FitzMartin
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Strong sales and marketing departments are a must for any company to sell efficiently and drive real results. But the key is that these two departments are aligned and sharing information. Sales enablement is a vital function that ensures this effective cross-team communication. It ensures that prospects get the right information at the right time. It ensures that our sales and marketing teams remain in alignment through the harried, chaotic pressures of daily life.
But how exactly can a company coordinate the actions between sales and marketing in order to drive real results? It requires three essential functions that, when firmly in place, will align sales and marketing to close more deals.
1: Collect and Share Data
It’s practically impossible to sell to your prospects effectively if you don’t understand your prospects. Data is the very foundation of sales enablement, and today’s marketing and sales technology provides more ability to gain insight into your prospects than ever before. From gathering general metrics about your prospects to analyzing the specific pages of your website they visit to what they have purchased from you in the past, data is an essential part of the sales enablement framework. And not only should your company have the right data infrastructure in place to collect it, but that data should also be shared with your sales team so that they are equipped to do their jobs most efficiently.
2: Work the Process
By our definition, sales enablement is the process of providing the sales organization with the information, content and tools needed to help salespeople sell more effectively. While it may sound simple on the surface, it takes sincere effort to keep sales and marketing in continual alignment because alignment is not a fixed point. Things change all the time, and this requires a company to constantly assess their data and make the tweaks needed to keep sales and marketing in alignment. In fact, according to HubSpot, 65% of sales leaders who outperformed their revenue targets have a person or team dedicated to sales enablement. Sales enablement means staying on top of the ever-changing data and keeping it constantly flowing to both departments.
3: Perfect the Feedback Loop
The importance of constant and transparent communication between sales and marketing goes without saying when it comes to sales enablement. As we already covered, alignment is not a fixed point—things are constantly changing. Thus, leaders from both departments should be brought together regularly to talk about what is working and what could (and should) be improved in order to optimize efforts.
Even the most talented of teams can’t perform at their very best if they don’t have the necessary information and support. Sales enablement can arm your sales team with the resources and information required to drive real growth and achieve better results.
