It’s no secret that the key to explosive growth is sales. It’s also not a secret that the key to sales growth is the partnership between sales and marketing. I work in HR Technology, where the cliché is, “your people are your greatest asset.” Yet, although most companies believe it, they don’t practice it. It’s the same in sales and marketing.
We all know that there needs to be an air-tight partnership between sales and marketing where the two teams act like one and use the same playbook, yet this is rare to find.
There are many ways that sales and marketing can collaborate, whether it’s through RFPs, pitching, objection handling, and much more. This is all considered sales enablement, which helps push prospects through the funnel.
Here are the top 3 sales enablement strategies your organization can’t live without:
1) Sales certification
Are all your sales people powerfully sharing your value proposition or do they go rogue? Salesforce.com is the best at sales certification. Not only are their sales people all certified on the pitch, but in the early days, all employees were, too. They would offer training to make sure that everyone was crystal clear on the message. Now, it’s just customer-facing employees who are certified on how to position the service and how to deliver the message.
They are taught how to defend the messages against objections and how to present different problem-solving solutions to different personas. Bottom line, at the very least make sure to certify your sales people to increase your odds of winning deals.
I personally prefer group certification because it allows sales people to hear each other pitch and improve their own pitch as a result. Develop the scoring matrix first, which will communicate to the sales team the specific points you are looking for them to speak to.
[Tweet “Group certification allows salespeople to hear each other pitch, improving their own as a result”]
Next, split the sales team into small groups of three or four with an executive on each team. Each sales person will run through the pitch and the group will each provide feedback and separately score the rep. After the call, have the executive speak to each rep individually to deliver the aggregate feedback and their score. If a rep requires more work, then they must work with the sales trainer and be recertified individually with them.
2) Personas
Most people conduct research on the buyer and then stop there. It’s not enough—companies must also conduct research on the influencers. People buy with emotion and backfill with logic. Logic isn’t just data; it’s also consensus.
[Tweet “Ppl buy w/ emotion and backfill w/ logic. Logic isn’t just data; it’s consensus @sarahbethanders”]
Know who is influencing the deal behind the scenes and make sure you interview those people and build personas around them so that you are ready with answers to their objections. I usually conduct approximately 5-7 calls per role before developing personas.
Once the personas are developed, I will validate them with current customers and the sales team before training begins. It’s a lot of work upfront, but definitely pays off.
3) Happy Meals
I learned this tactic through the Challenger Sale. The best sales enablement collateral is packaged with industry-specific and segmented content, called a Happy Meal. This content should include an asset such as an ebook, whitepaper, product brochure, case study, sales presentation, or business case.
Nurture your prospect through the journey with content based on their particular stage, and also nurture them with field events, webinars, and thought leadership.
Before any of these strategies can be implemented, work on building the relationship between marketing and sales. It should be one team working towards the same goal.
Please comment and share your favorite sales enablement strategy.
Editor’s note: Whether it’s fixing leaks in your sales and marketing funnel or just about any other sales topic under the sun, you’ll want to be in the room–virtually, of course–for the upcoming Sales Kickoff Summit 2016, a virtual event with over 30 featured speakers covering Sales, Marketing, and Social.
