A little disclaimer: these 3 elements are not the “market-leading” or renowned industry “best practices”. These are 3 things that I believe lie at the heart of every successful sales enablement strategy based on things I’ve learned and experienced over the years.
First of all, let’s get on the same page about what sales enablement is. Sales enablement is the strategic approach of equipping your selling (not just sales!) teams with the tools, resources, and information needed to effectively engage new prospects, delight and upsell to existing customers, and ultimately close deals. It involves sales and marketing alignment, operational excellence beyond just the selling teams, learning and development of your teams, technology, and of course, relevant content to enable revenue generation, whilst navigating the buyer's journey and experience more efficiently and providing prospects and customers with a great experience.
A bit of a mouthful isn’t it! In simple terms, sales enablement is based on strategies and methodologies that create the foundation that drives revenue generation.
There are many elements of sales enablement. After all, people like me wouldn’t have a job if this would be all that simple. 😉 But I have tried to simplify it as much as possible and packed it into 3 buckets: psychology, data and collaboration. Let’s dive in…
Psychology
Psychology is the scientific study of the human mind and behaviour, exploring thoughts, emotions, actions, and the underlying processes that influence how individuals perceive and interact with the world around them. Here comes the old well-known truth - people sell to people, no matter if you’re in the B2B or B2C sector, it’s all about human interactions. To be able to sell successfully, you need to TRULY understand and emphasise with your target audience - their goals, aims, challenges and pain points - to not only be able to create a strong value proposition for your product or service but also to make sure that your offering fits your target market. In today’s highly competitive world, creating messaging that hits the hearts and minds of your audience is essential which can be based on comprehending factors like cognitive biases, emotional triggers, and social influences. The times of throwing it out there and hoping it sticks are over (not that they ever truly worked).
Understanding your target audience goes beyond understanding your ideal customer profile (ICP) and buyer persona, it should be framed in every tactic your sales and marketing teams are executing. For example, sales teams who grasp psychological triggers like the halo effect (where positive perceptions in one area influence opinions in others) can build rapport more effectively. Or marketing should be producing the messaging and content that draws the attention of the right crowd and helps sales to convert those folks.
Ultimately, psychology in sales and marketing empowers teams to create more impactful, empathetic, and persuasive strategies that resonate deeply with consumers, driving engagement, conversions, and long-term relationships.
Data
Now, this is the one I LOVE! For two reasons - 1) you can’t argue with data (yes, yes, as long as it’s the right data I hear you say), and 2) it destroys the “drawing department” image of marketing (well, for those who actually make their decisions based on data rather than because it looks good).
For both, sales and marketing teams, data serves as a compass, guiding S&M professionals toward understanding customer behaviour, preferences, and market trends. For example, you can empathise with your target audience as I encouraged you above, but you should validate whether these are indeed the pain points of your audience and whether they resonate with your messaging - this is what data and analytics can tell you all about. Understanding consumer preferences and past interactions helps in crafting compelling messages and delivering them through the most effective channels. This targeted approach not only increases engagement but also maximises return on investment by reaching the right audience with the right message at the right time - meaning converting them quicker and increasing the quality of the leads.
Here are some of the important data points you should pay attention to if you want to make data-driven decisions.
Collaboration
Yes, we’re back to my favourite sales and marketing alignment. You can explore the importance and benefits of sales and marketing collaboration a little bit more. But I would take this further, and add delivery, customer care, professional services, product, and even finance teams into the mix. According to MarketingProfs, organisations with aligned departments can achieve up to 38% higher sales win rates. And, according to Hubspot, "tightly aligned" companies achieve 24% faster three-year revenue growth and 27% faster three-year profit growth.
The true beauty behind customer satisfaction and excellent customer experience comes from close-loop feedback and collaboration between all teams that are directly and indirectly customer-facing. Cohesive collaboration fosters a holistic understanding of customer needs and market dynamics. Sales teams sell better with customer-focussed sales enablement materials produced by marketing, marketing advertises better when they understand the product or service sold, product teams build better products with feedback from sales and/or customer care and market intelligence from marketing, finance bill better when the delivery process is sleek, and the thread goes on. You get the drill. At the end of the day, it all contributes to an ever-improving customer experience. And happy customers will come back to you for more. In fact, 81% of people claim that receiving good customer service makes them more likely to make another purchase.
And here we are folks. But before you head off to continue with your day, take a moment to ask yourself these questions:
How well do you know your target audience? Do you target them successfully?
Are you making data-driven decisions? Do you have all the relevant data to do this well?
Do the teams in your organisation work in cohesion? What would be the impact if they were working more collaboratively?