The year 2020 has really turned our lives upside down. Much of the world is now working from home full time – some while attempting to homeschool children and/or care for infants or elderly relatives. For me personally, with two toddlers in tow, achieving any semblance of normalcy has been challenging to say the least. But leaning on technology to make me more efficient and effective “at work” has helped. You can read more about the tools I’m using to navigate full-time remote work here.
The Mediafly customers I’ve spoken with over the last few weeks have echoed this sentiment. Yes, life is hard right now, but technology can significantly ease the burden. For these sales organizations, sales enablement technology, specifically, has helped them ensure their sellers have everything they need to lead prescriptive and engaging remote sales interactions that drive revenue.
Are you considering implementing a sales enablement technology to help your sales organization transition to remote selling?
While sales enablement technology is proven to drive business results including improved buyer satisfaction, increased sales and revenue, higher sales quota attainment, and greater average order values, getting the buy-in you need to purchase sales enablement technology can be easier said than done. Even more so in times of economic uncertainty. How do you build a business case that effectively conveys both the importance of sales enablement and the urgency of implementing a solution now? These tips can help:
Sell your problem, not the sales enablement solution
As with any sale, you start with pain. If you go to your boss and say ‘sales enablement brings sales and marketing departments together and supports salespeople through every stage of a deal’, they probably won’t care all that much.
If instead, you tell them what misalignment between sales and marketing is costing them – in both cold hard cash and wasted time – you’re much more likely to get their attention.
According to SiriusDecisions, poor findability and usability of content cost enterprise organizations an average of $2.3 million annually.
It helps to properly prepare for this conversation by gathering data from your own organization.
- You could survey your sales team to see how much time they estimate they spend looking for content and how well supported they feel by marketing generally.
- You could survey your marketing department to find out how much time they spend creating resources ad hoc, or taking calls from salespeople who can’t find what they’re looking for.
- You could monitor activities for a period of time for more empirical data. How many leads are followed up? How quickly? How successfully?
- You could even talk to customer success to see if there are any customers you could reach out to for case studies – for example, to see if the sales process was as seamless as it ought to have been, whether more resources would have been helpful, or if they have any other ideas about how to improve the buyer journey.
Now that you’ve drowned them, you can save them
Once you’ve laid out the challenges your sales and marketing people are experiencing – and the cost to your organization – it’s time to start talking about what could be. It’s not just cost and time savings compared to the status quo – it’s process improvements, cultural transformation. What could you gain by a more unified, more customer-centric selling process?
Of course, the most obvious benefit is increased sales. There’s lots of data out there that supports the idea that sales enablement improves close rates.
Having a sales enablement charter is linked to a 27.6% increase in quota attainment. CSO Insights
But there are additional benefits.
- Brand perception is improved thanks to the more unified messaging coming from all customer-facing departments.
- Staff satisfaction is improved. With sales and marketing working together, morale is boosted.
- Salespeople are more engaged. The training component of sales enablement gives them more learning and development opportunities, which gives them greater job satisfaction.
- Customer experience is optimized. They receive the level of contact and the resources they need when they need them.
Think about what all these things would look like in your specific organization. Like any good sales pitch, this one should be tailored, so use names and real-life examples wherever you can.
Prepare for objections to sales enablement
Change is hard. People are inclined to resist, even when they know that that change will be for the better. Know that however good your pitch is, there will be objections. The biggest are likely to be budget and the disruptive effect of change itself.
Budget – Some elements of implementing a sales enablement strategy are big budget items. There is a cost to training, a cost to new technology, even a cost to building the right resources to support your salespeople and help your customers. Identify what these costs would be for your business – and the expected ROI if you can. Vendors should be able to help you with those figures.
Lay these figures out alongside the cost of sticking with the status quo – and make sure you’re looking at the long-term forecast, not just the first year. If you’re right about the benefits that sales enablement would have for your business, there’s no argument.
Disruption – Salespeople already spend too much time on non-selling activities. No one wants them to do even less selling. Sometimes the impression is that sales enablement will be a distraction – but if properly implemented that couldn’t be further from the truth. Go into the conversation with an idea of how a sales enablement strategy will support salespeople to enable them to do more selling, close more deals and help more customers. It doesn’t need to be a complete strategy, just a starting point. Think particularly about onboarding and how this will be rolled out across the organization.
And if all else fails, take advantage of free trials available right now to stop hypothesizing the ROI sales enablement can bring to your unique sales organization and prove it instead. Mediafly is currently offering a free, 60-day trial of our interactive presentation and content management software for up to 100 users. You can sign up here.
Have you already sold sales enablement into your business? What were your most successful techniques and how effective was the transformation? We’d love to hear from you! Join the conversation on social.
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