Discover 5 Sales Enablement Best Practices

The old sales playbook – cold calls, product pitches, and hoping for the best – is gathering dust. Today's buyers are empowered, informed, and demand personalized, value-driven journeys. This is where sales enablement steps in, transforming your sales force from order takers to trusted advisors and revenue-generating champions.

With sales enablement, you empower your sales force with the right tools, training, and knowledge to navigate the complex customer path, overcome obstacles with confidence, and ultimately, seal deals with expertise and finesse.

So, how do you craft a winning strategy?

Here are 5 sales enablement best practices to build upon for your success.

1. Center Strategies Around Customers

Put your leads and prospects first, understand their buyer journey, and meet them where they are. 

That means that your team needs to be available and empowered to sell on the channels that are convenient for them. Sales Enablement isn’t just phone calls - though those are important - but also about business text messaging, live chat, automated lead follow-up, and more. To do this effectively, you’ll need to leverage technology so your team can communicate via phone call, text, web chat, and other channels as they evolve. (More on that later.) 

It also means you need to be prepared for rapid lead response. The best time to communicate with a prospect is at their peak moment of interest: when they engage with you. Your conversational sales enablement strategy empowers your sales team to have a high-value conversation at that moment. The odds of qualifying a lead are 21 times higher if you call within 5 minutes of the lead’s inquiry versus 30. After one hour, the odds of qualifying a lead are negligible. Your team needs to be ready to connect with the prospect when they make contact.

2. Embrace Sales Coaching and Training to Build Authentic Connections

Equip your team with the necessary skills and knowledge to navigate the ever-evolving sales landscape. Sales enablement provides comprehensive training programs, personalized coaching sessions, and ongoing development opportunities. This continuous learning fosters excellence, boosts confidence, and enables your team to tackle any challenge thrown their way.

Prioritize helping your team build strong, honest human connections with prospects, at scale. After all, people buy from people. Sales enablement isn’t just about automated emails or voicemails, though those have a place. It’s about making sure that your team takes every opportunity to strengthen an authentic, human connection with prospects. Coach for your salespeople for strong listening and communication skills, via phone and beyond. Research shows that, with complex purchases, consumers want to talk to a salesperson.

At Calldrip, we say that “every sale starts with a conversation.” Learn more about our award-winning sales coaching software.

3. Foster Sales and Marketing Collaboration

Sales enablement is a collaborative, cross-department strategy. In many organizations, marketing will be responsible for creating the resources, while sales is responsible for actually leveraging them. Your sales team is also responsible for communicating with marketing about which types of content and materials would be most helpful.

Since your marketing team “owns” your company's brand message and voice, they’re in the best position to create the resources. However, they’ll only be able to do that effectively by communicating with sales about the buyer journey and actual sales processes, to understand the resources that are most valuable.

It’s important that both teams understand the value of collaboration; your company culture can help this cross-department alignment. Research shows that alignment between sales and marketing teams can help your company become 67% better at closing deals and see 41% greater growth in reaching your quotas.By working together, both teams will be able to reach more prospects, convert them into customers more effectively, sell more efficiently, and retain customers more effortlessly.

4. Prioritize the Right Resources.

Content is the fuel that powers the sales engine. From compelling buyer personas and product brochures to interactive tools and insightful case studies, high-quality content engages prospects at every stage of the journey. Sales enablement ensures this content is readily available, tailored to specific customer needs, and optimized for maximum impact.

It will be helpful to create a content library that is easy to navigate for your sales team. We’ll talk more about this a little later, but know that sales enablement library tools exist.

Remember, high-quality content builds trust, educates prospects, and fuels the sales engine. We’ll share more insights for how to create the right sales enablement content in the next section.

5. Leverage Data and AutomationTechnology 

Leverage the power of technology to streamline processes, automate tasks, and gain valuable insights. From CRM systems and automation tools to data analytics platforms and collaboration software, and even coaching software, sales enablement integrates technology seamlessly into the sales workflow. This empowers your team to work smarter, faster, and achieve optimal results.

The right technology can also help you eliminate inefficiencies and ensure maximum impact with well-defined, data-driven sales processes. Sales enablement promotes continuous process improvement, from lead generation and qualification to deal closure and customer retention. 

Sales enablement isn't a "set it and forget it" game. Regularly monitor progress against your KPIs, analyze data, and gather feedback from both your team and customers. This data-driven approach allows you to refine your strategy, optimize resources, improve campaign targeting, and stay ahead of the ever-evolving sales landscape.

Don’t forget about conversational analysis; this is an important part of any sales enablement initiative. You need to know what’s actually happening in sales conversations to be able to gain clarity about the buyer journey, create the right content, and coach for continuous improvement. Our call monitoring software can help you achieve your data-driven sales dreams.

By leveraging data analytics and actionable insights, you can achieve increased efficiency, smarter investments, and a competitive edge in the market.

Remember, a winning sales enablement strategy is like a living, breathing organism. It needs constant care, nourishment, and adaptation to thrive. 

By investing in these five best practices and embracing a culture of continuous improvement, you can empower your sales team to conquer the complexities of the modern buyer journey, unlock their full potential, and drive sustainable growth for your organization.

Calldrip is proud to provide an all-in-one sales enablement software for performance-focused sales teams. We specialize in the conversational side of sales, from rapid lead response to call tracking tools and call monitoring solutions, plus sales coaching software that includes call scorecards, and even AI sales assistants!

There's so much Calldrip can do for you. Schedule a demo to see how: