Sales enablement leaders have three key roles to play: coach sales teams to win business, be a strategic partner for leadership, and understand buyer expectations.
And just as soccer coaches form a core part of their teams, sales enablement leaders are integral to organizations. Unfortunately, the latter are often not celebrated enough. Silent superheroes, as they say.
So, like most silent superheroes, sales enablement leaders carry on what they excel at — enable the players to win.
As the year is coming to an end, what should guide sales enablement leaders in 2021?
Buyer expectation is the answer.
The three metrics to determine whether you and your sales team are meeting your buyer’s expectations are:
a. Close rate
b. Cycle time
c. Deal size
Poor close rate means your buyer’s expectations haven’t been met
Salespeople are most successful when they are provided with the right content at the right time so they can likewise approach prospective buyers.
To improve close rates, empower your sales team with the right tools so they can identify deals with the highest probability of conversion. Guide your sales team with a sequence of strategic moves that would lead to deals won.
A modern CRM can reduce the cognitive load on you and your sales team as it can suggest the next course of action, with the help of AI.
Long cycle time means your buyer’s expectations haven’t been met
Today, marketing and sales teams often work in silos. Mainly because most B2B companies have stage gates that determine who is responsible for customer engagement. This leads to a long deal cycle time and a poor buyer experience as both teams work from different data sources.
Sales enablement can lead the marketing-sales alignment and help shorten the deal cycle time. If all teams operate from one source of truth - all the members have a 360-degree view of the customer - it would lead to an optimal buyer experience.
Research shows that sales reps spend less than 36 percent of their time selling. That’s not it. Reps have said that CRM is their biggest frustration. Not only sales reps, but even sales leaders also are not happy: a Forrester report shows that after investing their time and money in selecting and deploying a CRM, sales leaders want to replace it. They fail to see productivity gain and new revenue and, over time, realize that they have started using it for more rudimentary purposes.
A CRM that addresses end-users’ needs will help shorten the deal cycle time as reps would have more time to sell smarter and quicker. As per the Forrester report, the top three non-negotiable attributes of a great CRM are ease of integration with other systems, easy to learn with only necessary features, and a user-friendly interface.
While being a strategic partner for leadership, sales enablement leaders can help their peers in sales make a wiser CRM move by choosing a well-integrated, AI-powered CRM.
Low deal size means your buyer’s expectations haven’t been met
Here comes the role of having a single view of the buyer, again. Sales enablement leaders should encourage sales reps to fully leverage a 360-degree view of the buyer to get insights into past behavior and position the sales pitch accordingly.
You can help predict the probability of the highest-converting offers based on the behavioral pattern of customers with a similar profile. Unified CRMs can capture account-level engagement activities across multiple products, which will help your sales team create a bundled offer, eventually leading to more revenue.
Zoom out
‘Enablement by all’ was the talk of the town before the pandemic. It has become even more important now. Delivering consistent messaging from all teams is crucial and for that, having a single view of the buyer is essential.
As a sales enablement leader, use the above metrics and respective strategies to level up yourself and your sales teams - and greet 2021 with higher confidence in meeting buyer expectations.
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