Many things have changed in sales over the last few decades while many are still the same. The advent of modern technology paves the future for sales enablement solutions, making the life of a sales and marketing team member easier and more productive. These solutions are handy for all the key players in a sales cycle, from lead to customer. Amidst cut throat competition between various sales and marketing teams of different brands, it is very important to have a mobile, agile and versatile strategy to be a winner.

Imagine a scenario where a prospective buyer is approached with a number of sales and marketing messages from multiple companies– all in your line of business. How are you planning to create a unique, cutting edge sales strategy to stand out? How are you going to do this and remain cost-effective? Here is where the importance of a brilliant sales enablement solution will come into play. These solutions will convert technology like tablets and other mobile devices into revenue generating weapons. More importantly, the three key areas in which sales enablement software can boost your organization’s sales performance are; Content, Multi-Channeled Communication and Insight.

Content

A meaningful content strategy plays an important role in managing customer relationships. Keeping the customer aware, informed, engaged and ready to receive your brand message is a real talent. An interesting study by Gartner Research suggests, by 2020, customers will manage 85% of their relationships without talking to a human. A sales enablement solution is therefore a brilliant start to a new era in sales. It will solve many of the issues that your business is facing from a content perspective.

Creative Content Creation- A sales enablement solution will help in the creation of interactive and personalized stories, which will excite and engage your customers. These solutions have advanced features which are much more than a traditional PowerPoint presentation.

If you are in marketing, you know the difficulties in creating large sales presentations in a multi-page Word file, or generating PowerPoint presentations with many slides and high-res images that often bounce back when you email it to an another person.
It’s frustrating after spending so much time creating these large and complex sales materials, the sales objectives were not met.

The solution is now here. You can create a story on multiple platforms and can merge it together to produce an enhanced experience using sales enablement solutions. Different file and media types such as .DOCX, .JPEG, PPTX, or Mp4 can all be mixed and merged to create an exciting and dynamic narrative flow of content.

Working with Digital Content- Working with digital assets is easy, cost effective and environmentally friendly. Your business is heading towards improving ROI with these options. Using sales enablement solutions and digital content is speak well for businesses like yours, which are socially responsible and support an eco-friendly approach towards a sustainable world.

Storage of Content- Sales enablement solutions help not only by creating stories but also in enhanced storage. These solutions help the marketing team to store the content in a central, accessible location i.e., in the cloud. New and revised materials stored in the cloud will be easily and quickly distributed in real-time to the sales team and the control will always remain with the marketing team. When sales materials are stored in a central location, a salesperson doesn’t have to solve the puzzle of ‘where to find the appropriate material?’

Content Availability- Your content is readily available and on the tip of your finger. The marketing team can easily update any changes instantly. Just as important, a salesperson can effortlessly receive the files whenever and wherever they need by using their tablets or other mobile devices. Since the updated version is always available, sales person confidence goes up and the usage of the sales material will increase. Offline availability is an added advantage.

Many brands have already recognized the potential of sales enablement solutions. Here is a good example of this by Sotheby’s International Realty, a well-known real estate company that offers luxury property and homes for sale. The company created a personalized app for enhancing sales named ‘Anthology app’. This app helped the brand in presenting, selling and listing their properties in a more engaging manner. They saw an immediate increase in clients and today, over 15,000 Sotheby associates worldwide are using this marketing tool.

If you are planning to explore a sales enablement solution, you have two choices: you can make a custom solution solely for your organization or you can find a flexible, enterprise ready solution that you can deploy quickly and easily.

Multi Channeled Communication

No matter how good your sales content is, if your communication channel is not interactive enough to engage your customers then all your efforts will be wasted. Sales enablement solutions can help by creating greater visibility at the right time. It will improve the communication between marketing and the sales team as well as between sales people and their customers.

Enhanced Engagement with Prospects – In a traditional sales environment, communication between a salesperson and a customer was monotonous and boring. However, using sales enablement apps and tools, your tablet and other mobile gadgets turn into an interactive sales platform.

Imagine a scenario where a salesperson is explaining the product details to a prospective client. Halfway through the meeting customer interest dips. The solution here is to involve the customer in an interactive session. A salesperson can give the tablet to the customer so that they can have a first-hand experience, resulting in an enhanced sales opportunity. Sales enablement solutions are highly engaging as well as the fact that they reinforce your message through a user friendly interface. Interactive platforms are also useful for communicating to people with hearing or visual impairment. Smart businesses are learning to use tablets for improved customer experiences.

An Updated Sales Force- A marketing team can save time by communicating to its sales team via a sales enablement solution such as Brandificant which allows you to place notes on specific media pieces to be sent back to the media creator. These messages are more direct than email and takes less time than calling. Moreover, since the note is on the actual media piece, the message relayed is in context making it easier to understand the implement. The updated messages are easily uploaded and automatically get synced with salespersons device. Most apps provide pop up messages which grab attention faster than email as well.

Insight Through Analytics

Feedback, analysis and having deeper sales insight is an important task by itself and is of paramount importance to a sales and marketing team. Understanding the pain points for sustaining business growth will lead to greater efficiency and higher revenue. All marketing materials are churned out after much effort but how do you know which material was most effective? Or who viewed it the most? How to measure the performance of your salesperson? Or what the most successful sales people are doing?

By using a sales enablement solution all of these real time analytics are possible. Advanced sales enablement solutions come with robust analytic features such as:

  • Dashboard View – Analyze the content and story usage within the organization.
  • Story Views – Find out how many stories were presented each day as well as cumulative. Use this data to find out how often sales presentations are being made and to make changes to ensure customers are being shown the right content for effective closing.
  • Story Analytics – Analyze the time spent on each story presentation, with detailed analytics on time duration for each page. Fine tune the story presentation based on insights for maximum customer attention.
  • Top Stories or Media – See the top stories and media being presented to your customers. Use this data to make them better and more enriching.
  • Top Users – See your top users. Measure the effectiveness of the sales team and their performance through the app.
  • Device Distribution – Analyze how the stories are being presented over different devices. Test your stories on the devices used most frequently.

Enhanced sales enablement solutions like Brandificant can provide all the above analytic features and much more. So what are you waiting for? Improve your company’s sales effectiveness by using sales enablement solutions. Contact us for further details.