Footprints by John Loo | CC BY 2.0
Companies everywhere are helping salespeople and marketers by embracing software like Salesforce, Hubspot, Marketo and countless others. One of the big categories among these is the vague catch-all definition of sales enablement software. Adoption of these solutions is also growing fast; from 2012 to 2014 alone, spending on sales enablement solutions increased by 69%. So, what is sales enablement? It means different things to different people, but we’ll use Salesforce’s definition of a “collection of activities intended to enable better sales execution.”
In practice, sales enablement software usually enables salespeople to follow contract procedures, reference current pricing information and maintain a database of names. All too often, sales enablement software is another way of saying sales tracking software. While important, tracking software won’t empower your sales.
The process of empowering your sales reps must go beyond them checking off items A, B and C in a customer interaction. Arming them with the right content is the first step to empowering them in in-person meetings, but it isn’t necessarily enough. There needs to be consideration of how content fits into the overall sales conversation, which means flipping the script (or better yet, throwing it out).
As Forrester has said time and time again, it’s the Age of the Customer, the age of the customer isn’t ending anytime soon and more companies still need to embrace the idea. It means adapting content to the customer and the conversation, not trying to mold the conversation to your content, and not just delivering that content. With the amount of collateral that B2B companies put out, chances are your prospects have reviewed a lot of your content already. Your content should thus add value to your conversation, not be the value.
The value-add? Your salespeople! In that last, crucial push after marketing has done its job, you don’t need to babysit your salespeople, but instead give them the tools that will empower them to close more deals from their in-person meetings. That starts with equipping them with the right content, but moves onto helping them tailor content for each individual customer and doing so on an interface that won’t add headaches for marketing teams who sends the content, and sales teams who use it. Whether it’s sales tracking or sales enablement software, that’s just one piece of the puzzle. Make sure your sales force has all the pieces before they’re out in the field.
Want to see what sales force empowerment looks like? Watch the video below to see how Interactive Content can help salespeople and customer choose their own adventure for the perfect in-person selling experience.
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