THE DEFINITIVE GUIDE TO GETTING SALES ENABLEMENT RIGHT

© Struto Ltd., March 2017 - The Definitive Guide to Getting Sales Enablement right - www.struto.co.uk

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER ONE: WHAT MAKES GOOD SALES CONTENT?

CHAPTER TWO: WHY SHOULD WE ADOPT SALES ENABLEMENT?

CHAPTER THREE: OKAY WE KNOW WE NEED SALES ENABLEMENT, WHAT NOW?

CHAPTER FOUR: CONCLUSION

2 Table of Content

TABLE OF CONTENT

Every organisation’s number one priority is acquiring more customers and holding on to them for life, ultimately making them a revenue engine.

But let’s face it, it takes time to become a money making machine. Sales gets into their routine of making calls, scheduling meetings and (hopefully) closing deals, and marketing knows that they must keep cranking out engaging content. With day-to-day processes, it is easy for these two teams to work in silos and not together. What they don’t realise is that by working this way, they are actually doing more harm than good.

This eBook will discuss the current problems each team faces and why you should adopt sales

enablement to ensure marketing and sales are working in perfect harmony, ultimately helping you obtain your revenue goals and acquire more customers.

We know that sales needs more marketing content and it needs to be the right content so that the recipient engages and chooses your organisation. In order to do this you need to adopt a sales enablement strategy.

So, what is sales enablement and why should we do it?

3 Introduction

Welcome

INTRODUCTION

Sales Enablement Is…...the process, technologies, and sales content that improves the performance of the sales organisation.

In order to improve the productivity of your sales team, we need to provide

them with two key resources:

• Knowledge of the buyer’s unique priorities and challenges

• Content that speaks to those unique priorities and challenges

Website redesign has come to be known as being a tiresome, laborious

process; fraught with systemic risk and cumulative, unforeseen problems.

Why, then, do so many businesses still go through with them, and why is this

still the accepted norm?

Knowledge

Today most organisations are not giving their sales teams the knowledge they

need to have value added conversations with their buyers: 71% of sales people

say they don’t have the knowledge according to Serious Decisions.

A clear process for identifying what is most important and challenging to the

buyer does not exist - thus salespeople struggle to gain rapport and trust.

Content

Once the sales team has a process for understanding what is most important to

a buyer, we need to arm that sales team with the content and tools to deliver

highly tailored proposals and other sales collateral, customised to the buyer’s’

unique situation and the recommended solution.

4 | Introduction.

The sales content challenge: Sales teams today are spending too much time creating and executing documents like proposals & contracts. This takes time away from revenue driving activity like prospecting and speaking with qualified opportunities.

Organise Sales and Marketing Content

When organised properly, proposal templates and reusable chunks of sales

and marketing content will enable the sales team to create more contextual

sales documents that speak to the buyer’s situation and challenges. Better

sales content means higher close rates.

Enable the Sales Team to Create & Execute Faster

We partner with PandaDoc, a leader in document automation, to help the sales

team reduce the time it takes to create customised proposal documents and

get those documents executed by their clients.

WHAT MAKES GOOD SALES CONTENT?

Chapter One

5 | The Problem with Traditional Web Design.

There are four reasons:

Marketing’s current inbound efforts are vulnerable.

When organised properly, proposal templates and reusable chunks of sales

and marketing content will enable the sales team to create more contextual

sales documents that speak to the buyer’s situation and challenges. Better

sales content means higher close rates.

This leads to lots of frustration between each team. Marketing feels like their

doing their job by providing lots of quality leads and sales isn’t doing theirs

because they aren’t closing and the thought process repeats itself by sales

thinking marketing isn’t doing their job of providing qualified leads.

Marketing needs to ensure that the content they are developing for the top

of the sales funnel is being utilised throughout the entire sales funnel. Sales

should be utilising top of funnel content at the bottom of the funnel too.

Marketing needs to work with sales leaders to ensure there is a proper sales

process in place to handle the influx of leads marketing will be delivering to

them. Without a proper sales enablement plan in place, neither team will be

successful.

Get more out of your sales budget

We know that ultimately leads provide more value to a company but

opportunities provide even more. Likely you are spending more money piping

an opportunity than you are converting a lead, and you can’t grow your sales

team without more opportunities, sales enablement allows you to do all of this.

Secondly, when you adopt sales enablement you are also increasing your

LTV (lifetime value) of your current customers. If your organisation is creating

a reoccurring revenue engine model, enabling sales with the right content

allows you to retain your customer longer, increasing that customer’s LTV.

All of these are a win-win because if marketing is providing sales with the

right content, thus helping them create more opportunities and higher LTV’s,

marketing can be seen as a revenue engine, which they will love.

WHY SHOULD WE ADOPT SALES ENABLEMENT?

Chapter Two

6 | The End Of Traditonal Flawed Web Design.

It simply works

75% of mid-market organisations have reported that by adopting sales

enablement throughout their organisation has made a moderate or signification

contribution to their entire company.

It has also been reported that sales reps are more productive, managers love it

because it brings in more revenue, and typically if you present these reasons to

your leadership team, you are less likely to get an objection to adoption. What

company doesn’t want to hear that they can be more productive and make

more money?

Competition

Everyone needs and wants to have an edge over their competition. Less than

30% of SMB’s have any sales enablement function today. That percentage is

significantly less than those organisations who have a marketing department.

If you have a marketing team that is producing consistent content then you

should be taking advantage of sales enablement.

The conversation around sales enablement is just starting. There is a lot of

opportunity for your organisation to make the rubber meet the road and

become a “doer” of sales enablement to win more business.

7 | Introduction.

1. Develop a plan.

Take a look at your current sales and marketing funnel and do an assessment

of your current content library. You’ll also want to dive into your close rate from

marketing qualified leads.

A good rule of thumb is if your close rate is less than 50%, you know that you have

a huge opportunity to utilise sales enablement. You’ll need mostly top of marketing

content to increase your close rate. Sales needs to work with marketing on ideas and

any other types of content they think they will need in order to be more successful.

2. Create an SLA.

Once you’ve done your homework, you will want to make sure each team is held

accountable for their goals. Create an SLA (service level agreement) to say that if

marketing delivers X number of leads then sales promises to close at least X%.

By setting expectations of each team, you will no longer have the back and forth

banter of “marketing isn’t giving us enough leads” and “sales isn’t closing on the leads we’ve given them”.

3. Put the right tools in place.

To aid in the success of sales enablement, you need the right tools in place.

Marketing will likely need a marketing automation tool to help distribute the leads

from their inbound efforts to the sales team, sales needs a CRM to capture those

leads and move them through the sales process and lastly sales needs a way to

close and convert the deal into a customer.

OKAY WE KNOW WE NEED SALES ENABLEMENT, WHAT NOW?

Chapter Three

8 | Growth-Driven Design - The Smarter New Kid On The Block.

Productivity

Leads are expensive. Your sales team is expensive.

The sales team’s ability to turn qualified leads into new business SHOULD be a top

priority. Most organisations find that their current process is leaking productivity:

the sales process is not clearly defined and the sales team is not provided with the

content or tools to efficiently create the documents to close more deals…

Sales enablement is a commitment to improving sales productivity. Close more

deals in less time.

We hope this ebook helps motivate you to take a closer look at your current sales

process, and specifically how much time and money your sales team is wasting on

content development.

Developing and implementing a sales enablement plan is no easy task but the goal is the same, for sales and marketing to align and acquire more customers.

With the right data, strategy and tools, any organisation can be successful in this endeavour, stay ahead of their competition and grow as an entire company.

CONCLUSIONChapter Four

9 | The Pillars of Growth-Driven Design.

CONTACT USThe End

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