Waste of money. We have overspent. Just a waste of time. We often here in marketing team review meetings. Let’s align the marketing and sales team more. Let’s focus on content. Let’s do support sales with the right content at the right time. Sales enablement and sales effectiveness depend on the right content.
Studies say that:
30% – 40% of the marketing budget wasted on attracting wrong leads
60-70% of the sales staff will say; they do not get the right Content to provide it to their customer. They don’t trust marketing, so they tweak it and send!
More than 60% of marketing staff complaints they don’t get feedback for leads generated
What is Sales enablement?
Sales enablement is about – enabling marketing and sales activities with the right Content to get the right customer.
The world of business is a chessboard. You have to strategize and make the right moves at right times, to win the game. This article of sales enablement and content marketing-focused towards sales enabling b2b sales process.
Business is all about many ‘C’s. It is not about Capital, but of identifying the right audience and within in that right contact.
Right, contact here it means, the decision-maker. Sales enablement and Sales optimizations can be achieved only if we get RIGHT leads and RIGHT customer at the right time. Check out how sales enablement can bring RIGHT sales READY Leads and then CONVERT to Customer. Off all, CONTENT and TIME are key players.
IDENTFY RIGHT CONTACT, COMMUNICATE WITH THE RIGHT CONTACT COMMUNICATE RIGHT CONTENT BASED ON THE CONTEXT COMMUNICATE AT RIGHT TIME CREATE A CONTACT / LASTING BUYER EXPERIENCE) CONVERT THE CONTACT TO A CUSTOMER THE SALE AND REVENUE
So the discussion or topic is not about ‘sales’ enablement alone. Enablement is about the mix of marketing and sales process, where necessary infrastructure, team and process is in place to attain the above goal. That is called sales enablements. This enablement will improve overall marketing efficiency and high ROI.
It’s all about aligning sales-marketing-team- resources.
It is about aligning marketing and sales process to get the right contact, right context, right Content and right customer in the right place at the right time. Aligning the goals of both Marketing and Sales process equal and vital here for the enablement effectiveness. There must be a high degree of process excellence is required. Right technologies and automation will add value and buyer experiences, along with the empowered staf
Buyer behaviour is changing: in today’s’ world, the customer is more knowledgeable than the sale executive. The b2b marketing world is knowledge-based sales. Customer is taking decisions before meeting people if required. Post pandemic, the meeting itself is not an allowed process. Buyers do not want salespeople on their premises. This is the right time when we want to take enablement ahead. Digital sales enablement will help the sales folks to close more deals.
The summary of what “Gartner mentions sales enablement as tasks, activities, processes, systems, data, information that support and promote knowledge-based sales interactions with customers and prospects.”
Seamless integration of tasks and process, thereby active connect the involvement of all stakeholders with customers.
Creating the right content and distribution at the right time
Shortening of sales cycles
The summary of Forester says is that, It’s about Buyer Experience. Sales Enablement is designed to deliver value to buyers, to inspire buyers.
Internally this process will improve marketing and sales efficiency, by streamlining the entire sale s cycle with Content delivery integration and visualization of data analytics.
So what are the steps to be taken for sales enablement?
1. Understanding customer – CONTACT
Here segmentation, customer personal and customer psychographics
It is aligning marketing and sales processes to be agile. Here marketing process and the sales systems, process and team must be proactive and act quickly, or on time, that dynamically communicate with the customers.
2. Right Content – CONTENT STRATEGY
If the CUSTOMER is the king, then CONTENT is the kingmaker. For your the sales enablement success, Content is the critical enabler for market success. Provide full information to the customer, as and when it is required. It is not about bombarding with Content. The content strategy is to have Content in capsules or right dosages in all touchpoints from lead to sales. Content can be from value propostion creation in marketing to commercial & value proposal to the customer. Here understand the marketing and sales cycle, based on that craft right content, distribute Content at all touchpoints. We can even say, Content enabled sales process.
3. Digitization – AUTOMATION
Sales enablement is not just an integrated process approach; it is about automation and digitization. It is about the decision to go for automation, wherever applicable, to provide the best customer experience. Digitizing this process, integrate the tools to have marketing efficiencies and ROI—applications such as Web Applications, Account management, Content distribution and sales process effectiveness measurements. Content distribution and it’s effective plays a vital role for both sales folks and customer.
4.Building Sales expertise – PEOPLE
Sales enablement is not just an integrative process approach or even digitization. Sales Effectiveness comes from the people working on it. It is about the marketing and sales of the team’s knowledge and skills in the process. Do they have expertise in doing this enablement? Strong and high proficiency in b2b digital marketing skills is critical here. Do they right skills and competence in providing this customer experience through sales enablement?
5.Right Software – TECHNOLOGY
Automation brings tremendous Sales Effectiveness. However, the same automation does not overkill your process. Deploying fancy or large systems or a famous brand for your business is not sales enablement. Having AI-based sales and marketing software can even kill your leads. Majority of the implementations fails due to unplanned digital assets. Random, overestimated or under the estimated purchase of software for your process.
Find out an internal champion or external specialist to help you identify the sales enablement process and right software suitable for your sales cycle.
Marketing technology provider, HubSpot says it is about technology, processes and Content that allows your sales team to sell much more efficiently and at a higher speed.
Let’s conclude!
The fact is sales enablement is all about aligning sales-marketing process to make sure that your sales team/ sales process is empowered with right Content, distribute it, at right the time, to provide a great customer experience. So sales enablement and content strategy go hand in hand. Sales Enablement and Sales Effectiveness depends on the right content strategy.