Sales Enablement Tools: How to Help Your Team Close More Deals

Sales enablement tools are a mix of strategically scheduled sales content combined with advanced coaching and training solutions. Together, these platforms help sales reps perform their best in a constantly changing sales environment.

Why are sales enablement tools so important? Our State of Sales report found that 82% of sales reps have to adapt quickly to new ways of selling and spend a full 72% of the average workweek on non-selling activities such as preparation, administrative tasks, and training. Sales enablement software addresses this by automating and consolidating that non-selling time, surfacing the perfect content to share with prospects and the right training modules to help when needed. Read on to learn all about how this software complements your team's other sales tools.

• What are sales enablement tools?
• The benefits of using sales enablement tools
• Key features to look for in sales enablement tools
• Best practices for implementing sales enablement tools
• Challenges when using sales enablement tools
• How to measure the impact of sales enablement tools

Sales enablement tools are applications designed to provide sales teams with the content they need to engage with prospects and learn how to close deals more effectively. These tools usually have built-in features such as content management, customer relationship management (CRM) integration, coaching and training, and sales analytics. They help salespeople find appropriate content for their leads, track engagement with that content, and get coaching on how to improve based on collected data.

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Sales teams invest heavily in tools such as CRM platforms, training documentation, and thoughtfully constructed sales playbooks. Often, these tools aren't used efficiently or effectively, but sales enablement tools can help change that while delivering these benefits:

If sales reps spend less time looking for the perfect piece of sales collateral, they can spend more time selling (compared to the average 28% of time reps usually get for sales activity, according to the State of Sales report). Reps' increased response time helps keep up sales velocity by giving reps the content they need to convert leads, such as videos, case studies, and infographics. Individualized training paths and AI-assisted coaching also help each rep perform their best by analyzing areas where they underperform their team and providing courses intended to help reps perform better.

Marketing teams conduct important research and craft detailed tools such as pitch decks, videos, calculators, and more. Sales teams live in the trenches, picking out the bits that seem to help and working more fluidly. But the net result can be inconsistent messaging for prospects since what sales and marketing teams say don't always align. Having one hub where marketers upload content that's easier for sales reps to find brings teams into alignment and prevents the friction created by mismatched promises.

Sometimes, sales reps just operate on gut feel to determine which content works. With enablement tools, customer-facing sales content is centralized in a hub that can be tied to lead records in a customer relationship management (CRM) platform. Teams can track the viewing statistics of content, comparing those numbers to win rates and determining whether the content actually worked. This can also help teams pinpoint where in a pipeline sales tend to fall off, and they can figure out where better-performing content is needed.

Sales can be a high-pressure job — our State of Sales report found that 25% turnover is expected within sales organizations over the next 12 months. Luckily, the personalized training and ongoing help provided by these tools make it easy to reduce time to productivity for new hires. Each successive hire gets the benefit of all the data showing which training modules helped previous new hires get up to speed faster.

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Sales enablement tools should always empower reps and save them time. Keep an eye out for the following features:

The content is the core of sales enablement tools. Content can be created, uploaded, templated, and edited in one place, preventing it from going unused. Most of these tools have customizable tagging features, which you might use to tag content by use cases, content types (such as a blog, sales playbook, or sales deck), the buyer persona it's intended for, and the place it targets in the sales funnel. When it's more convenient to sort and search without knowing the exact name, it's easy for sales reps to find the latest messaging and access up-to-date content in their training.

Our research shows that 87% of business buyers expect sales reps to act as trusted advisors. That's a lot easier when those reps "know" everything right when they need to. Sales enablement AI can detect topics from transcribed calls and text-based conversations with leads. It then uses that to suggest the perfect piece of content right in the rep's CRM, ensuring it doesn't get lost in notes or some third-party app.

Only 26% of sales reps report getting weekly one-on-one coaching with their manager. Enablement tools help with that, scaling up coaching without losing the valuable manager perspective to help improve performance. Enablement solutions let reps upload practice pitches for peer review and scoring. Managers can also use AI and machine learning to look through all sales conversations and find coaching opportunities for the rep. For example, they might surface product-feature white papers for review or objection playbooks a rep could have used in that last call.

Not every rep needs help with the same things. Some need help understanding how to enter data correctly into the CRM, some need a refresher on the service-level agreement (SLA) the company offers, and others need a partner-selling process module. What the best enablement tools do is build personalized journeys for them based on data. What have they shown interest in, what actions have they taken, and what are their metrics? If everyone receives training specific to their needs, they can get up to speed faster and improve on the parts of the job that give them trouble.

All of the above features work best when the data collected gets centralized and put to work. Enablement tools can associate the completion of various training modules and the use of specific content in certain parts of the sales funnel with core metrics such as deal win/loss rates and time to close. This helps with forecasting, which can affect production, staffing needs, and even stock prices.

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If you're considering bringing sales enablement to your team, you'll need a good plan. Follow these steps to start the process:

The catalyst for sales enablement is usually something that needs improvement or a challenge you're facing. Is your messaging off? Did the team realize it has no idea which sales collateral is actually helping? Are new reps taking way too long to be ready to sell? Bring in a team of sales, enablement, and marketing leaders, along with top performers, to help figure out what enablement practices and features are needed. Set goals based on the initial observation — improving customer satisfaction scores (CSAT), aligning the team better, improving revenue, and more.

With requirements outlined, begin comparing tools with the designated reps from each team. Start with a long list that matches your budget and includes essential features, such as content organization and discoverability, analytics, a simple user interface (UI), and mobile-friendliness for sales reps on the go. Then use a request for proposal (RFP) to solicit bids from vendors.

From there, reduce all the options to a short list based on what you can integrate with your current tech stack, and what has good reviews and robust customer service. Ask the vendor teams to conduct demos with your enablement team and look for functionality gaps to ensure you choose a tool that fits your needs. When you're ready, negotiate and finalize.

Decide on a timeline to get the new tools running based on requirements you gathered previously. Work with the vendor and your own migration team to transfer from your previous solutions, and configure and customize your new sales enablement tool to match your team's existing workflows and processes. Upload all sales collateral, tag it for easy discovery, and build your sales programs. Start by training managers on the software and then move to full teams. Seek feedback at all stages through regular surveys and let the wider team be involved so they'll be invested in its success while offering constructive observations about what works well and what doesn't.

Use the feedback you gathered in the previous step to keep updating sales content, improving the training paths, and refining the processes. The data your tool gathers and reports on will be your guide.

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Just like sales itself, sales enablement tools can present complications. Be aware of the following and the ways to overcome them.

Challenge: A complex new tool is often the last thing a sales rep wants to figure out. They've got a quota to meet.

Solution: Build a culture of continuous improvement, and make sure managers hold up their end, too. The built-in gamification features of many tools can help make the process more engaging.

Challenge: If sales content is outdated, reps won't use it and will improvise with their own pitch decks.

Solution: Give the marketing department a degree of ownership of the platform so they generate new material. The promise of much deeper insight into the sales content's efficacy and ROI should win them over. Also, focus on training all users of the tool to enter clean data at the start so it remains useful and relevant to everyone.

Challenge: A new platform that has to be cross-referenced all the time just creates more work and new data silos to get misaligned.

Solution: From the start, your sales enablement tool must integrate with your CRM and, ideally, your marketing automation platforms and customer service ones as well. This will be easier if it's built natively to work with these systems.

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You can judge sales enablement tools on metrics that are core to their content and the platform itself, such as:

• Adoption: What percentage of the team — managers and reps alike — have jumped in and have usage data?
• Content usage: Track each piece of collateral for opens, views, plays, and more.
• Training completion: How many training modules do sales reps finish?
• Time to productivity: When onboarding new sales reps, how long does it take for them to hit the phone and start calling?
• Internal sales team NPS: The net promoter score is a measure of employee satisfaction with the training, coaching, and content of the tool, based on surveys.
• Employee churn rate: Judge the effectiveness of your tools based on how many sales reps leave before and after you implement the software.

You can also compare normal sales metrics before and after the enablement tools go into effect to gauge effectiveness after an implementation period, ranging from six months to a year. Stats you'd want to see improvement on include time to first deal won, average win rate, and the sales pipeline value since these would show improvements in sales velocity, successful selling, and overall revenue.

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Train them. Coach them. Equip them. Empower them. Sales reps are on the front lines of your business, and they're worth the investment. With the right content, time, place, prospect, and knowledge of how to use it, they'll be an incredible asset.

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