Collaboration can be a powerful thing — especially when it comes to your sales and marketing teams. Unfortunately, a disconnect between the two departments is expensive, costing businesses $1 trillion a year in futile marketing efforts and shrunken sales.
As a marketer, imagine the possibilities of working in unison with your sales department, arming your reps with the information they need to close more deals. Rather than handing over a brochure and calling it a day, a sales enablement strategy equips sales with training, data, messaging points and relevant content reflecting those points.
Simply put, sales enablement has the power to transform the buying process. In fact, over 75% of companies employing sales enablement saw an increase in sales in the first year alone.
If your sales enablement toolbox is lacking in tricks of the trade, try these strategies to help boost your team:
Define your target — together
What makes a qualified lead? Sales and marketing should team up to clearly identify the who, what and when. Consider the demographics, psychographics and more before agreeing on your ideal buyer personas.
Vary your content types
Prospects are all on different roads in their buying journey, and they need content that reaches them at every turn. Blog posts, for example, are valuable top-of-funnel (TOFU) content because they introduce your brand and can be used by sales as a jumping-off point to get conversations started. As buyers move through the funnel and are hungry for deeper information, provide them with research reports and white papers with more details and data to help prospects convert.
Create email templates
Speaking of content, make it easy for sales to follow up by creating email templates they can customize. Take it a step further and craft email sequences that can trigger based on different customer actions — or inactions. So if a past customer hasn’t made a purchase in a while, they can automatically receive a targeted email to lure them back in.
Utilize a CMS
Don’t make your sales team have to dig around to find the right content for their immediate need. Give them flexibility with a comprehensive content management system (CMS). Make sure to post the most current content in user-friendly high-resolution pdfs and presentation templates that can be downloaded and personalized as needed.
Stay organized with a CRM
Alignment is key. That’s why a customer relationship management tool (CRM) is a one-stop-shop for customer data, reports and analytics that sales can access in a few clicks. This is an easy way to promote standardization and give them an edge when out in the field.
Send regular internal communications
What better way to keep marketing and sales on the same page? Ensure transparency by sharing content strategies, new martech tools, updated messaging and more. Internal communication is also a great place to celebrate successes as a unified team, encourage collaboration and identify opportunities for fresh tactics.
It’s time to start playing nice in the sandbox. Enabling your sales team with easily accessible content is low-hanging fruit — and a proven success multiplier for your entire organization.