Sales enablement is about helping your sales team learn how to sell effectively. It can be by providing information to share with their prospects or offering tools, knowledge, and strategies to enhance their skills.
Whilst sales processes are quite easy to track through metrics and KPI’s, it is good practice to get a deeper understanding of how teams are currently performing before implementing enablement strategies. A great way of doing this is by asking employees to fill out an evaluation form before changing anything.
It is also important to recognize that choosing the right sales enablement strategies is crucial for your business as it can determine the rate of the sales team’s success and your company’s overall performance.
To help you start, we collected these five best strategies you can quickly implement.
Purchase a sales engagement platform
Sales engagement platforms (SEPs) are a set of tools built with the salespeople in mind. These platforms enable them to connect with customers through various channels and automate repetitive tasks.
With the help of sales engagement platforms, your team can do tasks faster and more efficiently while ensuring quality customer service. They can communicate and monitor their prospects and customers, analyze performance, and manage and schedule tasks in one place. Additionally, you don’t need to build a platform from scratch because there are tons of great SEPs out there. All you need to do is to compare them and pick one that will best suit your team. Some top-rated platforms you should check are HubSpot Sales Hub, Outreach, and Groove.
To speed up the process, you may ask their support team for help. Most SEPs platforms offer scheduled calls, demos, and live chat assistance for their clients.
Related: Top Must-have Sales Tools That Will Help You Close More Deals
Set incentives for sales reps
Incentives serve as a reward to your reps once they hit a target or reach a particular milestone. Having them as one of your sales enablement strategies can help your team stay motivated.
While cash might be the first thing that comes to your mind, it doesn’t always have to be. You can also offer non-cash rewards like paid travel, gift certificates, gadgets or appliances, streaming services, and learning opportunities.
Letting your reps choose which reward they want is also a good idea. For example, you can provide three choices, one cash, and two non-cash options, and you can let them pick.
Providing incentives can make your employees feel acknowledged for their hard work. It can boost their morale, increase productivity and loyalty.
Moreover, your company will benefit from it. This sales enablement strategy can help you establish a relationship with them and create an environment with positive and healthy competition. It’s a great way to decrease the high turnover rate.
If you want to implement an incentive strategy in a week, you must plan properly and set a deadline. First, communicate with the top management about what they can offer. Next, ask your sales team what kind of incentives they want. You can decide which to offer and create some options after that.
Regularly coach sales teams
The third one on our list is sales coaching. It is the process of continuously teaching and guiding your team to improve their ability.
When you coach people, you give them the freedom to discover solutions on their own. You don’t directly give them instructions. Instead, you provide advice and feedback to help them improve.
A recent study by Sales Readiness Group and Selling Power discovered that high-performing companies, where over 75% of sales reps reach their quota, invest significantly in sales coaching. In contrast, average and low-performing companies spend less time on it.
For your sales managers to coach effectively, they must know first what they’re doing. They need to be proficient to coach your sales team better. Your sales managers should be able to identify reps’ goals, choose the right teaching approach, provide direct advice and guidance, and continuously motivate them in the process.
Coaching your sales team can help both employees and company long term. Coaching will produce proficient salespeople and boost your company’s revenue. A great way of introducing coaching to employees is by including it in an employee development plan.
Do not try to come up with all coaching strategies in a week. Focus on the areas where your sales team needs the most help and start small. From there, you may plan for the following coaching programs.
Related: How to Help Your Sales Team Generate Their Own Leads
Invest in a sales methodology
Sales methodology is a system that focuses on the “how” and “why” of the sales process. It goes beyond the steps and shows your team the foundation and practical approach to help them succeed.
Your company’s sales can only increase if your team practices and applies the correct sales processes repeatedly.
Having a sales methodology is a great way to establish a system. This can result in more accurate performance analysis, easier onboarding of new team members, and a more consistent customer experience.
You may adopt proven methodologies like BANT, SPIN Selling, Conceptual Selling, or the Challenger Sales Model for faster execution. Choose the best one that matches your company’s approach, and you may tweak it as you go.
Related: How To Drive More Revenue By Automating Your Sales Process
Take advantage of sales playbooks
A sales playbook is a comprehensive collection of all the information your reps need to succeed in selling. It may contain standard templates, scripts, datasheets, presentations, buyer persona info, sales processes, and other essential content.
A sales playbook is a great way to establish consistency among your team. It will help them be more effective in their selling process because they can search for information on one platform. Harvard Business Review found in a study that 50% of high-performing companies strictly follow and apply specific sales processes.
Your sales playbook should include everything essential that your sales team must know. So gather all existing content and practices you have. You may ask for your sales managers’ help as they are more familiar with the sales process, job description, roles, customer journey, etc. Producing a digital copy of your sales playbook will make it more accessible to everyone on your team.
Creating a sales playbook can be tedious, but developing it within a week is still possible. You can follow examples online and use templates like the free one from Hubspot, so you won’t need to start from scratch.
That’s All For Now
The most effective way to win and increase your sales is to have the best sales enablement strategies in place. It might seem overwhelming, but it’s possible. You may even connect the processes so you won’t miss anything.
You can start collecting data for your sales playbook and get an idea of the best sales methodology to use. From there, you may begin discussing the right sales engagement platform and incentives with the top managers. After that, you can distribute the information to your sales team, ask them about their goals, and start planning your sales coaching program from there.
