Sales Enablement & Sales Assets: Which One Aims, And Which One Fires?

Industry jargon tends to get muddled or skewed over time. Expressions get confused, concepts misconstrued and phrases take on multiple, often amorphous meanings. In the sales and marketing arena, two of the most misunderstood and interchanged terms are sales enablement and sales asset management.

So what’s the real deal with these jargon juggernauts?

Sales enablement involves all sales assets, but asset management does not cover all of enablement. In other words: Sales enablement includes, but is not limited to, sales asset management.

To really get a firm hold on these concepts, let’s shake free from abstract ambiguities and “title terminology” to zero in on the tangible distinctions:

Sales Enablement
Getting the right information into the hands of the right sales reps – at the right time, in the right place and in the right format – to stimulate valuable, ongoing conversations with buyers for exceptional buying experiences, thereby optimizing sales success and marketing ROI.

Sales Assets
The tools, information and practices used by a sales team to move a sales opportunity forward.

Think of your assets as your arsenals, and your enablement as the knowledge, training, skills and testing mechanisms to use these weapons effectively. Without sales enablement, you’re firing marketing content and sales tactics aimlessly – no strategy for precision targeting, no instruction for discerning execution.

Your sales assets are your arsenals.

These tools, information and practices help you win battles:

• Detailed buyer insight helps the marketing department create relevant, pain-centric content and helps the sales team attract, nurture and convert leads into legitimate sales opportunities.
• Precision-targeted marketing content that reps actually want to use stems from sales and marketing alignment and spurs crisp differentiation for potent B2B buyer engagement.
• Coaching tips, subject matter expert (SME) input, relevant research and thought leadership enable reps to connect with buying teams, establish trust, earn respect, inform and educate, assure key decision makers and drive consensus, pulling off that “content triple threat” (comfort, compel and challenge) that seams together the entire buying process.
• Personalization tools help reps give the particular, highly leveraged B2B buyer that exceptional experience he demands, expects and deserves.

Sales and marketing technology propels the troops forward:

• A SALES ASSET MANAGEMENT LIBRARY empowers sales reps with access to an entire collection of slides for easy presentation construction, plus content recommendations based on buyer persona/buying stage and detailed sales analytics on how prospects are responding to materials – all in one place.
• PRESENTATION MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE allows reps to build hyper-personalized, precision-targeted multimedia displays on the fly, not to mention streamline their efforts via auto-update cascading, full-text search, systems/process integration and brand/compliance control. Textured, interactive B2B sales presentations become simple and seamless.
• A SALES PORTAL enables reps to meet with prospects or clients, share content and execute presentations in a singular, secure hub. It keeps all the content, coaching and insight at reps’ fingertips to keep them at ease and their buyers pleased.
• CONTENT MARKETING SOFTWARE, including lead nurturing tools and other personalized communication and messaging automation, help to keep your leads primed and your company top of mind.
• VIRTUAL AND CLOUD CAPABILITIES promote a nimble defense and proactive offense of responsive mobile sales reps who are always up to date, in the loop and on the ball.

Your sales enablement commands the campaign.

Sales enablement is what wins the war, marshaling your sales assets into one cohesive, calculated and cogent sales process.

“Sales enablement is a strategic, ongoing process that equips all client-facing employees with the ability to consistently and systematically have a valuable conversation with the right set of customer stakeholders at each stage of the customer’s problem-solving life cycle to optimize the return of investment of the selling system.”
– Forrester Research

Zoom in on that part about “all client-facing employees.” This means that sales enablement isn’t just about “sales.” It also encompasses everyone and everything that has a hand in sales success:

1. All Marketing Tactics
   Buyer persona creation and marketing content generation set the stage for the sales team.
2. All Sales And Marketing Alignment Efforts
   A “content sales strategy” connects the right information to the right people, using persona profiles and buying stages to direct timing and formatting decisions.
3. All Sales Presentations And Points Of Contact
   Swapping out uninspired, off-the-shelf “solution selling” for a value-driven insight sales approach furnishes content that comforts, compels and challenges at each stage of the sales cycle.
4. All Follow-Up And Long-Term Communication
   This means not dropping the ball on lead nurturing, especially for those hesitant buyers and dormant leads who just need a little extra time and attention to get on board. 
5. All Sales Analytics And Automation Tools
   Sales enablement is a science that uses evidence for process improvement and technology for information movement.

Don’t let fiery sales assets rush the front without that uniformed, even-tempered and methodical sales enablement to keep your troops in line.

Recruit Accent Technologies to help command your campaigns. Our sales and marketing software experts strategize and customize the optimum technology solutions for sustainable sales enablement and explosive sales success.