It’s 7 AM, do you know where your sales team is?
Or more accurately, do you know what they are saying, selling and showing to your customers? Like it or not, most salespeople work on an island where they get to choose how they interact with customers and as a result, most organizations have a big problem.
Despite an enormous amount of investment in CRM, new Products, Marketing Automation, Sales Training and a whole host of other things designed to help the sales and marketing teams do their jobs, over 58% of companies still miss their revenue targets!
How can this be, you ask? Good question, and the answer starts with the fact that while most companies believe these investments help the sales person, they in fact just help the company, and the sales team continues to struggle. With all the investment in sales, the salesperson is still “selling” in the same old way, showing what they are comfortable with, and having conversations with customers that don’t lead to happy customers and closed business.
If companies want to thrive in today’s competitive markets, they are going to have to shift their focus from their own offices to their customer’s offices, and start actually enabling the sales and marketing teams.
Start implementing these 3 easy ways to get focused on true sales enablement and transform the customer experience, the sales experience and your business.
- Deliver the Right Content at the Right Time – 40% of all sales materials will never be used by the sales team! This is because they don’t have easy access to it, they don’t understand it, or it does not help them with their customers. To truly enable your salespeople you have to provide meaningful content in a manner they can easily access it, deliver it and monitor it with customers. Your content has to be available to your salespeople in a way that helps them use it to have more compelling, more engaging conversations. PowerPoint, tri-fold brochures and pulling things from your shared folders no longer cuts it.
- Actually Go Mobile – When was the last time you were happy your sales team was sitting in your office? Then why continue to give them access to things only on your network. A sales team should be in the field, talking to customers, this is how they become effective salespeople. They need all of the mobile technology you have provided to be truly useful. Tablets and smartphones need to be actual tools of success, not just cool gadgets. Ditch the cheap “Sales Apps” and get enterprise grade real sales enablement technology that puts real power in the hands of your salespeople.
- Stop Wasting Valuable Selling Time – Updating your CRM, posting information to Social Media, Route Planning and Presentation Prep are all things which must be done, but don’t add real value to the salesperson. If you want your salespeople to sell, then stop asking them to spend inordinate time doing non-selling things. Give them real tools, which eliminate or significantly reduce the mundane, administrative aspects of their jobs, so they can focus on blowing the minds of your customers. Your CRM does not manage customer relationships, your salespeople do….so let them do it.
Want to drive real ROI from your investments, start focusing where the money hits the road, your sales team. Empower them to have better conversations with their customers. Help them deliver compelling, engaging and exciting information at the right time, and give them tools that help them, not just you.
Sales Enablement has evolved, are you evolving with it?
