Forrester defined Sales Enablement as “ a strategic, ongoing process that equips all client-facing employees with the ability to consistently and systematically have a valuable conversation with the right set of customer stakeholders at each stage of the customer’s problem-solving life cycle to optimize the return of investment of the selling system.” In other words, Sales Enablement is the iterative process providing salespeople with the right tools to improve their performance and efficiency.
10 Key Sales Enablement definitions:
1. Sales Content Management
2. Sales Readiness
3. Sales Productivity
4. Sales Enablement tool
5. Buyer persona
6. Lead qualification
7. Lead Generation
8. Lead Engagement
9. Sales training
10. Sales coaching
Certainly, it is very intricate and has an impact on various aspects of a company. So, whether you’re new to Sales Enablement or are deep into applying it to your organization, it is always helpful to have these key concepts in mind.
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1. Sales Content Management
Sales content management is about creating, organizing and optimizing sales collateral. Correspondingly, it enables teams throughout the entire sales process. Thus, it has two main goals:
- Ensure that sales collateral is accessible to sellers;
- Develop and organize content specific to each stage of the sales process.
In fact, some sales enablement strategies are content based and focus solely on this aspect. Emphatically, it is a strong way to boost your sales team’s effectiveness and productivity. Indeed, it saves time and contributes to marketing and sales alignment.
2. Sales Readiness
Sales readiness ensures that salespeople have the skills and knowledge required to address their prospects throughout their journey. It serves two main goals:
- Increase conversion;
- Impact prospects with the sales speech.
In other words, sales readiness goes beyond closing deals. In thruth, a sales speech should impact all prospects.Undoubtedly, it is key to make an impression no matter the outcome. For instance, they should be left with the thought that they had an enriching conversation with an expert in their domain.
3. Sales Productivity
Productivity means getting a higher output for the input invested. Therefore, sales productivity is closing more deals in the time your sales teams invest. Moreover, it is also the product of two other factors:
- Sales efficiency: refers to the smart allocation of sales resources such as budget and especially time. It involves maximizing the amount of productive time for the sales team.
- Sales effectiveness: refers to how resources are used to achieve settled goals. It involves maximizing the output from the same level of input.
4. Sales Enablement tools
Sales Enablement strategies and initiatives are often powered by technological tools that come in different forms and address different needs. To illustrate, a few examples below :
- Customer experience;
- Process automation;
- Content management;
- Lead qualification;
- Sales intelligence.
AI and machine learning power many of these tools to properly leverage data and generate sales boosting content or insights. The most wholesome products, Sales Enablement platforms, aim to be end-to-end solutions.
5. Buyer persona
In essence, a buyer persona is a detailed description of someone who embodies your target audience. It is a fictional person that has the characteristics of your best potential customers. A complete buyer persona should include:
- Demographic details;
- Interests;
- Behavioral traits;
- Fictional name for identification.
With this in mind, marketing teams are able to better understand the potential customers’ goals, pain points and behaviors. Straightaway, thay can create targeted content and guide the brand’s voice or communication channel accordingly.
6. Lead qualification
Lead qualification is determining if a lead fits your buyer persona and has a good chance of becoming a customer. To do so, sales and marketing collaborate to decide on which leads are more likely to convert.
7. Lead Generation
Lead generation is the process of attracting prospects to build an interest into a company’s products or services. To demonstrate, there are various lead generations strategies such as:
- Paid Ad media;
- Blogging;
- Events and Seminars;
- Landing pages on websites.
Lead generation strategies are diverse and can be used simultaneously. They differ according to industry, company size, structure or goals.
8. Sales engagement
Sales engagement covers the interactions between buyers and sellers. An engagement is any kind of action a prospect takes on a channel owned by the seller. Actions such as opens, clicks, likes, replies or emails can be considered sales engagement. In other words, sales engagement is also the result of a good lead qualification and lead generation strategy.
9. Sales training
Sales training provides high-level knowledge to boost sales representatives in the understanding of their environment. To be effective, new sales representatives must understand their customers, product, and territory. Sales training focuses on actionable strategies that can be applied to any sales environment.
10. Sales coaching
Sales coaching helps sales representatives fix specific points and continually improve as individuals. Contrary to sales training, that focuses groups, sales coaching focuses on how individuals can improve their overall sales ability. Sales representatives are individually assessed first to identify their weaknesses and work on improving overtime.