5 Reasons Why PEOs Should Implement a Sales Enablement Strategy

According to The Center For Sales Strategy the secret to a successful sales team is summed up in the following equation.

Talent + Training + Tactics = Performance

If you’re missing any of the 3Ts, your team will be operating at a disadvantage. Many PEOs have gone to great lengths to recruit and retain a team of talented and experienced sales professionals. They’ve invested time and money to ensure they're up to speed on the ever-changing laws, regulations, and market trends in the PEO industry. And they expose their teams to leading sales experts to ensure their sales skills remain sharp.

Unfortunately, many PEOs have neglected the last variable in the equation – Tactics.

5 Common Problems a Sales Enablement Strategy Can Fix

The sales tactics deployed by a team can also be described as their sales enablement strategy. A PEO’s sales enablement strategy includes things like sales process, playbooks, marketing content, templates, and technology tools. It can be easy to spot if your sales enablement strategy and tactics have been neglected.

Below are some of the common symptoms you may see.

1. Not Getting Enough First Meetings with Qualified Prospects

The first step in closing new business is getting that first appointment  with a qualified decision-maker. Let’s face it, those meetings are harder than ever to secure because those decision-makers are getting more and more difficult to reach.

How a Sales Enablement Strategy Can Help

• Multiple step “Don’t Give Up” sales play that prescribes a communication cadence (email templates, email sequences, voice mail guides, social media posts, etc.) designed to secure the first meeting.

• Messaging strategy based on researched industry insights and valid business reasons (VBR)s to meet.

• Industry relevant case studies and testimonials that speaks directly to the challenges your targets are facing.

2. Mistaking Busyness for Productivity

Many PEO sales leaders assume their salespeople are productive because they’re making 100 dials per day and sending even more emails. When reviewing the productivity of your team, dig deeper into their performance metrics.

• Who are they reaching out to?

• Are they connecting with decision-makers?

• Are those connections resulting in scheduled meetings?

You may find that your team is trying to “boil the ocean” with all that activity scattered across too large of universe.

How a Sales Enablement Strategy Can Help

• Target persona research to better understand and define your ideal prospect.

• Segmented vertical market data to zero-in on qualified targets.

• CRM to track sales team activity and performance KPIs

• Tools that alert the sales team to a prospect’s digital behavior (website visits, email opens, link clicks, etc.) so they can better prioritize their prospecting activity – calling first the prospects who are already interacting with your firm digitally before investing time in making cold calls.

3. Salespeople are Spending Too Much Time on Content Creation

Here are some sobering statistics.

90% of content created by Marketing goes unused by Sales. It goes unused because Sales doesn’t think it meets their needs and they end up creating 40% of all enterprise content.

This eats up an average of 30 hours each month of a Salesperson’s time. Time that could be used selling.

How a Sales Enablement Strategy Can Help

• Sales & Marketing Service Level Agreement (SLA) outlines how the Sales and Marketing departments can best support each other. This includes specific feedback to the type of marketing content/sales collateral required.

• Centralized curated content library that provided easily accessible and sharable digital links to marketing content/sales collateral (eBooks, whitepapers, written and video case studies, webinar recordings, blog articles, sales sheets, proposal templates, etc.)

4. Inability to Effectively Answer Frequently Asked Questions and Overcome Common Objectives

It’s a good thing when prospects ask questions and raise objections. It shows that they’re at least thinking about how your solution could potentially fit their situation and address their business challenges. How your sale team responds to the questions and objections raised in the early stages of the buying journey is critical. They will either build up or tear down the trust and credibility required to advance the sale.

How a Sales Enablement Strategy Can Help.

• Sales Playbook that prescribes best practices for elevator pitches, voice mail scripts, call guides, discovery/needs analysis meetings, FAQ and common objection responses.

• Marketing content that’s mapped to various prospect questions, objections, and buying/selling scenarios.  

5. Slow, Drawn-Out Sales Cycles

Every PEO salesperson gets frustrated with how long it can take a prospect to make a decision. It seems it takes longer than ever to close a deal.

But it’s not always the decision-maker’s fault. Sales team inefficiencies (targeting inappropriate prospects, wasting time creating marketing content, or searching for answers to prospects’ questions) can often be blamed for stretching sales cycles.

In addition, often a PEO’s sales process doesn’t match the buyer’s journey. Salespeople are asking the prospect to invest valuable time in sales activities they don’t understand or they don’t see as necessary.

How a Sales Enablement Strategy Can Help.

• CRM to track deal stages and manage critical pipeline /deal stages

• Sales plays that prescribe best practice sales actions for various sales scenarios (i.e., getting the 1^st meeting, managing the discovery process, reengaging prospects who’ve gone dark, asking for referrals, etc.)

All of these challenges typically results in one overarching problem for a business – not closing enough new business and stagnate revenue growth.