Sales enablement is a term used to describe the tools, technology, practices, and processes companies use to improve sales processes and productivity. By using sales enablement, a company’s sales process can be transformed for the better because there is a commitment given to execute sales in a more successful way. However, as the customer base grows it becomes harder to track where a customer is in the sales pipeline, who are taking ownership of what deal and what needs to be done to get a prospect over the line. Productivity begins to suffer and leads begin to fall through the net due to a lack of structures.
Take some ways to help transform your processes:
1. Automate Your Data Entry
First thing first, data entry is a crucial but time-consuming task. By eliminating your team’s need to spend time on menial tasks like data entry, they can spend their time more wisely on bringing prospects over the line. Therefore, helping to improve your sales process and speed up the time it takes to convert prospects. Once that kind of commitment has been made, it helps your company move forward and embrace sales growth.
- Better Lead Nurturing
According to experience, it takes 8-12 contacts to convert a lead. The lead must first be convinced to buy from you using the valuable, informative and relevant content. No business can achieve optimal success without sales training. When you invest in ongoing sales training for your sales team, you give your reps the tools and information they need to sell smarter. Offering ongoing sales training is easy when you invest in e-learning.
3. Onboarding
To create a stellar sales team, you need to hire the right people and effectively onboard them to drive their success.
Your training sessions, sales coaching, and sales content will enable you to effectively onboard these new hires, leading to reduced turnover and greater productivity.
4. Sales Strategy
Part of sales enablement is making a sales strategy that encompasses how to best reach your potential customers and deliver the best customer service.
The first step in this process is creating buyer personas. Once your company has established who your ideal customers are, your sales team will stop wasting time reaching out to those who are not qualified.
This then gives them the time to focus on the people who are willing and able to purchase from you. Doing this helps transform your sales process to a more direct, hands-on relationship approach that will help increase your sales. The sales process can be very daunting, and often, overwhelming. Here are several questions owners should be able to answer:
– Does your sales process executing a few hours, or keep going several months?
- Where do you find customers who are willing and able to buy what do you offer?
- Does your customer rely on referrals to make a buying decision?
- Who is the decision maker for the good or service you are selling?
- What is the common budget customer spends on your product or service?
- What is the conversion rate to execute a sale?
5. Embrace Analytics
Analytics can be overwhelming; however, by using analytics to monitor your sales process and your sales funnel, you will be able to see where in your buying process you are losing customers.
Once you know where the problems are in your system, you’ll be able to work on fixing them and delivering a smoother buying cycle that customers will have no problems navigating.
6. Integrate Sales and Marketing Teams
Sales and marketing can be considered as two peas in the same pod. These two teams always had some overlap, but now that overlap is more frequent and pronounced. Encouraging your sales team to develop, and then stick to, a sales routine can help.
These two teams now have to work together rather than as two completely separate entities. When they do, you’ll have a more cohesive unit, which has proven to increase sales.
Conclusion
First of all, make your sales order process available 24/7. Your customers need to know that you are available and responsive to their needs so if you can send a document via email no matter what time of day it is, they will see you are quick to respond and therefore reliable. It also helps save them time and money because email and technologies are quicker than a drive across town for a short meeting. Making a sale is difficult. But being armed with these six strategies may position your company to increase its chances of winning business and hitting its targets.
