2018 Sales Enablement Opportunities for Growth

As we prepare for 2018, it’s important to look back on 2017. By reviewing emerging trends in the industry, we can further sales enablement’s overall mission to create successful selling experiences.

In general, there has been a large shift of companies moving towards a sales enablement methodology in 2017. Whether it’s a formal or informal process, companies of all sizes have recognized a need for methodology. Unsurprisingly, increasing revenue and selling time are the two major priorities for sales organizations. Seemingly having a direct correlation (you’ll sell more if you spend more time selling), time spent on activities such as on-boarding and sales admin work are distracting today’s sellers. This reduces the amount of time spent creating positive sales interactions.

Based on this year’s trends, here are a few of the top opportunities we’ve recognized to allow your sales organization to become more efficient with their time and more effective during each sales interaction.

#1 – REDUCING SALES ADMIN TIME

Sales people get bogged down with administrative tasks such as searching for content, preparing decks for upcoming meetings, creating content when they can’t find what they’re looking for, logging meeting notes into a CRM and sending follow-up to prospects. How do they even have time to sell these days? According to CSO Insights, reps are only spending 35.9% of their time selling¹.

• The good news is that with sales enablement on the rise, this is changing. The amount of sales people creating their own content has decreased to 18.4% (with creation by product management rising to 17.5% and marketing remaining the same at 39.3%).² Looping product specialists into content development allows for marketing-approved messaging with an element of technical expertise (and of course allowing those sellers to sell).
• The bad news is that more and more companies are using email to distribute content to their sales people(increased from 24.5% to 29%),² which is a cardinal sin in terms of enabling sellers. Consolidating resources to a single tool that combines content management and sales presentation capabilities not only saves a seller time, but alleviates marketing concerns around sellers using the most recent and approved materials.

#2 – BRIDGING THE GAP BETWEEN MARKETING AND SALES

Aligning marketing and sales may seem like an obvious statement, but did you know 65% of content created by marketing for sales doesn’t get used? The quality of content impacts win rates. Part of the reason sellers spend time creating their own content is because marketing is not aligned with sales needs (which ultimately means they’re not aligned with buyers needs).

• According to Forrester, only 8% of B2B buyers believe sellers are focused on driving business-value results for their specific needs⁵. It’s crucial to align the internal sales process with the customer’s journey, and content must be reflective of those needs.
• If 65% of content is not being used, one crucial question needs to be answered: Why? Why isn’t this content being used? Is the value of a solution lost in an infographic? Could that value be more effectively articulated through a video? Are your current videos being watched the whole way through? It’s not enough for marketing to check a box on a project and claim content has been created. Measuring content adoption in the field and the impact it has on closing deals is not done enough. We’ll touch more on this during point #4.

#3 – COACHING YOUR SALES REPS

One of the most overlooked and under-developed areas for sales advancement lies within the training of sales managers, and eventually, the coaching of sellers³. Chances are current sales managers are just as new to sales enablement approach as the organization is, thus lacking personal experience with this style. Sellers know that this impacts their ability to make money. An outstanding 36% of high-performing reps indicate lack of ongoing training and development as a significant reason to leave their current position⁴.

• Playbooks and guidelines for training and sales processes are most effective when there’s a mix of top-down and peer-to-peer tactics. Managers should be certified for individual coaching, yet learning from a counterpart generates collaboration for real-world situations.
• The shift from relationship selling to consultative selling is a trend on the rise as we’ve seen through approaches such as The Challenger Sale and The Sandler System. In order to train reps to keep a buyer-centric focus, they’ll learn to lead with insight about the customer’s industry or show added business value to create dynamic experiences. 77% of today’s B2B buyers are more likely to buy if a seller shares highly customized data/insights or if they learn something new about their company through the sales process.

#4 – MEASURING RESULTS

Building an internal case for sales enablement can be an uphill battle when ROI is difficult to measure [as is true with any new shift in technology or strategy]. The three top goals for sales productivity include 1) increasing selling time, 2) decreasing onboarding time and 3) reducing sales admin time². Time is a valuable piece of a seller’s success and limiting time in front of buyers takes us back to point #1. One way to approach measuring the success of your sales organization would be to focus on the quality of sales interactions.

• Understanding how your reps are performing has historically been a quantitative assessment driven via CRM data (i.e. how many meetings were held, how many opportunities were created). It may be more valuable to stand back and look at the overall progression holistically. For example, a seller may be going to less meetings, but having a higher conversion rate. This can be attributed to the transformation from static pitches to more dynamic and value-driven conversations. (as discussed in point #3).
• Marketing typically tracks KPIs around social impressions, website views, clicks and leads generated. This is all well and good, but omits a key marketing activity, content creation. Back to point #2, marketing is not currently measuring content adoption and its impact to revenue⁶. Understanding how, when and how often a seller uses content should be a key indicator of marketing’s success. Mapping content strategies should be prioritized by materials are driving revenue, and what stage of the sales process is lacking sufficient content.

Sources:

1. 2016 CSO Insights Sales Enablement Optimization Study. pp. 1–40, 2016
2. 2017 CSO Insights Sales Enablement Optimization Study. pp. 1–42, 2017.
3. Bickford, Paul. “Driving Behavior Change: Transforming Training into Business Results.” Experience Sales Conference 2017, Oct. 2017, Dallas, TX, Sales Enablement Society.
4. Cole, Heather. “The State of Sales Enablement.” Experience Sales Enablement Conference 2017. Experience Sales Enablement Conference 2017, Oct. 2017, Dallas, TX, Sales Enablement Society.
5. “How B2B Sellers Win in the Age of the Customer.” pp. 1-14, 2016, Forrester Research.
6. Pisarri, Peter. “6 Reasons Performance Initiatives Fail.” FUSED, 2017, Sales Enablement Society.

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