As a business, you set sales goals that are linked to your overall vision of growth. Needless to say, every milestone that your sales teams set and achieve takes your business forward towards where it deserves to be. This is where sales enablement comes in. A strategic approach that ensures everything from teams to goals, strategies to practices, results to resources and tools to processes are aligned optimally to empower your business to excel in sales. Here’s a blog that will take you through the basics of getting your own sales enablement strategy in place.
1. Set goals and KPIs
This is among the first things to do when creating a sales enablement plan for your business. Set goals that make the best sense for your business and establish Key Performance Indicators that will provide you the yardsticks to benchmark your performance along the way; KPIs are also a great way to understand your team’s strengths and weaknesses. Hiring a business coach with expertise in coaching a sales team will help you get your goals and KPIs in place.
2.Provide goal based training
Sales training is a fundamental exercise that needs to be done before your sales teams pick up the phone, shoot an email or set out to reach a prospect’s workspace. A typical sales training program will cover product background, effective sales techniques, customer service essentials, integration of technology, market and competitor analysis and so on. Consider training as a navigation system that will enable your teams to plan and execute their steps with minimal possibility of going off track. Tap into your network of professionals to check how one-on-one sales coaching can help take the burden of sales training off your to-do list.
3. Equip your teams with the right tools
While classic business wisdom stresses on good old fashioned hard work, smart business rules underline the use of appropriate technology to succeed faster and bigger. Here are a few examples of the kind of tools that will add an edge to your sales performance. Incorporating sales intelligence and acceleration tools will help your sales reps reduce the gap between getting leads and closing sales. Advanced sales analytics tools meanwhile will help your teams scrutinize sales performances and know where to make improvements. CRM software will enable your teams to consolidate high-quality relationships with existing clients and build productive associations with new prospects.
4. Ensure communication at all times
Your marketing team sets the prices for your products and/or services but it’s the sales team that knows whether or not the prices are working in the marketplace. As per a recent study, optimal alignment between the sales and marketing teams helps a business **perform 67% better at closing sales. Make communication, collaboration and feedback a vital part of your sales enablement process. Setting the right communication process could prove to be a complex task and this is where hiring a sales coach or business coach could help make a difference.
5. Create an environment of support and mentoring
Getting sales and moreover, continuing to clock higher numbers is a tougher task than it may seem to be. This makes it imperative to have a regular process of interaction whereby your teams will have the freedom as well as means to share issues and develop solutions, get coached on winning sales methods or mentored to succeed in today’s highly competitive business arena.
6. Performance tracking and optimization
Your sales teams are putting in their best but how do you ascertain if the efforts are aligned with the path your business needs to be on? Performance monitoring and assessment will help you understand details such as the kind of clients you pursue, the number of deals you close, the time you take for closure and more. Tracking your sales metrics will enable your business to identify areas where your sales strategies or tactics are falling short thus enabling you to make necessary amendments in time.
A robust sales enablement process that factors everything from goal setting and tracking to communication and smart technology integration will help your business get more efficient in chasing down the most challenging of sales goals. If you’re interested in hiring an expert business coach with decades of proven experience in effective Sales Management, visit polarisone.com to book an appointment. You could also download your free copy of ‘What Every Great Salesperson Knows - A No-nonsense Guide For Sales Success’ by Robert Arzt to learn valuable success insights. A quick read could be your first step towards enabling your sales process for optimum success.
**As per Marketo - a leading American software company that develops and sells marketing automation software.
