The operational side of your sales enablement strategy is perhaps the most complex. It's also absolutely essential if you want to give buyers a consistent understanding of your brand's value proposition. Your operations are powered by three things: people, processes, and the tech that underpins those processes.
In large organizations, your processes are only as robust as the tech that enforces them, because It's impossible to oversee and manage the behaviors of the many, many people who create and deliver content. CIO Insight's research shows sellers still create about a fifth of the content they use. Salespeople's time is much better spent in conversation with buyers, and there's also less risk of non-branded and poorly crafted materials being distributed if materials are created and controlled centrally.
While quality and consistency are easier to control with centralized content creation, there are often two particular challenges:
1. Personalizing collateral In a world where most selling has moved online, the ability to personalize digital touchpoints and experiences is how businesses can capture some of the conversational magic of offline selling.
The ideal setup is one where the accuracy of key messaging and branding can be maintained and updated centrally, but agents around the business are able to adapt collateral specifically for the context of the buyer and include personal touches like custom messages and the recipients' names. This is completely possible with the right technology in place, like Turtl (learn more about we can help here).
2. Content findability If the sales team can't find the right piece of content quickly and easily, then the resource simply won't get used. This is a recurring challenge for all content created outside of the sales team. Sales enablement content management tools like Highspot and Seismic are designed to solve this problem.
In-person selling benefits from informal interactions that build rapport – like small talk while pouring coffee – and non-verbal communication that can reveal attitudes, preferences, and intent, i.e. body language. In the absence of this kind of communication, how do salespeople get to know their buyers, beyond the words exchanged? Data.
How buyers interact with sales enablement content is hugely revealing of their interests and intent. For instance:
Not only do you need your systems to capture as much of this type of data as possible, you also need to implement tools and processes that give sellers quick & easy access to these insights, without them needing to be data-savvy. Equipped with this feedback, your sellers can tailor their presentations, questions, and follow-ups based on hard evidence of what the buyer cares about. That's what we like to call two-way content.
