According to Brainshark, sales enablement is “A systematic approach to increasing sales productivity, by supporting reps with the content, training and analytics they need to have more successful sales conversations.” Brainshark, along with Forbes Insights, has also discovered that “Sales enablement solutions (55%) are the top technology investments for boosting sales productivity.”
While sales enablement may sound straightforward, and should apparently be considered for businesses if they want to stay competitive, there are several road bumps that may prevent you from accomplishing your sales enablement goals. These include content creation, contests, training, coaching, and mentoring.
- Content Creation
Content creation for sales involves the writing, curating, and sharing of materials that a sales rep should use when meeting with a prospective client. This type of content would include everything from reports, case studies, white papers, and presentations. This also includes internal content, such as demos or identifying customer needs, that the rep will need to better understand what exactly it is that they do.
Unfortunately, 60-70% of marketing content goes unused.
Why?
The easiest answer is that marketing content passes through the hands of multiple departments, such as sales or marketing. For example, when discussing a new tool, a sales rep could learn how that tool is used in IT, as well as how the PR team uses it. Because there could be differing perspectives on the same tool, the content loses its intended message.
One of the easiest ways to handle this challenge is to organize your content by different groups, such as product presentations or case studies. This will vary from company to company, so find an organizational method that works best for you team.
You’ll also want to make sure that each department is on the same page so that the content will be consistent across the board – which will also help with organization. This can be especially difficult with freelance teams, but whether managing remote teams or in-house, keeping everybody on the same page is key. You also want to make sure that it’s easy and convenient for sales reps to locate relevant content when they need it.
One final bit of advice regarding content curation. It’s not effective to overload your reps or freelance teams with too much information. It’s best that you provide them with shorter pieces of content when they need it along with a support system, like automatically recommending relevant content. And, make sure that this content can be obtained on the rep’s preferred device.
- Contests
You may be shocked to learn that salespeople are a competitive bunch of people. OK. You probably already were aware of that. So why not tap into that competitive nature by hosting a contest to help boost sales, or whatever goal you desire?
The first step that you need to take when developing a content is to identify your goals. Why are you are putting on this contest? What outcome are you hoping to achieve? How will you measure the success or failure of the contest?
Once you’ve answered those questions you’ll want to make sure that the contest fits into your long term strategy. That’s not saying that a contest will resolve a short term problem, but often a contest can assist you in changing the game. As Biznology points out, you can create a contest “for getting in-person meetings with customers and prospects.” This helps your long term strategy since it will help reps learn how to “build relationships with customers and start them on the buying process.”
Here are a couple of pointers to keep in mind when developing a contest:
- Tier your contests by differentiation’s like performance or experience so that all reps will be able to be engaged.
- With a win – hand out your prize as soon as possible and in public.
- Prizes don’t always have to be monetary. A reward could be anything from flex hours, a reserved parking space, a spot on a ‘wall of fame,’ or an award ceremony.
- Measure the contest results. If the contest was created to improve sales and this goal has been met, then your contest was a success. If not, then you need to change the contest’s objectives the next time around.
- Training
Typically, organizations will provide reps with two types of training;
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- Product. This training describes all of the practical and technical knowledge that your reps are required to know to best sell your product or service to customers.
- Process. This involves techniques, processes, and philosophies your reps will need for the sales process, such as using CRM tools.
If you do in-person training, Pardot recommends that you keep sessions at around 20 minutes. Sessions should also be engaging and interactive exercises. Finally, don’t forget to include actionable takeaways from the training session.
Thanks to technology, however, you can also provide e-learning opportunities to your sales reps. The main benefit of training courses on-demand is that your reps can access them whenever or wherever they want. Keep in mind though that because our attention spans are getting shorter, try to use videos that are only about 5 minutes long.
It doesn’t matter if you want to do in-person trainings or e-learning, make sure that you provide your reps with the latest industry trends or techniques through training sessions. And, don’t forget to follow-up with your reps to make sure they understand the training and how to use it properly in the field.
The biggest challenge with training is that reps have a tendency to forget the information that you’ve provided them, so make sure that you have content related to the training sessions readily available so that they can revisit it when need be.
- Coaching
Training sessions can be priceless, but you may not always have the time or money to host a new training session. That’s when you need managers or sales leaders to step in and become a coach for your sales rep team. Coaches will give your reps a chance to boost leads, close more deals, and grow either individually or as a team.
The problem with asking managers or sales leaders coaching your sales reps is that they may have never had any proper training in sales leadership. You can search for a sales coaching training program to help develop these skills. Even after attending a program, you should employ the following techniques to be effective:
- Align the right actions with the right goals.
- Ask your reps questions and provide them with feedback.
- Scott Edinger notes on Forbes that you should spend half of the numbers review discussions as an early-stage pipeline review discussion.
Other ways to become a stronger and more effective sales coach, according to Matt Sunshine on HubSpot, would be to:
- Spend time with your sales reps in the field.
- Get to know your reps and develop a personalized growth plan for each one.
- Know your reps strengths and weaknesses.
Remember, you should foster a culture of coaching where managers send the following message: “I want you on my team, and I want to see you do well.”
- Mentoring
According to John Treace on Inc.com, the “first 90 days of a sales rep’s tenure is the highest-risk period.” This is because reps will have questions regarding the sales process and may struggle having success with customers. This can result in sales reps getting frustrated and possibly leaving the team.
To help sales reps, you should have a mentor program in place. Having a mentor program simply means enlisting a veteran salesperson to show new sales reps the ropes. It gives your new rep the much needed emotional support in their first few weeks. The new reps will know that someone is watching out for them, is there for them if they need a question answered, and provides them with someone who has their back. Not only is this cost effective, assigning a mentor to one or two sales reps can help them with any concerns going forward, as well as build a new reps confidence. Mentors should check-in with new hires frequently – on a daily basis if possible.
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