SMARKETING CONNECT
  • Home
  • Find Professionals
    • Sales Directory >
      • Boston Professionals
      • Detroit Professionals
    • Marketing Directory >
      • Boston Professionals
      • Washington D.C. Professionals
      • Philadelphia Professionals
      • New Jersey Professionals
      • Greater Salt Lake City Professionals
      • New York Professionals
      • Columbus Ohio Professionals
      • Detroit Professionals
      • Albuquerque Professionals
    • Find a PROFESSIONAL
    • Rate Our PROFESSIONALS
  • Partners
    • Partnership Sign Up
  • Learning Center
    • Sales Resources >
      • Sales Articles
      • Sales Tips
      • Sales Tools
    • Marketing Resources >
      • Marketing Magazine
      • Marketing Tips
      • Marketing Tools
    • Podcasts
    • Quick Tip Videos
    • Smarketing U
  • Networking
  • Professional Sign Up
    • Learn More
    • Sign Up Now
    • Submit Content

Is Sales Enablement out of reach for small businesses?

by Susan McKenney – Diversified Sales Solutions, Inc.
Picture
Sales enablement or if you prefer the old-fashioned term “Lead Nurturing” is the structured organization of sales content best practices, research capabilities, tools, training and coaching. When I talk about small, I mean a sales staff of 1 - 20!  Sales enablement processes can be simple or complex and small businesses can create a repeatable process even if it’s simple!

The key is to provide the sales representative with an easy to use system that can be updated or tweaked as you grow or your needs change.  Your job when designing your sales enablement is to make sure the resources you pick, are easy to use, easily repeatable, and are at a reasonable cost. These tools and processes should also include ways to continually educate and train your salespeople.  Today there are a multitude of options for tools and techniques to help you plan, which I’ll cover in the next few articles! Thoroughly investigate the tools and processes, especially if you’re going to use multiple solutions. You’ll want to make sure they work with each other.

It’s essential to make sure your sales team embraces and uses your sales process and tools, or you won’t get optimal results. The best sales enablement programs have sales management reports that track and enforce whether resources are being used. Most importantly, they optimize future sales enablement efforts based on what’s used and what’s not used. The sales metrics you need track include sales cycle length; number of reps achieving quota; and average deal size. There are other metrics that can be tracked, but these three are the basics.
 
How is a sales enablement process put together for your sales force?  Start with these five planning segments.

There can be more segments added but these are essential.
 
Define the specific objectives for your program. Your program should focus on helping salespeople sell more effectively. This starts with providing them with everything they’ll need to engage and convert buyers. But what do you focus on from there? You may choose to focus on detailed information about products and services, sharing best practices from top performers in the sales organization, or the development of sales skills like delivering great presentations. In any case, be specific about your goals.

Your Buyers journey and experience is the foundation of sales enablement. Given that sales enablement is about empowering salespeople to engage the buyer, it makes sense that you would make the buying experience the cornerstone of your efforts. This helps salespeople communicate more effectively with customers by providing them with the information and tools they need to provide buyers with what they want. There are two pieces to this. First, make sure salespeople understand who the buyer is and the journey they’re on. Second, map your sales plays and training to the buying experience.

Create and use a lot of high-quality content. Content is becoming the “force multiplier” of most modern sales organizations. Things like blog posts, white papers, and webinars allow salespeople to deliver a lot of value to buyers in a scalable, controllable way. In fact, salespeople are now using content as a crutch, preferring to let high quality content do the talking. So, make sure your sales team has a lot of high-quality content that maps to the buying process.

Sales Training  should be done on an on-going basis…a continuous effort. Sales training is a big part of sales enablement. It’s where salespeople learn how to sell more effectively. Most sales training programs suffer from a fatal flaw – they happen once a year. As a result, salespeople quickly forget what they’ve learned, as well as the information, content, and tools they’ve been provided. To combat this, you need to make sales training a constant effort. You should conduct at least one formal training a month and use tools like newsletters and collaboration platforms to keep sales enablement in front of the sales team.

Adoption of the process shows how well salespeople are leveraging what you provide. Even the best sales enablement programs can die a quick death if no one is watching how sales uses what’s provided to them. It’s critical that management enforces the use of best practices, content, and tools in the sales enablement process.

Today there are a multitude of options for tools and techniques to help you plan.  Make sure you thoroughly investigate the tools and processes to make sure they work with each other.
Once you have defined the segment’s it’s time to add the sales tools.


Susan McKenney
Vertical Divider

Susan McConnell - Diversified Sales Solutions, Inc.

NETWORK SELLING
Picture
Susan has a passion for connecting people and giving referrals, she is a natural born networker.  She is rarely behind a desk and can be found at many networking events in Massachusetts. Susan is also the President of Diversified Sales Solutions, Inc. Her experience with start-ups and small business’s gives her the knowledge to get the prospecting process off the ground quickly by helping build a customized prospecting journey for her clients. Susan, takes the lessons she's learned from successes and failures alike in her own sales and sales leadership career of over 20 years, teamed with actual work with sales teams in small companies and startups to help determine the best path to results.  Click to view Susan's Smarketing CONNECT Page.


Find LOCAL PROFESSIONALS

Sales & Marketing Support
Are you a looking for help with sales or marketing?  Let Smarketing CONNECT help you find resources!  Tell us about your needs and we will match you with LOCAL PROFESSIONALS.
Find LOCAL PROFESSIONALS
Are you a LOCAL Sales or Marketing PROFESSIONAL who wants more exposure?  Sign-up today and get listed on Smarketing CONNECT where you will get seen by the LOCAL Startups and Small Businesses looking for you!
PROFESSIONAL Sign-Up
Picture
We connect Small Business with
Sales & Marketing

HOME

ASK A QUESTION

Vertical Divider

LEARNING CENTER

NETWORKING

Vertical Divider

FIND PROFESSIONALS

RATE PROFESSIONALS

Vertical Divider
Smarketing CONNECT Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy
© COPYRIGHT 2021. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
​
.
  • Home
  • Find Professionals
    • Sales Directory >
      • Boston Professionals
      • Detroit Professionals
    • Marketing Directory >
      • Boston Professionals
      • Washington D.C. Professionals
      • Philadelphia Professionals
      • New Jersey Professionals
      • Greater Salt Lake City Professionals
      • New York Professionals
      • Columbus Ohio Professionals
      • Detroit Professionals
      • Albuquerque Professionals
    • Find a PROFESSIONAL
    • Rate Our PROFESSIONALS
  • Partners
    • Partnership Sign Up
  • Learning Center
    • Sales Resources >
      • Sales Articles
      • Sales Tips
      • Sales Tools
    • Marketing Resources >
      • Marketing Magazine
      • Marketing Tips
      • Marketing Tools
    • Podcasts
    • Quick Tip Videos
    • Smarketing U
  • Networking
  • Professional Sign Up
    • Learn More
    • Sign Up Now
    • Submit Content