While Sales Enablement puts salespeople in the best conditions to perform in meetings, Growth Enablement involves all employees to trigger and/or accelerate growth. In this blog post, Touch & Sell provides you with three crucial tactics to successfully implement your Growth Enablement strategy.
#1 Embrace the “Sales” mindset (even in marketing)
When was the last meeting between the sales and marketing teams? How often do these meetings take place? If you are uncertain about your answers, you may need to take action to address the numerous consequences of Sales and Marketing Misalignment:
- 65% of content produced by marketing is never used by the sales team (Sirius Decision);
- 28% of content produced by marketing is not shared with salespeople (Datadwell.com);
- 40% of salespeople are unable to answer 40% of the questions asked by B2B buyers regarding the product they are selling.
No matter how good your content is, it will not help your sales efforts if it doesn’t address the reality on the ground. That’s why every content production must involve your Salespeople. They are, after all, the only ones who directly interact with your customers and prospects. They know their verbatim, their expectations, their concerns, their objections and their ambitions.
4 tips for reconciling your salespeople with content marketing
- Gather all your content in one reliable and accessible source.
- Ask your salespeople about the content they use the most. You’ll be able to update it and perform a complete audit of the existing material.
- Periodically survey your salespeople about their content needs. Keep doing this until the cooperation between marketing and sales becomes a natural habit.
- Your marketing team’s work is not just about awareness, branding and LeadGen. Your marketing department is also expected to produce content that can be used in customer meetings (or to prepare for a meeting).
Keep in mind that marketers can’t just create and share a volume of (good) content with the sales team and expect them to make good use of it. They need to adapt their content to the reality on the ground. This means involving salespeople to figure out the right topics, the right pitch and the right type of content.
#2 Strategy before technology
Whether you are a small business, a medium-sized enterprise or a large corporation, technology can save you time and money. It speeds up operations, spares you redundant tasks that can be automated, allows you to use data to streamline decision-making, etc. But you need to get it right: first the strategy, then the technology.
Beware of the “gadget syndrome”, i. e. buying a new tool for every individual need. Every tool must be part of the company’s technology stack and more importantly, of the company’s business strategy. As entrepreneur Robin Good explains, orchestra instruments may play different melodies, but they all fit into a coherent and harmonious ensemble. Your tools should achieve the same goal: they should harmoniously complement each other to serve the global strategy.
#3 Feedback and sharing of best practices are the fuel of your sales performance
As a strong link in the Growth Enablement equation, Sales Enablement requires a continuous improvement approach. We have already mentioned the vital importance of feedback from salespeople to frame marketing content. Sharing knowledge and best practices in a “Tribal Knowledge” approach is also important.
The best way to promote individual skill development is to encourage collaboration and sharing among your teams. Managers should highlight commercial successes, feedback from the field and best practices to spread them. From a managerial perspective, they must create a pleasant and stimulating environment, in which each salesperson is encouraged to share his or her experiences in the field with others. This systematic and continuous feedback will help you find out what works and what doesn’t on an ad hoc basis.
Let the French pioneer of Growth Enablement take care of your growth!
After introducing the concept of Sales Enablement in France, Touch & Sell is now the French leader in Growth Enablement.
We have extensive expertise in the Sales Enablement triptych: tools, Content and Personal Development. But Sales Enablement alone is not enough to drive growth. That’s why Touch & Sell takes it a step further with a Growth Enablement program. Our goal is to optimize processes, activate synergies and help you reach your full potential with a consistent path involving people, processes and technology.
