Your Sales Enablement Portal: It’s Time To Give “SAM” A Facelift

FACT: The selling process is in a very vulnerable and volatile state right now.

With the haze of economic uncertainty, the rise of globalization, increasingly distributed and virtualizing workforces and, most importantly, the evolution of today’s savvy and self-reliant buyer, sales enablement is more challenging for our reps than ever.

FACT: With big challenges come big rewards.

If you get serious about sales process improvement -- if you get the relevant people, processes and systems working together effectively and efficiently -- you start winning over that savvy, self-reliant B2B buyer and broadening the differentiating gap between you and your competitors.

Traditions are great … just not when it comes to sales enablement.

Traditional Sales Asset Management (SAM) platforms focus on storage, access and management for sales material. But the reality is that basic document management is deficient (to say the least) in today’s dynamic and demanding market.

Sophisticated buyers have plenty of information available to analyze, develop options and compare vendors … not to mention teams of buying advisors to not only enhance their information arsenal, but also help them to interpret it. Needless to say, by the time that buyer is reaching out to you, he has already completed most (60%!) of the buying process already.

Say sayonara to same-old SAM.

Just as your reps need to step up their game to stay in the game, your marketing and sales tools have to undergo a serious facelift, as well. You need to take SAM to the next level: upgrading its value from a one-dimensional asset management platform to an interactive sales enablement portal.

Meet SAM 2.0

This upgraded sales enablement portal opens the door to the following winning opportunities for your reps:

• RESOURCES

It’s a repository of not only client-facing documents and deliverables, but also resources that help guide the sales rep through the B2B sales process.

These resources include sales guides, email templates designed for specific situations, best practices and playbooks to help them win over the buyer.

• ALIGNMENT

As we’ve stated in previous blog posts, your marketing and sales teams must be aligned at all points during the buyer’s journey with your company. A sales enablement platform catalyzes this marketing-and-sales alignment by serving as the substrate for that powerful revenue department.

This portal provides marketing with visibility into what’s performing, what’s not and the quantifiable feedback to readily and rapidly improve. Sales always has this content library at its fingertips, with simple search-and-sort tools to select the most relevant material for each buyer -- no need to go digging for the right material with a clumsy hit-or-miss approach.

• RESPONSIVENESS

Your sales department needs to respond quickly and personally to buyers. The platform presents reps with recommended resources for each particular sales opportunity. But more importantly, your reps are empowered with the ability to quickly and easily tailor, personalize, segment and target marketing content for each buyer according to his needs and position in the buying process … without compromising the message.

• EXPERTISE

Reps have to compete with advanced buyer knowledge. They need easy access to internal company experts: a rich, collaborative infrastructure to engage with the internal talent and appear as thought leaders to well-educated buyers. While that traditional SAM platform won’t get you to this higher level of information sharing, an upgraded sales enablement portal is designed to do just that.

• INTEGRATION

Your platform must completely support the sales process each step of the way, which requires integration with CRM systems, integrated marketing solutions and marketing automation systems (e.g., HubSpot).

Think of this like a one-stop portal for sales enablement: pulling together information on leads, prospect profiles, past communications, opportunity probabilities and priorities, recommendations and resources.

• ANALYTICS

Reps need actionable, easy-to-interpret analytics to be effective on both their account strategies and on their tactical follow-ups/touch points. Your sales enablement platform must stream stats on which materials and resources are effective based on specific selling situations: It must provide 1) systematic ratings on material and 2) insight into how buyers are reacting (opening, downloading, sharing, etc.) to the material your reps are sharing with them.

The takeaway: Your sales-and-marketing software can’t just be a feature-rich platform that gives you the ability to take on any document management task imaginable. Managing documents simply doesn’t cut it anymore. Your platform must be productive, personalized and practical for each sales rep’s daily scenarios: from prioritization and preparation of sales activities to hyper-personal engagement and sustainable sales enablement.

Give your sales asset management platform a facelift with Accent Technologies. Fill out the form below to get the conversation started about empowering your sales team with a platform designed for sales enablement.