Earlier, combining marketing insights and customer call data was out of the question. Both information elements were created and distributed separately to sales teams, but now, thanks to technological advancements, marketing can easily gather feedback from sales personnel and integrate their ideas into content creation.
If you look at the above scenario you can identify the inspiration behind investing in sales enablement technology.
But that’s not all.
Rapidly evolving market needs and sales teams are contributing to the reason for investment. Every sales team is endeavoring to be a front runner in the market to cater to customer needs in the best possible way. And just not sales but marketing too is scouring ways to cater to customers and sales teams more efficiently and effectively.
So, how do organizations accommodate these changes?
Sales collateral management and best practices need to come under the same umbrella to execute buyer-centric sales activities. Sales teams are needed to leverage an intelligent solution that can make sales enablement a well-orchestrated strategy backed with data and insights.
So, today, we’ll like to walk you through the 3 fundamental considerations before selecting a sales enablement software tool:
- What is sales enablement software for a sales guy?
- Where does the sales enablement software fit in the sales cycle?
- The Best and Simple Checklist for Choosing a Sales Enablement Software?
We're confident you won't procrastinate anymore and make a regrettable purchase decision.
After reading this informative piece, you will be in a better position to purchase the sales enablement software.
So, here you go...
What is sales enablement software for a sales guy?
As per a study conducted by Aberdeen, organizations with excellent Sales Enablement programs have a staggering 32% improved team sales quota attainment and 24% improvement in individual quota accomplishment.
Well, don’t get excited too soon!
Attainment of improved numbers and quota is possible only when the right software solution is employed for sales enablement.
To help sales professionals like you in engaging with the audiences, organizations encourage sales enablement. The strategy, process, and content alone can not offer a holistic approach to sales enablement. A software solution compounds the benefits of a sales enablement plan helping your team increase sales conversions.
Sales enablement technology has a proven record of improving your sales team’s productivity, performance, and revenue. Buyers and sellers alike have access to rich and well-structured high-quality on-demand content to pursue buying decisions on the tool.
Essentially, sales enablement software gives your sales team all the tools they need to successfully close deals.
Disclaimer: Conversational intelligence-driven sales enablement software solution is a huge motivator and gives ample opportunities to celebrate your salespeople for successful and exceptional performance or client acquisition.
Who owns the sales enablement software and the overall strategy?
As per tried and tested methods, both marketing and sales jointly own sales enablement strategy and process.
According to Gartner- Experts recommend that sales and marketing do not work in silos when it comes to sales enablement in the organization.
Large organizations invest in building a separate sales enablement team that consists of folks from both sales and marketing teams. For smaller and mid-sized companies, the responsibilities remain the same but the stakeholders may change. Involving marketing, however, adds greater value to the content and resources.
To attain the alignment between the two critical inter-dependent teams, your organization needs to develop a culture of collaboration between sales and marketing. The two teams should coordinate their efforts and, more importantly, exchange information about customers and markets.
Where Does The Sales Enablement Software Fit In The Sales Cycle?
Sales industry analysts anticipate that the global sales enablement platform market size will grow to USD 2.6 billion by 2024.- Source
Now that you are accustomed to the sales enablement software solution and its significance, you need to understand where the sales enablement program fits in the buyer’s journey and the sales cycle.
While sales enablement software is leveraged throughout the sales cycle, from prospecting to closing, it categorically focuses on the early to middle stages of the cycle.
Where the early stages cover discovery, designing tailored solutions, and presenting demos.
As per general observation, prospecting is the most challenging area and needs the utmost attention. Penetrating the prospect’s mind is difficult and demands agile content management, flawless customer experience, and excellent product knowledge. Hence, a sales software solution is the easiest and effective way to handle prospect content needs and questions without unnecessary delays.
The discussion above prepares you for the next step: choosing the best sales enablement software vendor. Are you ready to deep dive?
The Best and Simple Checklist for Choosing a Sales Enablement Software?
1. List down the must-haves
- Sales collateral management
- Content management, distribution, and customization
- Incorporation of customer feedback and experiences
- Capture and track market and customer insights
- Develop sales playbooks, and field-generated sales content
- Refine and revise incumbent content periodically
- AI-powered learning recommendations
- Capture and share best practices, competitive insights, and success stories
- Coaching and training options for managers to coach teams on objection-handling, demo simulations, and spontaneous discussions.
As a general rule, these are the essential features of a sales enablement tool. Your software solution must support the above features to offer an overall customer experience during sales engagement.
In our next step, we need to examine a few critical points and hygiene parameters that shouldn't be overlooked during the selection process.
2. Time-saving solution
Time is a serious and sensitive issue when it comes to sales engagements. Right from responding to potential customers to ramping up sales reps, time is a very critical factor.
You must spend enough “Time” in evaluating the solution for time-reduction capabilities such as:
- Automate tasks that you currently perform manually
- Track majority of sales training and content activities important for boosting sales
- Neatly organized and well-labeled content improving accessibility without any hassle
- Reduce focus on extra work, by freeing up time for more strategic tasks.
The sales tool you choose must add more hours to your day and make your sales life more convenient.
3. Align sales and marketing
The software solution is futile without a perfect harmony between sales and marketing.
Both teams must have access to content and exchange customer information on the platform. Plenty of organizations investing in sales enablement capability of conversational intelligence, categorically add marketing users to the portal to give access to recorded and transcribed client calls.
With continuous collaboration and internal communication of the sales team with marketing, you’ll be able to define a comprehensive structure or framework for sales enablement.
4. Record & Transcribe Sales Activities
For the success of daily sales calls and activities, it is essential to understand the areas of improvement.
At Convin, the sales tool automatically records and transcribes the call for you, giving you a fair picture of areas of improvement and celebrations.
5. Self-sales Training
Any sales enablement tool vendor will be able to offer content management encouraging training of the sales team. However, we want you to keep an eye on a smart sales tool that automatically translates customer calls into learning lessons.
Now, being automatic makes all the difference.
Because the idea is to remove sales teams’ dependency on the senior sales managers or marketing team for training.
6. Promote collaboration and teamwork
Distribution and sharing of training and client engagement content shouldn’t be taken lightly. The solution must promote teamwork and the capability to share data.
Shared data and collaboration reduces the need for frequent communication and allows all sales reps to be on the same page. However, this feature shouldn't undermine user access rights or organization-wide authority structures.
7. Tracking and Analytics
The importance of analytics can't be underestimated and demands attention.
You must be able to analyze, measure, and monitor content usage, virtual training sessions, and remote sales calls. Here’s a quick checklist for you:
- Analyze sales data
- Measure Sales KPIs
- Take informed data-backed decisions
- Discover and comprehend new buying patterns
- Track underachievers
- Spot gold opportunities as well as challenges.
Also, Isn’t client data hard to find, and analyzing even more difficult?
Hence, preserving the call records for sales training and content development requires sales analytics capabilities.
Even content usage and requirements must be tracked periodically for accurate analysis. The sales team alone doesn’t benefit from the analysis, other departments, such as marketing and customer success can take advantage of the data too.
Take note of the simple features in the tool- dashboards, interactive reports, charts, and graphs, as well as the ability to sort and filter data. This may sound trivial to you now but often create a major impact on the sales process.
8. Flexible Integration
Initially, integration may not appear to be a critical aspect of sales enablement solution buying criteria, but at a later stage, you’ll need other sales tools such as CRM to move customer data back and forth.
Integrations to an already existing sales tech stack are a must-have for seamless sales operations. Either the vendor offers out-of-the-box integrations or the vendor will integrate your existing software solution.
Exercise: List all the tools that your sales and marketing team use presently( for instance-Freshworks, Pipedrive, etc.) Now, check the compatibility of the vendor’s solution with your existing list.
9. Security
The solution must consider all aspects of security, right from internal data to client call recordings to sign-on permissions. You may want to examine the access controls and role-based permissions in the sales enablement software system.
Closely track the ability to create, share, edit, and manage marketing and sales materials based on roles and permissions pre-defined by your organization.
10. Scalability & Customization
While making a buying decision you may need to make a quick analysis. Is the solution scalable enough to handle growing sales team content requirements? Is it compatible with high-quality multimedia content? Also, with the increase in a wide variety of customers, is content management expandable and customizable?
Scalability is often underestimated, but it has incomparable value.
Always remember, your organization is on the verge of expanding vertically and horizontally. Remember to factor in the sales team and all the interactions with customers.
Investing in a solution that is capable of dealing with large data volumes is what you should be going after.
11. Cost of purchasing
The cost of purchasing any SaaS-based solution depends on the number of users. If you are an enterprise organization, you may get a further discount on the subscription price. Compare the price, but don’t give too much attention to the price in comparison to the expected benefits.
However, do pay close attention to the vendor's quote or proposal for additional charges.
Keep Calm And Empower Your Sales Team
We recommend closely looking at each parameter mentioned in the above section.
Don’t haste and take every point into consideration while making the purchase decision in due time.
Additionally, we’ll recommend mapping and planning a sales enablement process along with stakeholder requirements. Involve the marketing team to get a wholesome view of all aspects of the content strategy and sales training.
When you make efforts to empower your sales team with the right training, content, and tools, they'll not only sell more but turn into honest brand advocates. Haven’t you been longing for that all your life?
The wait’s over. Hop on the sales enablement train and start your buying journey. Need help? Call us anytime!
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