The decision has been made; this is the year your company is going to crush the competition. Although your reps have made great strides in closing more deals, siloed content and inefficient processes have resulted in missed opportunities. Opportunities that could have taken you that much closer to reaching your goal, if not achieving it. What if you could put processes in place that will help sales increase conversion rates? According to CSO Insights recent study − Sales Enablement Grows Up: 4th Annual Sales Enablement Study, companies with sales enablement reported a more than 22% increase in the number of sales reps achieving quota, and win rates for forecast deals rose by 14%.
While sales enablement consists of numerous components, there are a few key areas that can make a nearly immediate impact on sales rep’s success − and your bottom line.
Align Sales Processes to the Customer’s Buying Journey
Do you know your targeted buyer persona’s, their research and purchasing preferences? A customer-centric approach to sales enablement requires looking at your processes from the customer’s vantage point. Your sales processes need to be tightly aligned to each step along the customer journey and appropriate for your targeted buyers. But, since customer needs and desires are dynamic, a static sales approach could result in prospects abandoning their journey. To keep prospects engaged, you need the ability to quickly adapt to an increasingly dynamic environment. Let’s take a high-level look at the key stages of the buyer’s journey − Awareness, Consideration and Decision/Purchase, and how sales enablement can keep prospects advancing through the funnel.
Awareness Phase
Decision makers at this phase of the journey are looking at their competition and asking questions such as ‘what are they doing’, ‘how do my products or services stack-up?’, and ‘what would give me a competitive advantage’? When their competitors are already using your products, questions such as ‘what type of products are they?’ and ‘how can they also help me?’ begin to surface. During this phase, you should focus on delivering high-level and industry-specific content. By providing prospects with an array of informational material such as blog posts, infographics, eBooks, LinkedIn articles, editorial content, and industry white papers, prospects will be armed with the knowledge they need to move to the next step in their journey, the consideration phase.
Consideration Phase
During this phase, prospect engagements should focus on how your products will solve their challenges. Nurturing prospects through this phase requires an intimate understanding of their issues and laser focus on delivering the right content, at the right time. Throughout this stage, material, webinars, and presentations shouldn’t be too salesy, but rather emphasize the benefits of your products in relationship to the prospect’s pain points. Material such as product sheets, case studies, product demo videos, and product comparison white papers should be shared. This phase is all about making a strong business case for your products.
Decision/Purchase Phase
The final stage in the buying funnel is when prospects need validation and reassurance that the decision to go with your company is the right one. By this phase, you should have built the foundation of a trusting relationship with the prospect. To make the final buying decision, prospects want to be assured that they are receiving a quality product, the best value for their money and that your products will resolve their challenges − faster and more efficiently than your competitors’ products. To help sway the purchasing decision your way, content should include competitive analysis, return on investment (ROI) / total cost of ownership (TCO) information, customer testimonials, third-party data, detailed product literature, and when possible free trials or incentives.
So, the journey has come to an end? Far from it. Now that you’ve won the customer, you’ve entered the post-purchase phase. Continued engagements can be the difference between a loyal customer advocate and one that cuts ties with you and moves to a competitor. Ongoing nurturing is not only essential to keep your hard-won customers, but it can also have a positive impact on recurring revenue. While you don’t want to overwhelm customers with a constant bombardment of material, it’s vital to keep them informed and educated. For example, upgrades, new purchases or expansion opportunities can lead to additional revenue, while at the same time making your customers feel nurtured and empowered. Content can and should include newsletters, product sheets on new or enhanced products, white papers, analyst reports, industry news, event invitations, etc.
Enable Sales with Sales Enablement
With such a wide variety of content at your disposal, how can you be sure you’re sending the right material, at the right time, to the right buyer persona. And when questions arise, are you able to quickly respond with the most appropriate and up-to-date material? If we take another look at the buyer journey, what would happen at the awareness stage if you combined an eBook with a detailed competitive analysis? Or, what do you suppose the prospect’s reaction would be if you sent a highly technical white paper to the CMO? Chances are either of these scenarios would raise serious concerns about your ability to be a trusted partner that could resolve their challenges.
Enablix takes the guesswork out of what material to send, when and to whom. Sales reps no longer need to sift through multiple apps or sites to find the content needed. They provide a centralized hub that not only delivers a single source of relevant material for easy discovery and access, but it also infuses intelligence into the content process ensuring the material is appropriate for each stage of the buyer’s journey. Since decayed content is no longer in the collateral mix, your reps are assured that they are sending the most up-to-date content available. With Enablix, growing organizations are gaining content clarity, allowing them to sell as much as 3x faster.
