3 Reasons to Add a Sales Enablement Platform to Your 2015 Plan

Why you should add a sales enablement platform to your sales strategy

Table of Contents

    The end of the year is upon us and this is traditionally a final week to push hard on Q4 deals before the meeting requests and follow up items get pushed to “after New Year’s day.”

    It also marks a good time to take a deep breath and consider what worked over the past 12 months and how the next 12 will be even better.

    For your sales and marketing team, adding a sales enablement platform to the mix will increase sales funnel performance and improve sales effectiveness.  Why?

    1. Your marketing and sales content (collateral, assets, case studies) is unorganized and hard to find

    Even though you have a file system, document management system, wiki or otherwise, your content is spread all over the place and in multiple versions leaving the sales team to fend for themselves due to frustration or lack of knowledge or something in between.  Content gets created, produced, and distributed but then the “last mile” from the sales representative to the customer becomes a wildcard. Your content is in lots of places from unused portals to a salesperson’s hard drive to a personal Dropbox account somewhere that a work team uses.  Fix this with a sales enablement platform that brings all the benefits of a portal but is something the sales and marketing team will actually use.  Make the whole process smarter with easier ways to share, comment, and incorporate feedback directly into the system.

    2. You have no real understanding of what works and when

    Impromptu and ad hoc deal postmortems can occur but rarely get documented or shared to the rest of the sales team or the marketing team.  In most cases the actions, content, and decisions made to close a deal stay with the sales representative and their direct supervisor.  This perpetuates a blind spot of having no idea what core investments actually aid the sales process and lead directly to revenue.  Including advanced analytics designed to close the loop across marketing to sales to customer show what worked when and how it was used in direct engagement with a prospect.

    3. Your sales team is not as effective as they could be with better tools & support

    Delivering sales training, helping with the creation and distribution of sales collateral, and creating the proper incentives and compensation plan all work towards operating a high performance sales organization.  But what about better, faster access to the right pieces of content for the sales stage by product line by prospect type?  Is this available at the fingertips of a salesperson as they follow up with a lead or push a conversation forward?  The absence of intelligent and readily available sales playbooks inside the CRM system is costing you productivity and money so turbocharge sales team productivity and effectiveness with a sales enablement platform.

    Contact us if you’d like us to tell you more or schedule a demo.

    By Jeff Day

    Jeff is the VP of Marketing at Highspot and an 18-year veteran of sales enablement activities through roles in both marketing and sales. Jeff’s current mission is to elevate the role of sales enablement to a critical business function charged with driving radical improvement in sales effectiveness.

    Related Resources

    Who Needs Leads? 4 Ways Pipeline Marketing Drives Revenue
    Blog
    Who Needs Leads? 4 Ways Pipeline Marketing Drives Revenue
    Marketing isn’t about leads. Of course, Marketing isn’t closing deals, either. Marketing is about pipeline generation for both new business, […]
    A Complete Guide to Revenue Operations
    Blog
    A Complete Guide to Revenue Operations
    This comprehensive guide provides practical steps for implementation and insights on when RevOps is the right choice. Learn more.
    The Perfect Sales Pitch: Examples and Best Practices
    Blog
    The Perfect Sales Pitch: Examples and Best Practices
    Unlock the secrets to crafting compelling sales pitches with our expert tips, templates, and proven strategies.