Enabling sellers to be more efficient and impactful is difficult. Technology is one aspect of sales enablement that is helping companies increase productivity. The challenge is identifying the technology vendor that will provide the performance improvements for your business and will be easy to deploy.
In a recent webinar—Jen Winter, Managing partner of Lenati—illustrated how Highspot’s real-time sales enablement tool has accelerated our capabilities in improving overall sales performance and insights on how to achieve a successful sales implementation.
Here are four key success factors for implementing a sales enablement tool:
1. Strategy First
If you are just getting started with sales enablement or switching technologies, one key step to include is a sales enablement content audit. According to SiriusDecisions, 65% of content created by marketing for sales is not used. Sales enablement efforts are only as successful as the content. A content audit can help identify:
- Key scenarios you can support out of the gate
- Critical content gaps against each phase of the sales process
- Content quality based on usage feedback
2. Less is More
We recommend practicing the less is more philosophy. Starting out with your top “strong” content pieces. Avoid uploading all of your content as sellers will need to sift through the content to determine what is meaningful for their specific scenario. You want your sellers to quickly embrace the usability of the tool.
3. Always Pilot
If this is your first attempt at sales enablement, focus your implementation on one or two key scenarios – for example, proposals/RFPs, key sales stages, case studies, etc. We recommend picking the scenarios that will alleviate pain points expressed by your sales team. You want to deliver productivity out of the gate.
4. Assign a Champion
Select an internal “super user” or “champion” from your sales enablement or sales operations team. Make this individual accountable for being the expert on your sales enablement rollout, sales adoption monitoring and content performance monitoring. Put a bi-weekly or monthly sales enablement review on the calendar to review productivity success, content performance, and discuss how to improve or extend your implementation.
Sales enablement tools provide a variety of capabilities to optimize the way that your sales team engages with customers and closes deals. If you are considering a sales enablement platform for your organization, we encourage you to leverage these key learnings to ensure success in your investment.
To learn more about why investing in sales enablement is critical for your business, download Making the Case for Sales Enablement.
