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Sales enablement is about aligning the stars by hand so that sales representatives can deliver the right message to the right person, consistently. You’re certain that your sales people are delivering some message to some people, but how can you determine if it’s “right”? When a sales team has the proper sales enablement solutions at their disposal, they will exhibit the following indicators:

Speed.

Rep onboarding is a breeze. Sales rookies become engaged in quota-carrying activities and comfortably transition to sales rock stars, like clockwork. There is no “one size fits all” time limit for onboarding, but consider this: every day that a sales rep is not performing is a lost opportunity for revenue.

Effective salespeople aren’t spending time constantly entering data, browsing social media feeds of prospects or playing phone tag. They use those hours to actively sell. How much time do sales reps spend actually selling? If they are writing their own sales playbooks or Google stalking prospects, then the answer is: not enough.

Successful sales teams harness sales enablement strategies that shorten the sales cycle. That means adhering to playbooks that include: closed loop marketing with CLM platforms and highly communicative sales and marketing teams.

Accuracy.

Effective salespeople are knowledgeable about the product and up-to-date brand messaging. Successful sales teams don’t stop learning after training. No, they are continuously educating themselves about their company and product.

They’re also knowledgeable about the customer. Effective salespeople aren’t scouring Twitter because they have access to technologies that deliver valuable insight into customer accounts.

Delivery.

The best sales teams are able to deliver the right sales materials at the right time to the right person on any device. They meet their customer on the customer’s preferred platforms. That means utilizing digital sales aids to create a mobile sales force. Advanced mobile sales forces are able to recreate that synchronicity of message, timing and audience over and over again. That is the pinnacle of sales enablement success.

Is your sales team falling short in one, two or all three of these areas? The first step is recognizing that you have a problem. Do you need help finding the solution?

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When things go wrong and sales opportunities don’t materialize, you might jump to berate your salespeople, especially if the buyer dropped out after speaking with them. You resentfully ask the sales team if they’re up to date on your flurry of e-mails filled with case studies, or if they aren’t properly using your new and improved sales portal? You shake them, thinking you’ve given them every sales enablement tool they could possibly need, and you begin to wonder if maybe they’re just ignoring you. You bury your head, sigh, and think about hiring a new sales team. Maybe you have a group of duds?

Instead of assuming your salespeople are failing you, explore the idea that maybe you are failing your salespeople. Your salespeople are in the trenches of conversation with your potential customers. They’re working hard to make a sale, and if they are not using your current sales enablement solutions to do that, it’s probably for a good reason. The tools probably aren’t useful to them. They would know! If your reps are ignoring your new and improved portal in favor of outdated slides and data sheets, the portal that you are providing them is probably not as engaging as you thought. 

The marketing and sales model is forever evolving. Marketing and Sales weren’t always on the same team. Marketing executed campaigns while Sales acted on prospects thought to be ready for the face-to-face interaction. There was never a real collaborative effort between the two departments. The model begged the question “How do we reconcile the marketing process, which is product focused, with the sales process, which is customer focused?”

Today, the selling model means something entirely different. It’s called “Sales Enablement” – the process of bridging the gap between marketing strategy and sales execution and transforming the selling model into a cross-functional discipline; or as we define it:

The digital age has provided us with thousands of tools, one being sales enablement, to help us determine how our sales and marketing teams are performing, what content is converting and how people are responding to our message. But, tools can only tell us the raw facts and data. Humans still need to be a part of the equation to decipher and analyze. Even then, we might not know why someone decided to come to us in the first place; did they accidentally click a Facebook ad or were they intrigued by your CTA on another webpage? When it comes down to it, we’re still dealing with people and the power of “personalization” is going to continue being prevalent.

The Content Marketing Institute compiled 50 of it's best quotes from various professionals to bring us this SlideShare presentation. These predictions include actionable advice that is relevant to content marketing in 2014.

Today more than ever, marketers work to accumulate as much knowledge as possible on the habits and preferences of customers in order to improve conversion rates and help speed up the sales cycle. Tracking customer engagement, identifying top-performing campaigns and measuring marketing initiatives has given marketing the ability to deliver personalized offers and targeted messages based on consumer behavior. And while this has become a standard practice for marketing, the need to gather insights and analytics into the content that gets consumed after the sales call has become the next frontier in sales.

We’ve all heard of the 80/20 rule, where 80% of your revenue is generated by 20% of your customers. Despite changes in the sales process and the lengthening of the sales cycle due to the digital age, the 80/20 principle has prevailed in most sales environments. More often than not, people are looking for a product or service that they can rely on for the long-term instead of learning a new tool or adjusting to a new account manager every couple years. Are you setting the stage for loyal customers or simple sales?

A large part of building customer loyalty is making them feel comfortable and educated during the sales stage. Even though most B2B customers only contact sales after 70% of a purchase decision has been made, the most defining moments of that sales cycle is when they sit down with their dedicated sales rep. Sure, there are going to be times when you will be tempted to rush the sale because you want the commission. But, what if you could create a brand advocate for life? How much recurring revenue would that be for you and your company?

We all know that people do business with people, not with businesses. And that is why it is so important for companies to place an importance on vetting their sales representatives before you hire them. Your sales team is only as good as how they are able to adapt and resonate with a customer. While you might have a need to make more sales now, waiting to find the right representatives can pay off a lot more later.

Here are the 3 defining attributes a good sales representative (and things to look for when hiring them):

One of the big struggles for sales organizations today is that the sales cycle continues to get longer because of the growing amount of options available to consumers. We’re overwhelmed with how many different companies are offering the same products. And if the sales cycle continues to lengthen, then revenue streams have the potential to decrease because sales aren’t being made as quickly as before. How can organizations combat this?