Gross sales Enablement Instruments: 7 Options To Look Out For
Sales Enablement Tools: 7 Features To Look For
With sales going virtual, sales reps today need to have better conversations with their customers to effectively convey value, respond to questions from an increasingly informed customer, and effectively manage the ever-changing demands of this competitive landscape. Enter Sales Enablement [1].
Since its big breakout in 2017, it has grown into a specialized role in many sales organizations that has a noticeable impact on business results. In a previous article titled “Five Sales Enablement Trends To Look For In 2021,” we discussed in depth the five underlying trends that we believe will continue to drive the rise in sales enablement for years to come will accelerate.
There are tons of sales promotion tools available in the market. To streamline your search, we’ve created a checklist of 7 key features to look out for in a sales promotion tool before signing on the dotted line.
1. Just-in-time learning
With just-in-time learning, you have access to information exactly when you need it. It’s like searching Google for a good place to eat. It’s all around us, the learners have got used to “knowing” at the push of a button. Why should your sales reps expect otherwise? Sales reps are always on the go, their days are full of customer meetings. As a result, sales reps need access to insights, tools, and information that they can use to tailor conversations to suit the interests of the customer.
Bite-sized microlearning modules improve the accessibility of learning content by breaking down training barriers and allowing sales reps to access training whenever it best suits their needs and just before it is needed. A sales enablement tool should provide a sales rep with the right information at the right time to improve the quality of customer loyalty. This could translate into faster sales cycles, higher revenues, and higher goal achievement.
2. Reinforcement and retention
A recent study by the Technical University of Denmark suggests that the collective global attention span is narrowing due to the amount of information presented to the public. We live in an era of cognitive overload. Sales reps tend to forget newly learned skills by 50% within days of a traditional sales training program! This has led to the popularity of micro-learning. When investing in a sales enablement tool, it is important to evaluate the effectiveness of the sales training medium that the tool is using.
By breaking down traditional sales training content into micro-learning experiences, the cognitive load and perceived time expenditure on sales reps is reduced. Having an experience selling microlearning sales allows the sales rep to view the same material repeatedly, reducing the time it takes to pull the information out of long-term memory.
3. Gamification
Seller engagement is critical to the success of any sales promotion initiative. Given the pressures associated with a sales rep’s job, it is often difficult for them to grapple with what is being learned. This is where gamification comes into play. Gamification of the learning content introduces a fun factor that increases the focus and motivation of the sales force to keep going and to achieve the set goals. For example, the sales onboarding process can be made playful to improve knowledge retention and skill application for recruits by creating incentives for them, through rewards for successful completion, repeated testing, and mastering the given skills consistently learn. It can also add a social element to the onboarding process and allow friendly communication between the new sales reps.
4. System of intelligence
Traditionally, sales enablement tools were created as integration systems with a company’s ERPs, CRMs and LMSs, the recording systems. In today’s world, however, sales promotion tools are becoming intelligence systems with AI-driven feedback. Sales trainers can use activation data to continuously improve and update the content of the sales training. Data can also be used to make the sales reps learning journey adaptable based on their learning curve or lead time, as well as on-the-job performance.
5. Content management
Buyers in today’s world are more knowledgeable than ever and need information that will give them relevant insights. This means that sales reps also need access to great content at the right time to position themselves better. Therefore, to create a practice for a superior customer experience, sales organizations must invest in platforms, tools, and services that enable not only their sales reps, but their post-sales support as well, to keep up with their customers’ knowledge and buying habits. and expectations.
By optimizing and categorizing the learning content into categories like product knowledge, sales skills, etc., a sales rep can easily navigate the tool and find the sales content they need with minimal clicks and minimal frustration. In addition to optimizing content, a sales enablement tool with built-in content authoring to improve the effectiveness of salespeople can enable quick content creation and reduce the number of follow-up actions required by learning managers to qualify or retrain the workforce.
6. Manager activation
Sales enablement can prove to be an expensive investment for any sales organization, especially if they don’t have a way to measure the success of their sales enablement initiative. A sales enablement tool that provides insights and analysis into the learning of the sales force could also be a key for the manager enablement. Micro-assessments can help sales managers determine whether sales reps are ready to apply the learning to actual sales interactions. You can identify skill gaps and embed the resulting insights during daily meetings, weekly reviews, and other internal sales pitches.
A data-driven approach to micro-learning can further bridge the gap between a sales manager’s intuition and the actual results of their sales team. Access to distributed and personalized reports, dashboards, and analytics can help a manager personalize learning for individual sales reps, resulting in better learning outcomes.
7. Manager coaching
Sales leaders are the key element in every step of the sales enablement journey. Therefore, manager coaching is an important feature to look out for in your next sales enablement platform. A sales enablement tool should provide managers with coaching tips and skills to better coach their employees and should help track the impact of coaching on sales force performance.
Whether your organization has already embarked on this journey or is just setting up their sales activation practice, the sales activation tool you are using must be successful in order to accelerate your sales.
References:
[1] Four Ways a Sales Enablement Platform Can Drive Breakthrough Sales Results for Your Salesforce
