marketing team, distributors, product managers, trainer and others. Although frontline sales representatives will always be the go-to people for sales, sales enablement equips more people with the right information so that there is a universal language followed across the organisation. For sales partners, sales enablement platforms provide a good opportunity to remain connected with the organisational changes and be up to date with the changes and trends.
2. Sales enablement platforms increases & accelerate sales readiness: Sales enablement platforms reduce ramp up time by certifying the sales representatives with essential selling skills and knowledge required to engage with a customer. The sales readiness tools include regular coaching on the product and service information that let them have meaningful conversations with potential buyers and achieve business results.
3. Sales enablement engage sellers & partners more effectively: An organisation’s investment in its employees motivates them to learn more and engage with their work. With the right knowledge, the salesforce also becomes more confident and can position products & services better against the competition. With increased job satisfaction and the ability to successfully steer through a customer conversation, the right platform can motivate front line sales to go the extra mile and exceed their quotas & KPIs.
4. Sales enablement provide more focused learning experience: Unlike a traditional Learning Management System, sales enablement platforms focus on improving skills associated with selling and enhancing the quality of customer conversations. The skills needed to sell and to convey product knowledge, involve constantly changing information, and hence sales enablement platforms nudge sales people to constantly learn and practice their skills in this context. By leveraging other new-age principles like microlearning, gamification & data analytics, the sales organization is primed for success at each level of the sales hierarchy:
1. Front line sales get an engaging experience that builds a habit for enablement
2. Sales managers get actionable insights on account of this habitual enablement
3. Product heads & marketing managers get visibility on key aspects of the selling skills and product knowledge that are bright spots or trouble areas for each sales rep
4. L&D and sales training teams are able to quickly repackage traditional sales training content at scale and speed
5. Sales leaders get a constantly upto date view on the state of readiness of their sales force across their business & geography
As industries become hypercompetitive and selling occurs in the digital, virtual and physical world, a robust sales enablement platform would go a long way in enabling your field force in a rapid, scalable & effective manner while allowing sales leaders to effortlessly align their vast sales & distribution workforce.
Looking for an effective sales enablement platform for your salesforce? Write to us at [email protected] or schedule a demo to learn how Master-O can rapidly enable your existing salesforce & onboard new sales hires effortlessly.