Sales Enablement Tools
Reaching the consumer and converting a prospect to a consumer during the sales cycle has never been more critical, but it has also never been more difficult. The long-drawn lines between traditional sales and marketing teams are blurring more and more with every new sales enablement software that is released. This has caused many leaders to ask if everyone correctly knows what the shared definition of sales enablement is. Sales enablement solutions are a dime a dozen in the market right now, but understanding what they are and what you need them for can go a long way to making the right choice and helping your team Do Better Work. To help cut down on some of the noise surrounding sales enablement tools, we have gathered information surrounding sales enablement materials to ensure that your sales team is benefitting from all this attention so you can continue being…enabled.
Sales Enablement Definition
Let’s start by taking a stab at what we think the sales enablement definition is. According to the smart people at Forrester Research, “sales enablement is the bridge between go-to-market strategy and tactical execution.” Breaking that down a bit further, sales enablement is a set of tools that allows your sales team to actually implement a plan to bring your product to the customers. As we’ve discussed before, sales enablement best practices would be to provide amazing content management solution to your sales team so you can pass that along to clients and prospective customers during the sales process. In fact, teams that bring in content from all over the company and their industry are better equipped to do close more deals. Sound like a tall task? Don’t be discouraged yet, it’s not that hard. Sales enablement tools examples can range wildly depending on how much you’re looking to spend on software or your sales activity. Sales enablement apps may seem like easy and quick ways to get started, but if your company is planning on growing, “free” might not provide the key features your sales reps need.
Sales Enablement Best Practices
In a world where everyone wants to say they can enable your sales team to work better, sell more, and grow your company, it’s important to follow a few practices to keep things in order. First, and usually the largest room for improvement, is employee training. Not just in one area either. Sales employees need to be fluent in everything about the product. This can come in many different forms, but before you go adding too many tools to the toolbox, it’s important to understand the importance of employee training and the objectives surrounding it.
Objectives of Training
If picking a sales enablement system and distributing it to your team fixed everyone’s problems, there wouldn’t be much of a problem to begin with. The truth is, training is just as important to sales enablement as the tool itself. The importance of training can’t be stated enough when it comes to equipping your employees with the knowledge that they need to achieve their sales goals. It’s kind of like training for a 5k or training for a half marathon, you can buy new shoes, a fitness tracker, and all the headbands you can wear, but it won’t replace actually training yourself running. Simplify as much as you can while keeping it relevant to the work that you are doing as a company within your four walls. Throwing as many sales training courses and other training tools in the toolbox only leads to confusion and lost work. Bringing in outside information and opinions can be useful to a point, but integrating internal information into sales enablement increases output almost every time. To do this, you would need to invest in an online training software that you have control of. Lessonly is one such platform that allows for easy lesson creation with in-depth reporting on your entire company’s learning. However, Lessonly makes online training software something that employees actually want to instead of something they dread. When you place the focus on the learner during employee training, engagement goes up and everyone wins.
Types of Training
If you are planning on investing in sales training courses to help with sales enablement, it’s important to know the different types of training that can be implemented. No, we’re not talking about online safety training or online fitness training. Training meaning the development of your most important asset, your employees. When deciding on which type of training you need and how you plan on getting there, know that every program can work differently and might not be the right fit for two separate teams.
- Personal training – Plenty of workplaces assign online personal training to employees to help learn the product, the company, and the sales process. These online training courses usually serve to increase product knowledge and sales skills.
- Leadership training – Leadership training is usually more personal, away from the rest of the employees and focused on tools and skills to manage an entire team and keep them moving in the same direction.
- Employee development – These types of employee training are more in-depth and are usually focused on making individual team members better at a certain topic or skill. Developing employees often takes place through additional training and coaching.
Lessonly excels in giving employees and administrators alike the autonomy to learn at their own pace. Nailing the essential knowledge can be knocked out pretty quickly with the right training software. Here you can create lessons with training quotes that can be serious or funny, depending on your company culture. We never lock down content and make your employees sit on a slide for a certain amount of time to “ensure” that they read it. Micro-managing your team in such a way is one of our three things that will not enable sales. By giving your employees the time and tools to learn the best way that works for them, you equip them with the knowledge they need to be able to excel in their position. There will be training peaks and valleys, but that’s how the process works. Lessonly allows the learner to work through these at their own pace and gives sales team leaders the ability to achieve their job title and lead.
