What Sales Leaders Get Wrong About Sales Enablement

Running a sales enablement program feels like playing tug-of-war.

Wait, you mean the children’s game where two teams stand at opposite ends of a rope, and you have to use your team’s strength to get the rope over to your side? Yep, that’s the one! But it turns out this simple schoolyard game might not be as simple as you remembered. Because it isn’t about strength at all. In fact, it takes strategy to win.

First, mastering tug-of-war starts with alternating your strongest and weakest members in line so your power is balanced. Next, the entire team should be facing forward, feet shoulder-width apart, leaning backward, and pulling at the same pace and rhythm. And finally, you need a good leader upfront to motivate and guide the team to victory.

Sales enablement is oftentimes treated as a simple solution to poor sales performance. But it too needs a good strategy,?the entire company and leaders working together to win.?Why do some sales enablement programs fail at helping teams sell better??In many situations, it’s because the marketing and sales teams don’t get support company-wide. It takes more than plopping spreadsheets and sales decks in front of reps to help them pitch.

Author and sales expert Zig Ziglar once stated, “I have always said that everyone is in sales. Maybe you don’t hold the title of salesperson, but if the business you are in requires you to deal with people, you, my friend, are in sales.” The truth is everyone is responsible for sales enablement: the CEO, customer support, human resources—everyone.

In this article, we’ll answer the question: what is sales enablement? Once that’s out of the way, we’ll share how to create and execute a strategy that goes beyond the bare minimum, as well as explain why everyone’s responsible for its success. To wrap things up, we’ll give some tips for getting key players on board with empowering, motivating, and transforming your sales teams’ results.

What is sales enablement?

Sales enablement is the strategic process of providing your sales team with the right training and mindset development, mentorship for both leaders and sales reps, technology, strategies, systems and processes, content and information, and ongoing support to learn how to close sales.?In short, it’s empowering them with all the resources and tools they’ll need at every touchpoint with customers. This way they can qualify leads, communicate, learn how to contact leads, engage, and sell confidently and scale operations.

Just like a successful game of tug-of-war doesn’t mean telling 5 people to grab a rope and pull as hard as they can, sales enablement is not just providing basic content and information and hoping for the best. It’s a collaborative process with many departments and executives working together to help every member of the sales team.

Why is sales enablement so important?

Sales enablement is a pretty big deal in today’s B2B sales landscape. That’s because it systematizes the process of selling, guarantees the execution of your sales strategies, and helps SDRs and BDRs become more informed and consistently meet revenue targets.

Here are 3 major ways in which your organization will look different with a sales enablement strategy in place:

• Leadership is not overwhelmed: Sales leaders usually invest the most training and energy into their top talent. With a sales enablement strategy, underperforming reps get access to the same information and resources as top sellers, and managers don’t have to spread their resources thin.
• Customers can self-serve: Most B2B buyers would rather learn about your product or service at their own pace than speak directly to a sales rep immediately. When you contact them at inappropriate times, your conversation rate may lower. With sales enablement content on hand, reps will have material at every touchpoint to help buyers learn and make decisions on their own.
• More time for selling: Sellers will no longer have to look in many different systems to find information—which can result in sending customers outdated files. With the right files available at the touch of a button, sellers can communicate confidently and have more time for selling.

Who’s responsible for sales enablement?

Many believe the marketing and sales teams are solely responsible for sales enablement; marketing collaborates with sales to provide content and resources that’ll help them during their sales process. One important resource marketing and sales enablement teams might create is a lead scoring system—a way to measure a decision-maker’s interest in your product or service from your marketing campaigns and see if they match the demographics you’re targeting.

This kind of partnership does work, and maybe your company can keep chugging along with sales and marketing off in their own corner, while everyone else only hears from them at the monthly meeting. But a true sales enablement strategy gives everyone a role in the development of the sales team.

You may be thinking—other departments have their own problems and responsibilities to think about, and it’s impossible to worry about both. But this isn’t true. A sales-oriented company is fully capable of prioritizing their sales team every step of the way and handling their own duties.

Here’s how:

• Founders and CEOs:?Companies reflect the personalities, strengths and weaknesses of their leaders. Founders and CEOs are responsible for cultivating a company culture that makes the sales team the “heart of the business.” They can make that happen in two ways: One, leaders should understand the fundamentals of the sales cycle from start to finish and how their sales reps think so they know what a successful team looks like. Two, make your marketing and sales enablement teams the most valuable department and pour money and resources into your program. Leaders set the tone on how the sales organization is viewed, and when it’s time to pitch to investors they can explain why the money will be going to them.
• Customer Service and Support:?Customer service can provide data on common obstacles decision-makers face when using a product or service. It’s also important for both departments to be aligned to strategize on how to manage tough customer relationships and prevent churn on their customer journey.
• Human Resources:?HR plays a huge role in developing and nurturing the sales team. They should understand the sales process and sales enablement tools so they’ll know what talent to look for when recruiting and what training new hires will need.

Sales enablement strategy tips to get company-wide support

A sales enablement strategy outlines your vision and goals, and documents the steps you’ll take to get there in enough detail so that anyone can follow along. We’ll look at 4 tips to creating your strategy: understanding, automation, content, and accountability.

Understand why your organization needs sales enablement

Everyone who works with customers or plays a part in developing the sales team must know what sales enablement is and why your organization needs it. So your first step is to identify which aspects of sales you’re having trouble in. Some examples are:

• Example one:?SDRs have a high churn rate and many have reported prospecting for leads to be too time-consuming they’ve reached burnout. Your strategy can cover finding better?B2B prospecting tools ?that’ll help them get quality leads in record time.
• Example two:?New hires report a lack of mentorship from management. Your strategy can cover new training practices for them.
• Example three:?You notice sales targets are going unmet month after month. Your strategy can cover updating your sales enablement process with better resources.

Use sales enablement automation platforms

Sales enablement automation is software to take the repetitive, manual tasks that are sucking your time away and make them happen automatically. Examples include searching for contact information during prospecting, sending out outreach campaigns, organizing and updating your customer relationship management system, and much more.

There are a plethora of sales enablement automation tools and platforms designed for teams. Some edit and share content, while others record information into your CRM or look at reports to monitor lead activity. Traditionally, marketing and sales have each used their own sets of tools, but today, both marketing and sales departments can benefit from robust shared platforms that let them access information together.

Create sales enablement content

Sales enablement content is everything sales reps use to educate themselves and their prospects and customers. It can include case studies, blog posts, product guides, pre-recorded demos, customer testimonials, product reviews, webinars, video content such as expert interviews, product comparisons, and Q&As. Include other departments and their data in the process.

It’s important to keep all of your content stored and updated in one central database that all salespeople can access. No one enjoys sending a product guide to a hot new prospect, then having to apologize because it turned out to be last year’s edition. Dropbox, OneDrive, Google Drive, or any other collaborative file storage platform is an important sales enablement tool. You should also categorize content by running a customer segmentation analysis and offer suggestions as to which buying stage and which touchpoint sales reps should send it based on the segment. For example, enterprise customers should receive a video case study when they submit their information through a lead capture form. This way, reps won’t have to guess and will know exactly how, when, and where to send sales enablement content.

Hold leaders accountable for success!

The success of your sales enablement program relies on the department leaders and the heads of the company itself. If the program fails, it is 100% leadership’s fault. That might sound harsh, but when you’re on a flight, who do you hold responsible for making sure the plane lands safely? The flight attendants? The ground crew? The engineers who designed the plane? No, you hold the pilot accountable for your flight’s success. Here are a few ideas to help you incorporate accountability into your sales enablement strategy:

• Set clear expectations as to how each leader will support the sales enablement strategy. For example, HR can upgrade their recruitment technology to find the best salespeople faster, so your organization will only have the best reps to execute the strategy.
• Offer a voice to your sales reps, no matter how brutally honest. Give them a channel to report back to executives whether they’re being fully supported in the sales enablement process by their managers. If not, apply a penalty.
• Founders and CEOs can offer an incentive, like a holiday trip or tech gadgets to sales enablement teams—both to leaders and to sales reps—who show improvement and add to and uphold company culture.

Next-level sales enablement tools

Lusha Extension for B2B prospecting

?Lusha Extension ?is a Chrome extension that helps salespeople find emails and other contact information for prospects within seconds. What makes this software such a time-saver is that it can extract email addresses and phone numbers from social media sites like LinkedIn and company websites. Lusha Extension has a remarkable 90% accuracy rate; that means low bounce rates on your emails and cold calls, and less time going back and re-looking for contact details. Also, the extension delivers firmographics and demographics such as job role, industry, employee headcount, revenue, and more so you don’t have to use a separate tool to collect this data.

Humanic AI for personality assessment

Sales reps spend a heck of a lot of time trying to write the perfect sales email, pitch, or content for social media. Why is that? Unless you’re a psychic, it’s hard for most reps to read others, and we’re afraid of missing the mark when sending a message. While we can’t help you become a psychic, a personality assessment like?Humanic AI ?can get you pretty dang close. These sales enablement tools can predict the personality and specific traits of your prospect based on free data available around the web and on their social media profiles. Humanic starts by identifying which personality type your prospect fits in: extroverted, introverted, or somewhere in between. The software also advises sales enablement teams which tone, word choice, and approach to use when contacting prospects. It can even recommend email subject lines!

Membrain for prospecting, pipeline management and ABM

Membrain ?is a B2B sales enablement platform that offers a suite of solutions for sales teams. One solution it boasts is prospecting that helps your reps build a quality pipeline. Automation is great, but sometimes sales reps automate the wrong tasks and accidentally add unqualified leads to their pipeline. This tool automatically scores your leads so you always know who to reach out and connect with first. Another cool feature Membrain adds to the sales enablement process is for teams who use account-based marketing. With it, you can monitor your accounts’ behaviors and map all their decisions so you can make the right interactions at the right time.

Key Takeaways

• Everyone is in sales. Founders, CEOs, customer support, and even HR are responsible for the success of the sales enablement strategy.
• Sales enablement tools are your best friend when executing your strategy. Begin with a prospecting tool like?Lusha Extension , which helps you find prospects’ emails and phone numbers within seconds and helps you qualify and engage.
• Leadership is responsible for making sure a company is sales oriented. They can do this by understanding the sales cycle and what the sales team is going through. Then, they’ll be better equipped to build each department to support sales enablement.