Let’s say you’ve launched an apparel company and have enjoyed a successful first year, but want to increase sales volume and scale.
Crucial to increasing revenue and scaling is leveling up the sales game through sales enablement. You may have a great product or service, but what is the point if they don’t sell?
In the HubSpot Blog’s recent Sales Strategy & Trends Report, we found that although 37% of salespeople leverage sales enablement content or strategies in their role, 88% of those using it say it’s moderately to extremely important to making a sale.
Furthermore, recent Learn Hub data revealed that 76% of organizations see an increase in sales between 6 and 20% due to sales enablement.
The points above are just a few reasons why giving sales representatives the knowledge, content, and tools to sell is critical for any business, from startups to enterprises.
In this blog post, we cover the following topics:
What is Sales Enablement
Sales enablement simply means equipping sales teams with the knowledge, content, and tools to successfully sell products and services.
Knowledge
In order to sell, sales professionals need to know the products or services they’re selling inside out. In addition to knowing what they’re selling, sales representatives need to know sales best practices. Sales enablement provides sales teams with the learnings they need to succeed.
Content
Content is king and a key part of sales enablement strategy. Sales representatives need presentations, templates, reports, datasheets, video product demos, articles, infographics, and more to present to customers. Content helps customers better understand the company’s products and services, helping them visualize how they would benefit from them.
Tools
Sales professionals need tools to execute sales. Tools help automate processes, enabling sales representatives to provide a more personalized experience and handle more complex problems.
Ultimately, tools give rise to a more efficient and customized experience that puts the customer first. These tools can include: CRM software, sales enablement tools that manage the sales enablement program, and call coaching tools.
For a detailed guide on what sales enablement is and how to build key strategies, check out this post.
Sales Enablement Benefits
Organizations with sales enablement achieve a 49% win rate on forecasted deals, compared to a 42.5% win rate for organizations without sales enablement, according to data from Learn Hub.
Align Marketing, Product, and Sales Teams
Sales doesn’t operate in a silo. According to HubSpot Blog research, effective companies facilitate marketing-sales alignment. With this collaborative approach, sales representatives are equipped with the knowledge they need to excel.
For example, getting perspectives from the marketing team enables sales representatives to better understand the buyer’s journey.
Additionally, using marketing materials can help salespeople close deals. Working with the product team helps sales representatives get a better grasp of a product’s features and selling points, empowering them to develop sharper and more customized sales pitches.
Facilitate Content Creation
Without relevant and engaging content, selling is a difficult task.
With the right content, sales representatives feel better equipped to sell. And, as we mentioned in the intro, enablement content can even result in more sales.
Sales enablement content can include scripts for sales calls, reports, presentations, and more. Customized content helps sales teams become more agile, enabling them to guide a client through the customer journey.
Increase Efficiency
Time is precious, and sales representatives are busy. Sales enablement improves efficiency by equipping sales teams with everything they need to effectively sell. When sales teams know what they’re doing, they can focus more on closing deals.
Sales teams also operate more efficiently from the technical perspective. Sales enablement data can be integrated with CRM and DAM systems, reducing the need for manual updates. Because of automation, sales teams can spend more time on selling, rather than data management.
Empower Sales Teams
By implementing a sales enablement program, sales leaders feel more motivated and confident, which directly impacts the teams they lead. Because sales leaders implement sales enablement programs, their buy-in is important. Effective sales enablement programs efficiently get sales representatives up to speed.
According to Sales Hacker data, 25 percent of sales representatives state they do not feel like they’ve had sufficient sales training. With sales enablement, sales representatives are empowered with the knowledge, content, and tools they need to sell.
Scale the Sales Organization
Every team needs the right people to help it succeed. Because sales enablement helps with sales onboarding and training, it naturally helps with hiring sales representatives. Onboarding is a very involved process. Sales enablement enables sales leaders to provide new hires with the information they need to get them up to speed quickly. Hiring qualified talent can help the organization grow.
Sales Enablement Platforms
HubSpot Sales Hub is a one-stop-shop for all your sales needs, equipped with a multi-featured sales CRM, sales engagement tools, quote and CPQ functionality, reporting and analytics, and other helpful tools. Sales Hub can help eliminate friction by bringing many of your tools and data together on one easy-to-use CRM platform — freeing up sales teams’ time to focus on customers.
The Seismic Enablement Cloud™ offers sales content management, learning and coaching, strategy and planning, content automation, buyer engagement, and enablement intelligence. The Enablement Cloud integrates easily with your tech stack and scales with your team.
Showpad Content
Source: Showpad Content
Showpad Content aligns marketing and sales teams, which is key to sales enablement. The platform creates one centralized location that lets sellers discover, present, engage, and share the latest on-brand content in visually engaging experiences.
Your Organization Needs Sales Enablement
Regardless of industry or company size, sales teams that want to close deals need sales enablement. Sales representatives must be equipped with the appropriate sales framework in order to win.
Get started with implementing your own sales enablement platform today.
