If you work in sales, you’re sure to have come across the term, sales enablement. For the sake of clarity, sales enablement is the process of providing salespeople with the information, content and tools to help them sell more effectively.
But I believe that sales enablement is less about sales and more about the buyer – which is where your focus should be. Our job is to provide a sales team with the resources that a buyer needs. Read on and you will learn how you can successfully close more leads.
Focus on sales-qualified leads
Don’t feel overwhelmed by the number of people who are interested in your business because they might be a poor fit for your enterprise. This is why it’s important to generate quality leads. A sales-qualified lead (SQL) is more likely to become a customer compared with other leads that are based on the lead intelligence gathered. SQLs are deemed ready for the next stage of the sales process.
A lot happens before this step. For instance, a lead might first become a marketing-qualified lead – one who will require more convincing before they’re ready to buy anything from you. In other instances, they’ll be an instant SQL. Someone who’s filled out a “contact us” or “get a quote” form has made it abundantly clear that they’re ready for a sales conversation. SQLs are the ultimate end goal.
Get sales buy-in from the get-go
The whole point of sales enablement is to align all departments. Expecting sales to be solely responsible for selling is not just outdated, it’s bad for business. The same goes for the sales department becoming more involved in other aspects of the business.
Take content creation for instance. Helping with the content creation that will feed the inbound marketing which generates leads will go a long way. Sales can be proactive and suggest content topics. Perhaps they have a quota to sell more of a particular product or service, so a push from marketing can help. Sales enablement should be owned jointly by sales and marketing.
Lead management
You won’t let a single lead get away if you take advantage of a lead management tool. These tools will let you complete sales activities, see detailed company and contact records and view communication history all in one place. Once alerted to a lead, you’ll receive a notification and immediately follow up with them before they change their minds. Be sure to make use of a tool that integrates into your CRM, such as the one provided by HubSpot. Why is it important? You can look into what you know about this lead before you make contact with them.
The importance of sales reporting
If things aren’t working, you need to know why. Simply sitting there puzzling it over isn’t going to help anyone. When sales reports are done correctly, they will help you to analyse overall performance and spot issues so you can take action immediately.
Sharing your weekly report with your team has several positive results. This meeting will accomplish one of three things: It allows for healthy competition; gives your team a chance to voice concerns; and it holds people accountable so you can drive results.
Find out how we can help with the issues mentioned above by downloading our sales enablement brochure. Start improving your digital sales with League Digital.
