Where sales enablement plays a role in marketing strategy

 What is sales enablement?

First, let’s examine what sales enablement is.

Let’s say you own a business and have a wonderful innovative product you want your sales team to sell. You could give them the product to sell and hope for the best or you can onboard your sales team to understand the product, what it does, how it works and why the customer should buy it. When sales teams do not have clear understanding of a product (or service) they often find it hard to “sell” and effectively communicate the reason why someone should buy a product (or service). This is where sales enablement will assist.

Sales enablement is the essential, strategic, and ongoing process marketers use to equip sales teams to sell effectively. This includes tools, strategies, content, knowledge and information. Not only will sales enablement help your sales team bring in more business, but it can also be a way to strengthen your relationships with your customers over time. Every sales team needs sales enablement training and development and a sales playbook that helps them keep on track.

An effective sales enablement process

 When creating any effective sales enablement process, it is essential to follow a checklist or specifics to include in your sales enablement playbook.

1. Strategy. It all begins here. A strategy should be well aligned with the company’s goals and objectives. The strategy should also give direction. It will help guide the sales team on the right path and also uncover areas where there could be a need of improvements.
2. Tools and technology. A vast number of tools that focus on specific functions of the sales process exist. Finding the right tools can allow your sales team to effectively boost their sales and save valuable time.
3. Training. Continuous training is vital for your sales team. Training will arm your team with effective skills, and processes to close deals. As well as keeping them up to date with ever-evolving sales strategies. An upskilled team can also feel more valued as workers and benefit from growth within the company.
4. Content. One key component in building confidence for your sales team is the content provided for them. The right content such as blogs, email templates, case studies, proposals and messaging guides will help your sales team tailor their approach to be aligned with the business and build trust with customers.

All four of these components are fundamental in constructing a successful sales enablement within your business driving better performance from sales teams. To be successful, the role marketers play in the process of sales enablement and how the overarching marketing strategy is pivotal – essentially is a game-changer for businesses.

Marketing involvement

Sales and marketing both own sales enablement – and this is something that many companies don’t understand. The sales team have a more direct engagement with the consumers or decision makers within organizations. They can provide feedback as to what materials, content or even extra training they may need in order to resonate with consumers more successfully. The marketing team can work a little more behind the scenes and can provide, create and source the content and materials needed. And the process of creating such content is called - content marketing.

Content Marketing

It’s important to note that sales enablement differs from content marketing but also have a lot relating to each other. One of the marketing strategies; Content marketing is the process of delivering and developing assets the marketing team primarily deals with when working within the sales enablement. These assets include blogs, newsletters, social media posts, emails and any other means for the sales team to convey a clear message across to consumers. They can be delivered to consumers through websites, social media platforms, emails and other marketing channels. When implemented effectively, content marketing is a really good way to generate leads and closing deals.

The major difference is that sales enablement primarily attends to how the sales team will engage with the consumers and distribution of products or services. Whereas content marketing is more focused on the assets created for consumers.

Internally for a business, the marketing team and sales team need to work well cohesively to make positive impacts on the business. We can understand how important the role of a sales enablement can be for a business. Not only does it play a huge role for the sales team to help consumers make well informed purchase decisions, but for marketers, a sales enablement is a crucial element and ultimately it should be a huge part of what needs to be considered to construct a complete marketing strategy.

Image Source: Unsplash

Written by Fion Trieu