Sales managers, more than anything, are coaches. Their job is to put their team in a position to succeed by providing them with tools, strategies, and encouragement that helps reps sell better. To do this managers need to be constantly on the search for tactics and resources that will aid them in their efforts to motivate and support their teams. A great sales manager will have a host of qualities that makes them effective.
But oftentimes managers are so swamped with responsibilities that it can be difficult to devote the attention necessary for developing their team the way they’d like. As such, it’s possible that sales teams can begin to evolve and grow on their own, attempting to keep pace with an industry that is changing every day.
To keep a sales team acting as one cohesive unit that’s operating on the same page, sales managers need to ensure they are staying up-to-date with the latest technologies and trends. Sales enablement is a field that has experience rapid growth and provides managers with the perfect opportunity to supply their teams with invaluable tools. As such it’s important to understand how that happens and to follow sales enablement best practices. Here are a few reasons why sales team managers should leverage sales enablement for their teams.
Improve the Effectiveness of Outreaches
One of the most difficult tasks in Sales is getting your foot in the door. No matter whether a lead is marketing qualified or cold, it’s hard to clear the hurdle of the initial outreach. As buyers become more accustomed to personalized selling – 74% of buyers are annoyed when content doesn’t speak to them according to CMO – Sales, more than ever, needs to be on point with their engagement.
Sales managers can ease their team’s difficulties in outreach by providing them with tools that give them a full picture of the buyers they are engaging. Sales reps will spend a majority of their time within an organization’s CRM to learn more about a buyer, track activities, and plan their outreach. But only focusing on sales technology ignores a treasure trove of information that Marketing has acquired.
A MAP hosts all of Marketing’s interactions with a buyer and can provide vital data to Sales. This information includes the specific web pages, content, and campaigns a buyer has interacted with. Knowing those granular details could be the difference between success and failure with an outreach attempt.
But, Sales doesn’t often have the time to be hopping between the two disparate technologies to dig through analytics. So sales managers need to ensure they have everything they need readily available. A sales enablement platform integrates both solutions so that information flows in both directions. When a sales rep is looking at a potential buyer within the CRM, they will immediately have all of the information Marketing has collected and can start crafting an outreach that will feel more personal.
Get a Clear Picture of Your Buyers’ Needs
Every sales manager knows the importance of content. Not only are they constantly hearing about it in meetings with Marketing, but there’s proof in data too: a DemandGen survey found that 64% of respondents said that content had a significant impact on their purchasing decision.
However, content isn’t effective just because it’s sent to a buyer. There’s nothing that says someone will respond or be engaged by a piece that is sent to them regardless of the content. Each buyer is unique and will have interest in particular solutions and products. For a content piece to work it needs to truly resonate with the individual who receives it.
This is a difficult proposition for Sales because it is often nearly impossible to ascertain why a piece worked or didn’t work. A buyer who is willing to openly discuss the effectiveness of content is a rare – and maybe nonexistent – breed. A sales manager needs to implement a solution that will allow their team to gather that information on their own, and derive their own conclusions from the data.
Content analytics reveal a complete picture of a buyer. By tracking the minute details of how someone interacts with a piece of content, Sales can gain a clear understanding of their needs. Instead of guessing and assuming, content analytics show exactly what parts they engaged with, and for how long. Using this information, sales managers can prime their teams for interactions by shedding light on the specific needs a buyer has, and how reps should go about speaking to those needs.
Allow Your Team to Create Their Own Content
As previously mentioned, content is important – personalized content even more so. But creating personalized content is a time-consuming endeavor. Marketing generally doesn’t have the resources or bandwidth to fulfill one-off requests and doesn’t want Sales creating their own for branding and consistency reasons.
So what’s a sales team manager to do? They need to enable their team to provide buyers with the kind of content that will resonate, but they also need to respect Marketing’s time and wishes. A sales enablement solution that allows the sales team to create their own content – like Seismic’s LiveDocs – is the best of both worlds.
This type of technology creates a middle ground that makes both teams happy. Marketing uploads a piece of content to a central location accessible by everyone. They then mark which parts of the content should be configurable, and which should never change. This removes the possibility of a mistake that ruins the look and feel of a piece, but allows Sales to quickly create a personalized piece of content.
By allowing their teams to create one-off personalized content, sales team managers put their reps in a position to succeed. The team can use personalized pieces during every stage of the buyer’s journey to speak directly to individuals and their specific needs. In turn, managers can rest easy knowing that their efforts to leverage sales enablement have given their teams a whole host of tools to improve their productivity and results.
