Growing your business falls squarely on the shoulders of your sales team, so it is up to your organization to set them up for success. After all, their success results in increased sales, which translates to more money and more customer interactions. If you want to keep up with the competition, this is the time to empower your sales team and channel with a new sales enablement strategy and enhance your channel sales process with added strategies and tools. Doing so will optimize your business and your bottom line.
Think of sales enablement as a form of collaboration among your team – a combination of technology and strategies to deliver content, training, and coaching to your frontline that engages directly with customers. When effective, sales enablement strategies improve your customer’s interactions with a streamlined sales cycle.
Your internal sales team and your channel’s sales team are in the trenches with customers and need to be supported. But understand that in the digital age, customers are becoming more sophisticated and many do not need a salesperson to give them the ins and outs of how your products or services can solve their problem. This makes having a sales enablement process in place even more important to the overall process.
This post will uncover the best channel sales enablement strategies and tools to set up your sales team and your partners’ sales team.
It Takes a Village
Understand that creating a sales enablement strategy is not a task for one person. It should be a collaborative effort, and if you want a robust strategy, you’ll need to include input from various team members and channel partners for a diverse set of perspectives. Collaboration is key to get buy-in from your sales team and partners. Also, keep in mind that business is evolving every day. Therefore, your team and partners should be equipped with an ongoing initiative that can flex to align with changing metrics and analytics.
Your Customer Should Be Top of Mind
Although it is called a “sales” enablement strategy, your enablement process is ultimately for your customers. Put them at the forefront of your thinking and consider the steps they take when patronizing your business. Include a sales funnel as part of your strategy so you enhance the experience during each step of their journey.
Take Inventory
Useless technology and strategies will do nothing to boost your efficiency. If you lack efficiency, you’ll potentially lose your customer. You do not want to overload your system with a bunch of tools that you never put into use or do not know how to use. At the end of the day, your goal is to bring efficiency to your operating model. Implementing a tool just because you heard it was useful for another company is not the way to go. Conduct a SWOT analysis with your team and channel partners to identify the strengths and weaknesses of your current digital sales tools. Then decide which tools you can leverage to enhance the customer experience at each step of their journey.
Out with the Old, in with the New
Now that your organization has determined what works and what doesn’t, you must keep on top of the latest software and technology. You run the risk of losing your customer to the competition that uses the latest and greatest tools. And there is no excuse to leave your sales team and channel partners hanging with the plethora of tools available on the market. Implement a sales tool that can seamlessly integrate with other tools, such as Salesforce, that you already have in place.
Keep it Simple
Things move rather quickly in the sales world, and you do not have long to capture your customer. Your best bet is to keep it simple and optimize each interaction. Your goal is to keep customers coming back for more, right? A sales enablement strategy does not have to be complicated. In fact, the more simplified you can make your plan the better it will improve your workflow, processes, and efficiency.