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Sales enablement is a crucial piece of the puzzle when it comes to achieving revenue success. As the name suggests, sales enablement is all about giving your sales team the tools they need to be successful.
While there are many different components that make up a successful sales enablement strategy, one of the most important is data. After all, data tells the true story about your business.
It helps you understand what’s working and what isn’t, identify areas for improvement, and make better decisions moving forward 💪 📈
In this post, we take a look at how a data-driven approach to sales enablement can benefit your team – including actionable tips on how you can start using data to drive your sales enablement strategy.
Sales automation tools are an important part of any data-driven sales enablement strategy. After all, data is only useful if you can take action on it.
Sales automation tools make it easy to take action on data by automating tasks and processes that would otherwise be manual.
Insights extracted from data can help you to improve your sales process by identifying:
All of this data can help you fine-tune your time to close, pull revenue forward, and even land larger deals. It’s the data that drives the feeback loop of what content you’re building for the sales team, how you’re releasing and promoting that content, and how you’re training them on positioning.
Here’s a sales process playbook that we created with the help of 3 sales expert leaders to help you get started.
A part of the foundation of a data-driven sales enablement strategy relies on data collected through the assets shared. This data can help you understand which resources are most effective at driving buyers through the sales funnel.
And by content we don’t just mean PDF ebooks, datasheets, and one-pagers. More and more we’ve found that everything is content. Reflect on what your sales team is using every day to close deals:
When you know what’s in play, then you can then allocate your resources more effectively and focus your efforts on the activities that are having the biggest impact.
You can also use those insights to organize or reorganize your marketing collateral according to the sales funnel, so that they are more effective at driving momentum for buyers during the buying process. For reps, that means they can both search AND browse for the content they need.
Sales enablement tools like Content Camel have the right features to establish a foundation for your marketing and sales content – a key piece of your enablement strategy.
Capabilities like advanced search filters and custom labels for categorization, mean reps find and share resources with a custom short URL and get notified on engagement.
Then, content analytics help you gain an understanding of your content – see how many shares and views each piece of content has, a breakdown of engagement numbers by content type and funnel stage.
This will help you understand what content is resonating with your audience and determine which pieces need refreshing so you can plan and manage your efforts in the right areas of the funnel.
Sales teams are always evolving, and as your business changes, the same thing goes for your training programs.
Data-driven insights can help you to understand which areas of your sales process need the most improvement. That allows you to build training programs that will be the most effective in addressing those needs.
For example, data about prospect interactions can help you identify common pain points that buyers experience during the buying process. By documenting those pains and triggers, you can then create targeted training programs positioning reps for greater success.
Once you’ve rolled out some of your training, data can help you understand which programs are most effective.
Investing in sales enablement tools can often be expensive, there’s no denying that. But when you have a data-driven strategy in place, you can be confident that you’re getting a good return on your investment (ROI).
And, there are a number of different ways to measure the ROI of your sales enablement strategy. For example, you can measure:
All of this data can help you determine whether or not the investment is worth it - and if your efforts are working. And that means you can double down, scale up, or pivot.
Sales data provides a valuable feedback loop that can be used to improve customer relationships. Being aware of what content is resonating with buyers, you can better align your efforts with what your prospects and customers are responding to.
This data about prospect engagement and customer engagement can also help you to identify areas where you may need to provide more support.
Customer relationship management (CRM) tools are usually the central place to collect and track the info around customer interactions. This data is used to create a more detailed profile of each customer, understand their buying preferences, and track the progress of each sale.
Often, teams miss out on opportunities to expand existing customer accounts, as the go to market teams are so focused on new leads and increasing new pipeline. Your data can point the way to whether that’s the case (not much existing customer growth) and your sales enablement strategy can reinforce the plan to engage deeply with under-served customers.
When it comes to the content side of engaging buyers – new and existing – we wrote up details on winning with bundled content here: delivering custom buyer experiences.
Sales data can provide valuable insights into your competitor’s business operations, marketing strategies, and product offerings.
Knowing what your competitors are doing, you can get a better understanding of the competitive landscape and adjust your own sales strategy accordingly.
There are a number of different ways to track your competitor’s activities:
By using data from a variety of sources, you can compile a detailed profile of each of your competitors and use that information to position against them, build battlecards for your sales team, and make sure that you’re helping buyers execute and effective evaluation.
Data can also play an important role in helping sales teams stay ahead of the curve and identify opportunities for growth within their industry.
When you know which products are selling well, which marketing tactics are resonating with customers, and what areas of the market are growing the fastest, sales teams can get a head start on capitalizing on upcoming trends.
On top of that, data can help sales teams predict future trends in their industry. By tracking data about customer engagement, buying preferences, and competitor activity, sales teams can get a glimpse into where the industry is headed.
This information can help them prepare for changes that may occur in the future and make sure that they are always one step ahead.
Insights from your CRM can also help you identify potential roadblocks and areas for improvement.
For example, let’s say you notice that deals are taking longer to close than they should be. This could be due to a number of factors, such as inadequate training or a lack of relevant content.
By troubleshooting these issues early on, you can help your team close deals faster and improve their win rate.
A data-driven approach to sales enablement is critical for any organization that wants to stay ahead of the competition and build their revenue engine.
Using data to inform your decisions, you can allocate your resources more effectively and troubleshoot potential problems before they become major roadblocks.
And perhaps most importantly, a data-driven sales strategy provides accountability so that you can measure the ROI of your efforts and ensure that everyone on your team is pulling their weight.
If you’re not using data to inform your decisions, you could be spending valuable time and money on resources that aren’t actually moving the needle.
Showcasing the efficiency of your enablement program through unmatched insights will prove the value of your program. Once you get your hands on this level of insight, it is impossible to turn back.
👉 Learn more: What if you don’t use the right tech to enable your sales team?
Personalize follow up. Easily share content. Track results.
Content Camel is a sales enablement tool used for sales content management. High-growth sales teams use our system to quickly find and share the right content for each specific sales situation and measure content use and effectiveness.