Aim For Sales Enablement To Surpass Sales Dependency

Diana Parkhouse | Flickr | CC BY 2.0

You may be familiar with the classic adage, “If you give a man a fish, he eats for a day. If you teach a man to fish, he eats for a lifetime.” Ignoring the fact that you’d be eating only fish for your entire life, those words make a great point that relates to strong sales practices.

As an experienced rep or sales manager, what you hope to accomplish with your sales enablement tools is create sales people who are able to do their best work independently. Sure, you want to turn each sales rep into your top sales rep. Not that they’ll stop asking questions, but the key is to enable them; you want to avoid a dependent relationship entirely.  Aim for sales enablement to surpass sales dependency.

So, how do you go about giving your staff the aid they need without making them completely reliant on your every word? You should follow the acronym T.O.T, which stands for Training, Opportunities, Tools.  Special thanks to The Sales Blog for some of the following insight:

Training – Providing your sales staff with the best real-world training you can give them is crucial. This is the foundation upon which you build the house. This training should be ongoing, and will keep all your reps sharp.  In a shifting landscape that sees virtually every industry scrambling for revenue, reps have to be trained efficiently.

Opportunities – Every salesperson needs hot leads, but in order to continually grow as professionals, they need opportunities that challenge them. Your reps need opportunities that push them to work harder and better their chops. Sure, giving them things that are right in their wheelhouse is good from time to time, but pushing them is the only way to make them better and more capable.

Tools – So you’ve given them the right training and the right opportunities, now they need the right tools to help them close these sales. Mobile sales enablement tools are helping sales teams create more engaging and more impactful presentations. These tools can also funnel data back into training, helping you create a self-sustaining circle of sales (queue The Lion King theme).  The right tools in the hands of a highly-trained and seasoned salesperson will be the key differentiator in any discussion.

If you practice T.O.T. as a sales manager, then you are going to enable the right kind of selling and create a much stronger team in the process.

Having issues with your sales enablement strategies? Maybe you haven’t found the right tool.  Let us know what you look for to achieve optimal T.O.T.