Confession. You don’t have to quit marketing completely, but it's highly likely sales are crucial to your organization. So instead of thinking marketing, think sales enablement .Sales enablement is the process of equipping your sales team with the strategic resources they need to excel, from tools to technology to content and beyond. Sales is about making the deal, marketing’s job is to help make that effort happen. Marketing sweeps the path for sales.
How might a sales enablement plan shift your thinking about your 2020 outreach?
As an example, everyone knows follow-up is the name of the game with 80% of sales requiring five calls after the meeting, yet 44% of sales reps give up after one additional follow-up. What materials and information are you creating to assist in the sales follow-up? (No one wants a call that continues to say buy, buy, buy.)Since your outreach is thin on the budget, why are you wasting your cherished resources on something you know does nothing to close the sale – a pretty brochure? Yes, your sales folks may say they need a brochure, perhaps they really need a one-page sell sheet and a simple and informative white paper instead (to help with follow up). Even better, this information can be repurposed into an educational presentation, website lead magnet, contributed content to an industry newsletter and more.If cold calling is mostly dead, warm calling is where it’s at. In fact, 89% of top performing sales people say online networking platforms are growing in importance as a way to warm up calls and enable sales. This means your social selling efforts must be intentional and focused. Map out ways to stay top of mind.Finally, this articleis packed with statistics and ideas on selling smarter in 2020 – such as on average, sales people made far more calls in the last month of the quarter than the first two. Idea: Front load your outreach efforts to land in the first two months of the quarter, and possibly find space above the noise.Cheers to the New Year and your sales enablement success.
Related: Being a Modernist in Finance