“I think my sales team is ready, they can’t get any better,” said no manager, ever. So they train, equip, engage, control, and repeat, to get the most out of them. But what is it that turns salespeople into real powerhouses and secures the future of the business at the same time? We think it is mobile sales enablement.
Enablement Is More Than Support
Has your marketing team created content (brochures, presentations, photo galleries, white papers, ebooks, blogs, infographics) to support your sales team? If it has: great! But you’re not done just yet. (If you haven’t got such assets, our best advice is to stop reading this article right now and create some.)
Have you ever asked around if the sales agents use those materials? More often than one would think, the answer is no. And the reason, more often than one would think, is: “I have no idea where to find them.” Or, sometimes: “It doesn’t fit my client’s needs, and I have no way to customize it.” In fact, stats show that, although 95% of clients make a buying decision when they get content at each step of their journey, 65% of reps can’t even find the content the clients are expecting and 90% of them avoid using the material they locate because it is outdated and not fit.
Thus, putting the corporate content in a central place is the first step. The next one would be automation. When you have a well-specified workflow, it is quite easy to associate the right content with the right step of the process and offer the agent just the piece he or she needs at the right moment. For example, the sales insurance products always starts with an assessment and most likely goes on with product presentations. Sales enablement automation will make sure the assessment questionnaire is the first content piece an agent sees and that they won’t see any presentations until that questionnaire is clicked through.
Having the content in place is the support that forms the base for enablement, where the material provides a seamlessly integrated background to the sales rep’s work, i.e., using the persuading power, product knowledge, and personalization skills to offer a tailor-made solution to the client’s problems.
Enablement Triggers Efficiency
Sales reps are pushed from two directions to increase their efficiency: the employer wants them to contribute to more profitability while the clients expect them to save their time while helping them make well-informed decisions.
By its very definition, sales enablement does just that: it creates a business-friendly environment by giving the agent all the engagement tools and information that he or she needs to forward the sales process.
If this is too vague, let’s take a closer look. The most critical barrier to efficiency, according to a survey conducted among sales practitioners but also confirming common beliefs, is the time spent in the CRM. However, searching for content is also among the most time-consuming activities. When enabled by technology, sales reps have a more streamlined process for CRM use (as it is integrated into the sales enablement tool), and a central place to look for the content they need for their work. In return, the conversion rates, as a measure of efficiency, have improved at 95% of the companies of the survey mentioned above, at least to some extent.
A sales enablement automation tool also support the sales managers in being more efficient. The technology can log all the processes, all the time measures, and all the content usage, that managers use to inform themselves and make decisions. These logs are then quickly put together into a report and can be automatically sent to the management level. The time previously spent on administration and chasing down reps for the report now can be spent to work on strategic initiatives!
Mobilization Puts the Icing on the Cake
Today, when no technology is binding sales agents anymore to their desks for any tasks, sales enablement cannot be complete without a mobile solution, either. Companies are already investing in mobile technology, hardware and software alike, and it’s just a bonus that some of those solutions have the potential to also enable their sales teams.
The interaction that requires the most support from mobility is the personal meeting. In today’s customer-driven business environment, not being able to respond to a client request immediately and adequately easily becomes a dealbreaker. Meanwhile, a mobile device, equipped with a corporate app specially developed for these sales interactions, is a tool that delivers accurate information to the prospect, in real time.
A mobile sales enablement tool is the sales rep’s Swiss army knife: it has all the functionality for the assessment and the engagement of the prospect, as well as all it takes to contract on-site. What functions are we talking about? We have mentioned questionnaires and product presentations before, but integrated client data, emails, todo-lists (either by the manager or by the agent himself), multimedia, electronic signature, or voice notes. Furthermore, tracking and reporting is also an essential part of any mobile sales enablement tool.
The sales profession has exciting times ahead as the digital transformation allows the traditional interactions to develop in many ways. Technology helps to achieve a sense of purpose again by offering opportunities to win the almighty trust of the prospects. Who, in turn, become more engaged by experiencing a new type of sales activity. As much a higher achievable pay, this engagement will drive the agents’ commitment, too, and motivate them to perform better and better.
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