Sales enablement is a great opportunity to cement an effective working relationship with sales. Charlotte Graham-Cumming, director at Ice Blue Sky, offers advice on getting started
Forrester defines sales enablement as ‘a strategic, ongoing process that equips all client-facing employees with the ability to consistently and systematically have a valuable conversation with the right set of customer stakeholders at each stage of the customer’s problem-solving lifecycle to optimise the return of investment of the selling system.’
Several years ago I was lucky to have a great manager who recognised if marketing were to have its contribution noticed, we needed to align tightly with sales and customers; providing both with a lot of value in order to reach our own goals.
I still follow this now – it’s very powerful when done correctly and makes begging for marketing budget a lot easier.
Lost in translation
Salespeople, directors and the board talk in numbers and hard facts. The challenge for the marketer is to adapt to this language, and to create opportunities to present these facts to sales and management. Before you can think of helping someone, you need to really understand their challenges. Sales people may be frustrated with the following:
• Content isn’t always easy to find.
• Content isn’t always aligned with the way buyers want the information.
• No real ‘pathway’ through the content to help the sales team to know what to share and when.
• Don’t always see the value of what marketing is contributing.
Learn the lingo
Sales enablement is an extension of funnel marketing, which is great, as that’s what salespeople understand. Approaching your sales communication like this means you start to speak their language, and strengthen your role at the end of that long table. You should communicate the following:
• How many contacts marketing has initiated in named accounts.
• How contacts have moved through the sales funnel.
• Contribute to how marketing engaged people at that account, naming individuals.
• Identify cost-per-lead/opportunity – numbers that cannot be refuted.
• Ask them for input on upcoming activity, demonstrate what results you expect and what’s dependant on their involvement.
• Ask them what accounts they need help with, get them to identify what contacts they want to approach – follow through.
Tackling technology
If you’re like most of our customers, you have multiple systems to help you in marketing. Deluged with data, but not knowing how good the data is. In most cases, sales want three things from you:
1. Customer stories.
2. Email templates they can customise.
3. Supporting content (videos, documents, web resources, campaigns etc).
So, to fulfil this, consider looking at the following technology platforms:
• CRM: great for capturing lead information as well as responses to campaigns.
• Marketing automation: great for running, managing and measuring campaigns. Start small though, don’t overwhelm yourself.
• Sales portal: store all your marketing materials in one place; make it really easy for sales to find the right content.
• Website: align content to your campaigns and make materials really easy for customers to find.
• LinkedIn: great for outreach.
• ROI slider tools: can visually help customers see your company’s value.
Engaging customers
I like to use my sociable streak to meet customers. With a promise of keeping quiet during the meetings, I would tag along with sales and pre-sales to get to see how it all worked in person. I’d advise you to:
• Go more than once to start building a relationship.
• Ask to be introduced to their sales and marketing team.
• Research promotions they are running to see how they engage with their customers.
Lead to revenue pressure
So now you’ve got sales on your side, you know where and when all your content needs to engage with customers, you’re armed with information about how those customers access information, and you’re building up a great content resource.
Results from this approach don’t lead to overnight sales, but it is possible to demonstrate progress, in terms that sales and management understand and appreciate; keeping your budget safe.
Use the funnel model to track everything from early interest to full immersion in a sales cycle, you can easily demonstrate how the model is pushing prospects through the sales cycle until the first deal closes.
Charlotte has also contributed to our Sales Enablement Best Practice Guide