Sales Enablement, A Love Story

Its Valentine’s Day – a day when we celebrate the role that marketing and sales plays in our personal lives.  And in honor of Valentine’s Day, let’s take a look at a new trend in marketing and sales.

Many of my clients love sales and hate marketing.  Sales is short-term, tangible, clear – what’s not to like about sales?!  On the other hand, marketing is long-term, more subtle and intangible, and much less clear.  Unfortunately, many business owners never get past that black/white dynamic to see that marketing is one of the most important pieces of the puzzle to grow a business.

Good marketing – at the small/mid-sized business level – has always been about driving revenue – getting more people to buy more, sooner, at higher margins.  But that’s often overlooked when marketing focuses on tweets and clicks and likes and pretty graphics.

Fortunately, there’s a new trend that focuses more on the good kind of marketing – that trend is Sales Enablement.

Sales Enablement is how marketing helps sales – it’s the tools, systems, content, and support that salespeople use to engage prospects efficiently.  Because there is more competition today than there used to be, businesses cannot afford the inefficiency in the sales process that used to be OK.  Marketing brings scale, consistency, and clarity that brings down the costs of making the sale.

At a recent marketing and sales retreat I led, we reviewed a Hubspot video on Sales Enablement.  It said that 70% of the buyer’s decision is made before they even talk to a salesperson.  In other words, most of “sales” actually happens during the phase that is usually handled by marketing.

What does the trend toward Sales Enablement mean for you?

• Most small businesses are overinvesting in salespeople and underinvesting in their marketing.

• Sales needs to describe to marketing what it’s hearing from prospects and customers, and what it needs to address buyer concerns.

• Marketing needs to create for sales standardized tools and strong, consistent messages to make the sales process more efficient.

• You need to appreciate what a strong connection there is between educating prospects about their needs, and making sales.  Buyers are making their decisions while they’re learning…in fact, because of what they are learning.

Sales Enablement can help you generate more revenue more efficiently.  If you think your sales and marketing are not keeping up with the times, you should use the topic of Sales Enablement to open a discussion among your leadership team about how your approach could change.