Webster’s Dictionary defines sales enablement as… wait a minute, this opening doesn’t work for two reasons:
- Any writer worth their salt knows this is a cliché opening to any piece of writing
- Sales enablement isn’t defined in the dictionary
At Seismic, we have a pretty good idea of what the phrase means to us, but it still seems like this term has different meanings depending on the organization.
Here are some key aspects of the practice (in my humble opinion)
Content, and More Specifically the Right Content
All too often marketing creates tons of content that they believe to be wonderful and perfectly crafted to move leads through the buyer’s journey—I’m a marketer so I can say these things. The truth is that only some of it is, and sales is probably using only a fraction of that great content. A solid sales enablement function has the right technology to support it, which allows marketing to see what content is moving prospects along the buyer’s journey, while simultaneously allowing your sales reps to easily find it and personalize it for each buyer.
Communication and Collaboration
Marketing, sales, and sales enablement teams need to work together to achieve the best results. However, we all know the age old tale of sales and marketing’s difficulty working together. So, how do you get around this? Communication and collaboration. Provide your sales reps with information they want, positioning they need, and everything to help them sell. Work together with all the stakeholders, and use each of their areas of expertise to create the best content possible—that also happens to close your deals faster.
Analytics
How can you optimize your team and content if you don’t know how effective it is to begin with? If you want to be successful with sales enablement you must develop good insights into your content delivery, engagement with content, and what content is resonating with buyers. All these important analytics will allow you to follow up each piece of content with exactly the right content to close the deal faster – are you starting to see the trend here?
I’ll boil all that down and wrap it up with the Seismic definition: sales enablement is the strategic use of people, processes, and technology to improve sales team’s productivity and drive more revenue.
Okay, I’ve had my turn to talk. I want to know how you think about sales enablement. What are the most important things to know? The biggest challenges? And what tools do you use to succeed? That’s why we’ve created #AlignmentHour, a new sales enablement Twitter Chat hosted by Seismic.
Join us for our very first #AlignmentHour chat on Tuesday, January 16th at 2 PM EST where you’ll have the chance to share your perspective on these questions and engage with other sales and marketing leaders on the topic of sales enablement.
