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As a marketing leader, it’s critical to enable your reps with the right tools.
These should support their skill set to win more sales and excel at their job.
With so many sales enablement platforms on the market, how do you determine which one is right for your team?
The ideal software for your business should provide the best fit for your business:
In this article, we’ll cover everything from understanding your business needs, to evaluating sales enablement tools, and what kinds of blockers to look out for when you need to make the final decisions.
Let’s jump right in!
It’s important to first understand the reason why your business exists and what you’re looking to achieve.
Questions That Can Help You Define Your Business
Once you have a clear idea of your business, you can then start to look at the right sales enablement platform to fit your needs.
Here’s how we usually take the road by asking ourselves the most basic questions:
One size does not fit all.
If you’re a small team, you may not need all the bells and whistles that come with a top-of-the-line sales enablement tool. A simpler solution may be all that you need to get the job done.
If you’re a mid-size or enterprise company, however, you need a tool that can handle your greater volume of sales materials and help you to rally your team around your sales goals.
So, before you buy a sales enablement tool, determine the size of your business. That way, you’ll get a tool that’s right for your needs and get the most value from their investment.
No one’s buying sales enablement tools without good reason. When building a sales strategy, you should set up some goals to hold your reps accountable.
You want to enable them to achieve those goals. Keeping that in mind, look for the tools that aid the process.
Some of the goals that businesses might have include:
Each of these goals requires a different type of sales enablement tool, so it’s important to know what you’re trying to achieve before you make a purchase.
Traffic goals might be best met with a tool like BuzzSumo, which helps you track the most popular content on social media.
Expansion into new markets might require a tool like Salesforce, which can help you keep track of potential leads from around the world.
Check out our curated list of Top Sales Enablement Tools to find out which tools fit your goals.
Now that you understand the kinds of tools that you will need, you must now seriously evaluate a number of options to determine the most appropriate tools for your business.
Let’s say you’re looking for a sales content management software, here are some of the key features you might want to look for:
It’s also important to consider the value of the tool. Some tools may be more expensive, but offer more features, or be easier to use. Other tools may be less expensive, but may not offer as many features.
It’s important to weigh the cost of the tool against its features to see if it’s a good value for your team.
The most common blockers that sales leaders encounter while implementing a new sales enablement program are:
With all these risks are valid, you also need to take into account both short-term and long-term costs when implementing a sales enablement system.
One of the biggest implementation risks that businesses have fallen for is buying a system and onboarding 100 people all at once - that often leads to six months of downtime.
It’s better to first do a proof of concept with a small group to make sure the system is a good fit for your business.
In addition, you’ll want to consider the budget for the project and the timeline for implementation.
Sales enablement solutions can be complex, so it’s important to make sure you have the right team in place to support the project from start to finish.
Addressing these issues early on in the sales enablement process can help ensure a successful implementation.
The success of a sales enablement initiative starts with a well-crafted business case.
The first step in creating a winning sales enablement business case is to do some upfront planning. This includes figuring out what content you need, interviewing your sales team to find out what they are using and where the gaps are, and running a pilot with a small group of users.
Once you have a plan in place, it’s important to approach your boss with a proposal for the program.
Your executive team needs to understand the following:
Once you have answered these questions, you can begin to build your business case.
Quick pro-tip: Be prepared to answer any objections they may have, such as why can’t we just use Confluence or Sharepoint?
If your boss is on board, you can start looking towards implementation. Also, be sure to track the results of the program so you can show how it’s helping them sell more effectively. Showing continued progress and success should secure executive confidence.
By outlining the needs of your team and explaining how the new tool will help them achieve their goals, you can make a strong case for investing in any specific solution.
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