Unlock the true potential of your SaaS sales team with strategic sales enablement content. Help your sales colleagues exceed their quotas while meeting your campaign revenue goals.
I used to carry a briefcase as a deal-chasing sales guy, as my former VP of Sales Glenn Morris used to say. I often lacked current sales collateral to share with prospects and clients. Unlike Cosmo Kramer, I didn't just have a sleeve of saltine crackers, but I often met clients in their office with an aging laptop, dated sales material, and a presentation deck I put together on my lunch break a few days before. Up-to-date, on-brand, professional sales enablement content is essential for empowering SaaS teams to hit their sales quotas, and for marketer teams to meet their campaign KPIs.
By leveraging a well-structured sales enablement strategy, SaaS, technology, and mobility companies can ensure their sales teams are equipped with the processes, content, and technology they need to sell more effectively and move sales deals faster through the sales funnel.
Incorporating content like playbooks with activities such as preparing for client meetings in makes salespeople feel more confident, and helps them set clear, actionable objectives at each customer touch point. This structured approach leads to better productivity and higher sales velocity.
Sales enablement plays a crucial role in bridging the gap between marketing and sales teams. It fosters collaboration by aligning both departments around shared goals and ensuring open, trusting communication. This alignment is often facilitated by regular 'smarketing' meetings where both teams can discuss problems and collaborate on solutions.
I remember my first Smarketing meeting at Open Text. Sales sat on one side of the table in the morning, but as the day wore on and conversations became more casual, it didn't seem like the Sadie Hawkins dances of the old days. It also built relationships which lasted through sales kickoff meetings, and broke down departmental divides. The marketing team gained a better understanding of the kinds of case studies and guides the sales team needed, and the sales teams were better equipped with content to share with prospects and clients.
In the HubSpot Academy Sales Enablement Workbook and certification course, they recommend establishing a Service-Level Agreement (SLA) between sales and marketing to hold the teams accountable to helping each other. The SLA defines the number of qualified leads marketing must deliver to sales and the timeframe within which sales must contact these leads. Such structured collaboration ensures that both teams work towards common objectives, ultimately driving better results.
Content is a vital compont of any successful sales enablement program. Delivering the right content at the right time significantly impacts the sales process by addressing potential customers' questions and pain points. Types of sales enablement content include playbooks, battle cards, win/loss stories, email templates, buyer personas, training videos, and product one-pagers. Creating these content assets with input from sales, marketing, consulting, customer success, product management, and other teams is crucial to creating impactful content.
An effective content strategy involves understanding the questions that prospects ask and creating content that provides thorough answers that spark deeper conversation. This content can then be packaged in formats that are easily accessible by the sales team, so they can share the right information at the right time to move prospects and customers through the sales funnel efficiently.
There are some great SaaS sales enablement platforms in the SaaS marketplace these days, including HubSpot and Dock (shout out to their Content Lead, Eric Doty, who manages to find the time to also be the Community Lead at Superpath, which is an awesome group of content marketers I am always inspired by).
I've been a contributing writer to the HubSpot Sales Blog for nearly two years. I'm enjoying finding new ways to use their Sales and Content Hubs.
Sales enablement tools such as Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems, training platforms, analytics tools, and enablement platforms are crucial for accelerating the sales cycle. These tools help automate and streamline various sales processes, making it easier for sales teams to manage leads, track interactions, and measure performance.
For instance, a CRM system can store and organize contact information, track the progress of individual sales, and generate performance reports. Context-specific help tooltips can be enriched with sales enablement content that aligns with the sales stage, so sellers can overcome common obstacles or objections with resources like client testimonials or competitor FUD-busting battlecards.
Training platforms can ensure that sales teams are continuously updated with the latest product knowledge and sales techniques, while analytics tools can provide insights into sales performance and customer behavior.
Continuous learning is a cornerstone of sustainable growth in SaaS sales organizations. Sales enablement ensures that sales teams are always learning and improving through regular training and the use of up-to-date resources. Ongoing educational sessions based on what's happening on your team's calls and meetings (as informed by your CRM and customer feedback) helps sales teams stay ahead of industry trends and adapt to changing market conditions.
Further, empowering your sales and marketing teams to contribute to the content creation process can foster a sense of ownership and ensure that the content produced is relevant and useful. By regularly updating training materials and incorporating authentic feedback from actual sales experiences, organizations can create a dynamic, learning-focused environment that drives long-term success. If it can bring your sales and marketing teams together to work as a cohesive unit, you'll be far better off down the road.
Do you need to expand your sales enablement content library? Are you considering adopting a sales methodology like SPIN, MEDDIC, or Sandler? Contact me via the form below so we can discuss content and training strategies you should develop for measurable business growth.