Having the right tools and resources to convert leads and close customers is vital to any business, including small business. Converting leads into customers drives revenue and ultimately, it helps continue to grow your business. But how do you make sure your sales process has the right tools and resources to convert leads and move consumers through the buyer’s journey? The answer is sales enablement, and sales enablement should be part of your marketing strategy no matter how small your business is. In this article, you will learn what sales enablement is, and how you can include it in your marketing strategy to do more than just generate leads, but also assist the sales process to boost conversions, increase revenue, and grow your business.
What is Sales Enablement?
According to HubSpot, sales enablement “is the iterative process of providing your sales team with the resources they need to close more deals. These resources may include content, tools, knowledge, and information to effectively sell your product or service to customers.” As a small business owner if you are the marketer and salesperson, sales enablement is still an integral part of your sales process.
Sales enablement is a multifaceted concept, and it relates to both marketing and sales, which is where a lot of confusion around the concept lies. Who owns sales enablement? Marketers or sales people? Well, both do. Sales enablement is between marketing and sales, but it is ultimately a marketing task and therefore should be part of the marketing strategy. However, it’s a process that many marketers don’t think about as marketing and sales are often siloed – but they shouldn’t be. For a business to be successful sales and marketing need to work together, and sales enablement is the piece in the middle.
How does it work?
Marketers need to make sure sales have the resources and tools to improve the efficiency and success of the sales process. These resources could be as simple as FAQ (frequently asked questions) articles, product guides, comparison charts or videos … you get the picture. These resources should provide answers to questions that sales people often get during the sales process. Having this information on hand makes the sales process more efficient and improves the customer experience - ultimately leading to better conversion rates and more customers.
How to Include Sales Enablement in Your Marketing Strategy
Sales enablement is vital part of an effective marketing strategy. Here are the steps to identify what your sales enablement should be and how to include it in your marketing strategy.
Know what information your buyers need
The first step to including sales enablement in your marketing strategy is to make sure you have completed your buyer persona(s) and the buyer’s journey. During this process you will uncover the information your customers are looking for during the buying process. Make sure you are clear on the success factors and any perceived barriers that are important to them and what information they need to make a buying decision. A simple process to staying on top of this, is to write down the questions, or push backs, you have during the conversations with your prospects. This insight will tell you what content you need to create, it can be in the form of a blog article, FAQ article, comparison sheet or educational video - then add this to your content strategy.
Make sure it is easy to share
Next, make sure all this information is readily available and easy to share. This will enable you to share the information that your prospects need to move the sales process in a timely manner without taking up too much of your time. To optimise the way you share this content, create templated emails (pre-written emails, essentially) that address the common topics you have with your prospects during the sales process and link to the relevant articles. This will make it easy for you to send helpful articles and resources to a prospect at the end of a sales call.
