Sales Enablement Best Practices For Stellar Sales Presentations Every Time

If you want your sales team to succeed, you need to equip them with the resources necessary to get the job done correctly and efficiently - aka your sales enablement process. Providing your sales reps with the necessary materials, technology, tools and resources will help them convert leads, close more deals and drive revenue for your business. To achieve your goals, consider these sales enablement best practices.

What Is Sales Enablement?

According to Gartner, sales enablement involves “the activities, systems, processes, and information that support and promote knowledge-based sales interactions with clients and prospects.”

CSO Insights, on the other hand, defines it as a “strategic, collaborative discipline designed to increase predictable sales results by providing consistent, scalable enablement services that allow customer-facing professionals and their managers to add value in every customer interaction.”

Essentially, the concept of sales enablement boils down to providing your sales team with the most effective tools, resources and content to sell more effectively and make your customers happy.

Why Does Sales Enablement Matter?

Based on a study conducted by CSO Insights, organizations with a more formal and strategic approach to sales enablement have 15% higher win rates for forecast deals. This is why sales enablement has experienced a 343% surge in adoption over the last five years.

Sales enablement significantly improves sales readiness, sales engagement and retention. It also improves client-facing success while helping sales experts maximize their sales tools.

Content is a critical part of every sales enablement strategy.

According to Gaurav Harode of sales enablement provider, Enablix, sales enablement’s goal is to get more sales, faster. It is a multifaceted concept with content as the most crucial element. You need to get the right content to the right people, which requires more than just publishing a blog or an article. Creating content for sales enablement means engaging your customers with interactivity via sales decks, sales presentations and demonstrations.

Sales Enablement Best Practices

Arming your sales reps with tools and resources is more than just pulling together the most popular solutions around.  You need to have a strategy, with each tool playing a specific role in the sales process. These sales enablement best practices can help supercharge your team.

1. Optimize Sales Content

Digital content management is considered the precursor to sales enablement. It helps you optimize your sales content and tailor it to the buyer’s needs at a particular stage of the funnel.

Creating the right content is critical to the success of any sales enablement strategy. One of the content types that you should focus on is your sales presentation. In this age when face-to-face marketing is limited, a sales presentation serves as your company’s representation. What you say and show during the presentation should reflect your business’ vision, mission and culture.

sales presentation
0%Presentations are great storytelling tools.

Sales presentations provide your team with storytelling tools to enhance sales enablement. Instead of using traditional sales presentation software, use innovative tools, such as Ingage, to equip your team with interactive and engaging presentations. You can create non-linear, sleek and streamlined slides designed to keep your audience captivated throughout the presentation. You can even add videos and interactive bullets to create more depth in your slides.

Sales presentations also enhance in-person sales interactions. This is important because 74% of customers will choose the first company that adds value to their experience.

2. Work with Marketing

To ensure that your prospects are getting the right content at the right time, sales and marketing teams should work together. Keep in mind that the marketing team is responsible for creating content, such as blog posts and case studies.

It's important that your sales team is closely aligned with marketing. Collaborating with the marketing team can help you create consistent branding while ensuring that the content is compelling.

When salespeople get access to all the content they need and are coached on using it effectively, the win rates can go up by 16.6%. Research by Forrester also shows that businesses experience 19% more growth when they align their marketing and sales teams for smoother and faster communication.

3. Create Content for Every Stage in the Sales Cycle

The goal of sales enablement content is to build your company’s credibility, educate the prospects, answer questions and overcome any objections.  Every stage in the sales cycle needs different types of content.

For example, a prospect at the initial contact stage might not be ready to hear your plans and prices yet. They might be more interested in specific features that fit their needs.

On the other hand, if your sales team wants to reach out to prospects at the top of your funnel, industry-related articles or an introductory presentation would get more engagement. On-demand webinar recordings or tutorials might be more appropriate for nurturing prospects in the middle of the funnel. And case studies and package offerings would appeal to those in the decision-making stage.

4. Measure Your Work

Tracking the progress of your sales enablement strategy is one aspect that most marketers often overlook. Analytics are just as important as your sales strategy. You need to know who is consuming your content, from where it is being accessed, which part of your presentation is getting more attention and which areas need more work. By collecting and analyzing these metrics, you can measure whether your sales enablement strategy is working or not.

sales enablement best practices with analytics
0%Measure your success with analytics.

Creating a sales presentation using Ingage allows you to track the analytics that matter, including the number of clicks, views and presentation duration. Aside from being able to modify your presentation to maximize its reach, you can also share these insights with your sales team to help them sell better and faster. Your sales team can tailor their pitches if they know what the prospects are really interested in.

Wrapping Up

Sales enablement is no longer a best practice; it is a must-have. Businesses that want to compete in today’s marketplace must understand the importance of having a sales enablement strategy focused on content.

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