Setting up a sales team is easy but retaining a sales team and achieving outstanding results is difficult. This is one of the major challenges that a lot of organizations face. It takes approximately 6-8 months for a sales representative to settle in and get full control of their responsibilities which will benefit the company in generating good results and revenue. But with a lot of companies focusing on employee efficiency, they are looking for solutions that help increase efficiency while reducing the time it takes to achieve the exponential rise. While it is a common belief that sales training is essential to improving this number, sales training isn’t always the answer. What companies need is sales enablement. But what is it? Sales enablement is a process that guides an organization to improve its overall sales process through information, facts, figures, and tools. And because of its elaborate nature, it is becoming an essential part of all major organizations trying to transform their sales processes and getting optimum results. Today we will look at the different types of sales enablement tools that you should get to increase your efficiency and see better results.
- Audio Visual Coaching tools: A major challenge most sales teams face is dedicating time to train the sales representatives about the product as well as the organization. While one might feel that getting updated on the product is easy, the presentation of facts based on the customers’ needs and requirements can be difficult. And unless the reps are trained to identify opportunity and act on it, there will be lost sales opportunities. Moreover, even the organizations have a tough time identifying the level of preparation of the reps. This situation can lead to lost opportunities.
This is where sales enablement comes into play. Using a series of audio-visual coaching tools, the entire sales team can not only be trained to understand and present the product to the customer but also allow the company to analyze its employees and understand their readiness to cater to the customers’ needs and demands. The tool also enables employees to practice and share their pitch with managers and fellow employees for feedback and analysis. Using the grading the employee can improve their skills.
- Sales Engagement: Sales engagement is measure through KPIs which keep track of each employee’s actions performed throughout the process of the sale. Apart from the conversion ratio and average size of each deal, it takes into consideration efforts such as the average time taken to close a deal and the methods used to reach out to the prospects and make a successful sale. This is very closely related to the productivity of the employee based on their daily actions such as meeting prospects, writing e-mails, cold calling to name a few.
With the help of sales enablement tools, the company can monitor the sales reps, and based on the results, understand the interaction between the seller and the buyer. Furthermore, these numbers can be used to understand the methods which a seller uses to reach out to his customers and to maintain a constant flow of communication to close the deal and retain the business. Combining all the results with the help of the correct set of tools, they can optimize the process to get maximum benefits.
- Content Management System: As Bill Gates rightly said, “Content is king.” Similarly, the buyers are always looking for details and information about the products and services they are looking to avail of. And with awareness, the expectations are on the rise too. Customers want to see more content that is user-friendly and easy to understand. In other words, great content. But sometimes, the content created by the marketing team, despite being great goes unused by the sales representatives simply because they are not aware of its usage and effectiveness.
But, this can be tackled using Sales asset management tools which are being used by a lot of companies these days. What these tools do is help manage the content that is being created by the marketing team into appropriate groups and categories. Some of the common categories include product information, safety guidelines, and customer tips. With these tools, it becomes easier for the reps to pitch the product through the right set of information. For organizations, it is easier to manage the content and limit the content according to each individual’s roles and responsibilities.
- Account Planning: With sales, one major challenge is keeping a check on all the accounts that a sales representative is handling and at the same time creating and managing strategies to grow each one of them individually. Due to inefficiency in maintaining the data and keeping a check on all specifications for a client, there are revenue and opportunity losses.
But using a sales enablement tool, one can organize the entire data for each account and even dig into specifics to map out a road map for the movement and how to approach each account to get maximum benefits. Because of the tool, the organization of data is easier, and mapping out the progress leads to a better understanding of the results.
- Customer Relationship Management: With multiple stakeholders for each account, it can be difficult to maintain all data regarding the same. This includes vendor details, account information, pipelines, and even account ownership. And as the volume of data increases, it becomes even difficult to manage. So, using a customer relationship management tool, companies can create a single source of data and use it to store all the information in an organized manner. This leads to better productivity and helps the sales reps perform better with their accounts.
So, if you are planning to get one of the sales enablement tools for your organization and ease the process for your sales team so that they can focus on delivering better results, look no more and get yourself services from MindTickle. We are a team of driven individuals and have put in years’ worth of experience to deliver a product that has a lot to offer to make your processes simplified.