Continual learning is essential if you want to grow and prosper in the business world.
Last week, we launched our Sell Smarter. Sell Faster. weekly livecast focused on sales growth. Hosted by Dani Buckley, VP/GM at LeadG2, viewers can expect fresh insights, strategies, and real-world examples that will help business leaders take their sales performance to the next level.
Our first episode launched a conversation on 'What is Sales Enablement' where we dug into the basics of and introduction to sales enablement, along with an explanation of the four buckets of sales enablement.
Joined by Dean Moothart, Director of Client Solutions at LeadG2, he shared real-life examples of how sales enablement directly supports his successful and proven sales process.
Tune in now or keep reading for a brief overview!
Sales enablement is any tool or process that supports the sales function—helping salespeople guide their prospects through their buying journey—from exploration to evaluation to final decision making and close.
In the simplest of terms, it's about putting the right resource or content in the salesperson's hands at exactly the right time.
Building your strategy starts with truly understanding your buyers via target persona research. Then having conversations with your sales team to really dig into the areas they need the most support. Finding their needs, the questions they're answering, the parts of the sales process that are slowing them down, and more. Pulling real hard data (like length of time spent in certain sales stages and conversion rates throughout the sales process) to back all of this up is also key.
After this, you want to develop the actual "sales plays" that make up your sales enablement strategy. This is typically part of a larger sales playbook that puts everything your salespeople need in one document. Your sales play should be reflective of your unique sales process and the situations your salespeople encounter on a daily basis. Each sales play should outline the exact steps they should take and support technology and content.
Having the best content at their fingertips empowers salespeople to overcome objections, build credibility and trust, and close more business. Whether it's case studies, proposal templates, one-sheets, email templates, blog posts, or eBooks, sales content is a critical part of sales enablement.
It is possible to get results from a sales enablement strategy without utilizing sales enablement tools, but it's not advised. This is because you have a wealth of tools available that are going to really turn that manual sales play into a turnkey step that your salespeople can run smoothly and consistently, without wasting any of their valuable time.
To guide your team through the diverse sales scenarios they encounter day in and day out, a sales playbook is a key piece to winning sales enablement. Not only does it guide, but it also streamlines the entire sales process to ensure the team is following best practices.
For over 25 years, Dean Moothart has been helping his clients deploy people, processes, and technology to generate, nurture, and close new business. He's an expert in inbound marketing, designing and managing complex B2B sales processes, and leveraging technology to improve sales team productivity.
Dean has been with LeadG2 and The Center for Sales Strategy for over six years.
Our team hears from prospects and new clients all the time that if we can just help them sell like Dean – then they’ll be happy. He gets raving reviews about his sales process, which leads to the question, ‘What do you think buyers love so much about the way you sell?”
Reduce friction
Create experiences that they enjoy
Educating and informing
Dean explains, “I respect their time, and I don’t impose. I don’t want to impose what I think is my sales process on their buying journey. I want to be really easy to work with and be responsive if they have questions.” He continues, “It’s about how can I remove friction from their process right now. If I can take the focus off of selling and focus more on educating and informing them and helping them to learn.”
Throughout the interview, Dean explains how he makes this process a collaborative process where he and the prospect are talking together about challenges and learning about the business issues at hand. Together, they explore what potential solutions are available.
“It feels less like a sales process because we’re learning and educating,” explained Dean. “From the very beginning, when I start targeting a prospect, my focus is not to say, “Hey, do business with me, look how great we are,” but let me educate you on some of the ways we’re helping some others.”
The first piece of advice given to salespeople is don’t be afraid of technology! Be curious about it and not so cemented into this is how we’ve always done things.
Dean comments on the sales enablement tools that have helped him specifically sell smarter and faster. “My favorite tool is HubSpot Sales Pro. It’s a sales enablement tool that allows me to do so much more with the same resources that I had. It expands my reach, makes me more productive, and I can accomplish more in one day than I ever could before.”
For specific examples on HubSpot Sales Pro, tune in at 19:23.
Content is often overlooked. Marketing content isn’t just for generating new leads; it’s also for accelerating the sales process all the way through close.
“The content that our marketing department is creating for our inbound marketing strategy is great content to embed in my sales process,” Dean explains. “I use it daily to educate prospect and even follow-up after my first meeting. I’ll send them a link to a blog article or an eBook.”
Dean mentions how a lot of salespeople may over-complicate the process by looking for the big fancy eBook, whitepaper, or video. And while those are great content pieces to use, the most effective is often the old-fashioned, simply blog article.
“You can use articles to really engage buyers where they’re at in every stage of the journey,” he explains.
Video has the power to not only get your emails opened but replied to! Across platforms (not just email), it’s proven to help get higher response rates, inspire more action, and help sellers reach the C-Suite.
“I use a tool called Vidyard to create custom videos,” Dean explains. “It’s a tool that sits on my desktop and phone, and I can create my own custom videos without the help of marketing or a video production crew.”
As virtual meetings with prospects and clients progress, it’s important to know how to be effective without having to have that face-to-face interaction. Video allows salespeople to accelerate the process by getting to know prospects better.
Dean mentions how he also uses video in follow-up emails. “If I had a first meeting with a prospect, and I knew they had some questions or objections that I didn’t completely address on the call, then I can do a quick video that addresses those questions or concerns. I can even give an explanation through a screen share.”
By doing this, it shows the prospect that you listened to them, and what they had to say was meaningful to you. It not only shows you care, but it shows your creativity and willingness to go the extra step to earn their business.
Don’t miss another episode of the Sell Smarter. Sell Faster. where Dani Buckley, VP/GM of LeadG2 speaks with experts and thought leaders across a variety of industries and learn how they implementer of some of the most proven sales enablement and inbound marketing tactics and strategies. Visit SellSmarterSellFaster.com to learn more.
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