Gartner defines buyer enablement as “the provisioning of information that supports the completion of critical activities necessary to make a purchase.”
Today, most organizations deploy sales enablement technology to their sellers to indirectly enable buyers. The thought process is this: If we enable sellers to provide buyers with the information, content, and resources they need to make a purchase decision, they will close deals.
That makes total sense, right? Except, sellers are not the only ones influencing buying decisions. So if you’re only enabling sales, you’re missing a huge opportunity to help your buyers get over the finish line.
Who is Responsible for Buyer Enablement?
Consider that more than half of the buying process now takes place before a buyer engages with a salesperson. And over two-thirds of buyers never want to engage with a salesperson at all. That means your sellers have less influence over the buying process and your marketers have more.
Now think about what happens after a seller closes a deal. Existing accounts play a critical role in company growth. And in this market, customer loyalty isn’t automatic.
How are your customer success or account reps keeping your customers happy and informed about new offerings so you can retain and grow those accounts?
When you’re trying to enable buyers to make (and continue to make) confident purchase decisions, you can’t just enable sellers. You have to enable all of your revenue teams, from marketing to sales to customer success, with the resources, tools, and content they need to successfully enable buyers.
That’s a lot of enablement…
I know, it feels like a lot. But it doesn’t have to be. You don’t need separate enablement tools for marketers, sales reps, customer success managers, and buyers. You can use one unified sales enablement platform like Mediafly to accomplish your ultimate goal of buyer enablement.
Here’s what that might look like:
Buyer enablement in the early stages of self-guided research
Put yourself in your buyer’s shoes. Imagine you’re visiting your website in the early stages of self-guided research, before speaking with a sales rep. What does that experience look like?
Buyers who come to your website to learn more about your products or services typically have a problem to solve. Do you clearly communicate how you can help them solve their challenges? Do you offer the right content and information at the right time? Or are they left to search endlessly for something somewhat relevant to their needs?
Here’s the reality: If your buyer visits your website and can’t find the information they need when they need it, they bounce. They go to a competitor and the sales conversation stops before it even starts.
Using Mediafly, marketers can build AI-driven Content Hubs, small microsites built into their websites, to offer tailored content recommendations to buyers in real time based on buyer intent. Content recommendations can include traditional content formats like webinars or ebooks as well as interactive tools like business value assessments.
These tools allow customers to enter some basic information that’s used to generate a report quantifying the value your product or service can provide. This builds confidence in your solution and drives demand for your products and services.
Buyer enablement once a buyer agrees to speak to a sales rep
Again, pretend you are your buyer and you are meeting with one of your sales reps. What does the buyer experience look like in in-person, hybrid, and digital selling environments?
Are your sales presentations linear and static? Or engaging and interactive? Can your sellers quickly pivot to address buyer challenges uncovered in real-time? Are your sellers still pitching products or selling value?
Mediafly empowers marketers and sellers to easily create, distribute, access, and present engaging, animated content that wows buyers. Our CLOSE methodology helps you create challenge-based sales stories that get to the heart of what your buyers are up against and how your products and services can solve their real problems.
When your sellers use Mediafly, they can guide buyers through interactive tools like TCO calculators to directly compare the total cost of ownership of your product versus your competitor’s product. And with all content at their fingertips, they can pivot quickly and dive as deep as they need into topics your buyers care about most.
They can also quickly package content presented in meetings and email it directly from the sales application or CRM to enable buyers to share the information with other key decision makers in their organizations.
And post meeting, sellers can use Mediafly Insights to track how buyers interact with that content – who they share it with, what they revisit, how long they spend on specific topics – so they can appropriately tailor the next conversation.
Marketers can use the same information to determine what content works, what doesn’t, and optimize accordingly.
Buyer enablement after the deal is closed
Now, picture yourself as one of your existing customers. Is a renewal a guarantee? Likely not. Today, most organizations require financial justification to continue using a product or service. How do your sales reps prove realized value to current customers?
Mediafly enables success and account managers with tools to quantify the impact and value your solution has brought to a customer’s business over the last year.
After walking the customer through a collaborative assessment, the output is a beautifully designed, animated report that highlights the data and insights key stakeholders require to keep investing in your solution. Your reps can send the report to buyers in real-time during a meeting or Executive Business Review so they can easily prove the realized value of your solution.
Enable Marketers, Sales Reps, and Customer Success Managers to Close and Retain More Customers
When you’re trying to optimize the sales process for more deals won and higher revenues, it’s really not just about enabling your sellers anymore. Today, all commercial teams need the content, resources, and knowledge to create engaging and relevant content experiences at every touch point along the buyer journey.
Mediafly can help you enable marketing, sales and customer success with one platform. And when we do, you can reduce stalled opportunities by 15%, increase competitive win rates by as much as 50%, and increase deal sizes by 70%.
Want to learn more? Download our Sales Enablement Toolkit.
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