Ag Marketing, AgTech

Sales Enablement and Sales Acceleration Tools to Grow Your Business

Gate 39 Media Staff
8m

No matter what the market, competition is higher than it’s ever been. Ag businesses need every advantage to succeed and create sustainable profit centers for future generations. One of the ways business owners along the Ag value chain can gain a competitive advantage is by embracing and implementing the processes of sales enablement and sales acceleration.  

Ag Tech developments like precision agriculture and drone technology have advanced rapidly in recent years allowing growers to hone their efficiencies and profitability, leading to increasingly sustainable models.  Equally as swift, marketing and sales methodologies have evolved to keep up with the hyper-competitive digital landscape.    

The goal of every business is to increase sales, generate more revenue, and ultimately become increasingly profitable in the process. This implies a certain level of streamlined efficiency achieved over time. What if there was a way to get there faster?  

Every business owner and sales manager’s time-worn credo is, “We need more leads. Get more leads!”  Unquestionably, qualified leads are indeed the lifeblood of every thriving business. Without a steady stream of targeted leads, companies cannot grow. Yet, leads on their own merit are hardly the holy grail and metric by which we measure our marketing success. Instead, it’s what businesses do with those leads that matters most.   

What if you could significantly shorten the distance between attracting leads and closing sales while automating much of the process? The answer is you can.   

Using Sales Enablement and Sales Acceleration Tools to Drive Conversion

In business, things move at the speed of light.   

The advent of the internet brought with it more educated decision-makers and buyers than at any time in history. As a result, businesses need to respond with solutions quickly and efficiently to compete for their buyers’ attention. Consequently, sales teams require resources and tools to keep pace with an ever-changing landscape.  

Although the two concepts are often used interchangeably, there are differences between sales enablement and sales acceleration.    

Enablement tools primarily focus on enhancing and supporting excellent sales behaviors by providing salespeople with “the right message, at the right time.” Conversely, acceleration tools help expedite the sales process so businesses can achieve targeted goals more precisely.   

In many ways, sales acceleration can be considered a type of enablement tool or, in some cases, a result of enablement.  

Defining Sales Acceleration  

Acceleration is the process by which companies streamline their media, sales processes, tools, and other internal sales mechanisms to achieve maximum efficiency, revenue growth, and profit in their sales cycle.  

The concept of sales acceleration first appeared on the scene in 2015 in Mark Roberge’s book “The Sales Acceleration Formula.” (1). An MIT-trained engineer, Roberge created a non-traditional, metrics-driven formula to help sales teams navigate the sales funnel using predictable, scalable systems.   

Roberge’s system took HubSpot from 3 employees to $100 million in sales in 7 years. The overarching goal? To move prospects and customers through the sales pipeline faster, more efficiently, and increase conversion metrics. When sales teams have the tools to sell, they naturally hit revenue goals and create an elevated experience for clients and teams alike.  

Sales acceleration employs a methodology where businesses create unique buyer experiences using engaging and relevant content and analytics that lead to higher conversion. Simply put, this formula “accelerates” the customer journey and sales process, increasing the overall sales cycle’s velocity and shortening the process to conversion.  

Many repetitive tasks and processes are easily automated and streamlined using sales acceleration software. In addition, reporting tools such as those in HubSpot offer data-driven insights allowing businesses to find areas of success and areas that need improvement, boosting customer conversions in the process.   

With automated mechanisms such as unified databases, tracking technology, drip campaigns, and analytics reporting tools, sales teams have the insight at their fingertips to alter, improve, and customize the customer experience. The net result is a smoother, more efficient sales experience for customers and sales teams, helping businesses meet their revenue goals.   

Defining Sales Enablement   

Acceleration tools speed up the sales process. Sales enablement tools provide the resources, sales training, and coaching that teams need to succeed in closing sales and achieving higher conversion. In addition, they help salespeople to develop positive relationships with clients.   

Tools like sales and pitch decks, battle cards, and AI bots help sales members in the moment to overcome objections, highlight key features and benefits of their product or service, and help gain the trust of potential buyers.   

Think of enablement as your high-tech, fully equipped sales toolbox. Here are some of the most valuable enablement tools:  

Reporting and Qualifying Leads   

You’ve heard the expression, “the numbers don’t lie.”   

Data can be your greatest asset in the enablement process. Every brand is different and will have a different set of metrics and goals by which they measure its marketing and sales performance. The important thing is to generate a specific set of data points that you can measure within standardized sales reports.   

METRICS: 

For example, standard metrics are leads generated, conversions, customer touchpoints, deals won and lost, and product demos delivered, which can help your business see what’s working and what requires improvement to reach your overall revenue goals.   

REPORTING:  

Reporting allows businesses to audit their sales processes and look for areas of disconnect. For example, if your sales teams schedule a respectable number of sales calls, but few of them convert, you’ll know to review the sales process, talking points, and collateral to determine what can be improved.  

LEAD SCORING: 

All leads are not created equal. A good sales enablement platform will also offer a lead scoring system so that sales teams can assign a positive or negative weight to the contact based on how well they fit the business and its products and services. Sales teams can spend more time and effort closing leads with high scores and allow automated assets to nurture leads with lower scores. The net result is a happier sales staff that can use their time more efficiently.  

Generating Sales Tools and Assets   

Customized content is essential to a successful sales funnel. The prospect of generating content can feel daunting to many businesses, yet you might already be sitting on a gold mine without knowing it. Most companies have a plethora of excellent content that can become the basis of sales assets, such as websites, sales decks, eBooks, blog posts, case studies, white papers, reports, personal emails, and newsletters.   

CONTENT AUDIT:  

Audit of your content. You might be surprised at the rich resources you already have at your fingertips that you can use to generate sales tools. Creating a resource library or central place to store your content, such as SharePoint, Google Drive, or an internal wiki, will ensure easy access to the information to create engaging content and sales resources. The more “evergreen” the resources, the more valuable they will be to your teams.  

TESTIMONIALS & CASE STUDIES:   

Testimonials and case studies are potent accounts that help drive conversion. When making purchasing decisions, a compelling testimonial or case study demonstrating how your product or service has helped a customer can be the difference between a closed deal or the dreaded “I’ll think about it.”  

VIDEO CONTENT:  

Don’t forget about video content. Video is one of the most potent sales conversion tools in the sales and marketing toolbox! Video can be added to emails, webpages, blogs, and ads. According to Invideo, 72% of customers said they would rather learn about a product or service through video. Leverage this statistic by adding a video to your sales efforts.   

A video message from your salesperson can go a long way in establishing trust with prospects.  

Automating Your Processes 

So many sales processes can be automated, creating time and freedom for your teams to focus on what they do best: sell.   

TEMPLATES:  

How often have you sent a near duplicate email to prospect after prospect? Creating email templates and sequences can save a lot of time spent on repetitive tasks. Templates don’t have to be one size fits all. Many CRMs offer customizable email templates which create a personal touch to an otherwise automated message.   

For example, let’s say you commonly send four variations of the same email. You can create four templates with personalization tokens.   

SEQUENCES & AUTOMATED PROSPECTING:   

Setting up triggered email sequences is another enablement function that streamlines the sales and communication process. Customers who respond to a particular trigger will receive a preset series of email messages that appear customized with the prospect’s name and other personalized details.   

You can also automate your prospecting efforts with a series of automated emails sent with the salesperson’s name and links directly to their calendar. Qualified prospects ready to move forward can automatically schedule a meeting or consultation. As a result, sales teams can spend more time closing deals and less time pursuing leads!   

LIVE CHAT:   

Strike while the iron is hot! The best time to engage a lead is at the very moment they express a need or interest. Offering Live Chat or a Chat Bot is an excellent way to provide stellar service and qualify the lead in the Enablement programs can filter the highest quality leads and send them to live chat so your sales teams can engage them at the exact moment they need them. Statistics show that customers typically choose to do business with whatever company responds first. So be the first in line!   

ENABLEMENT SOFTWARE:  

Enablement software brings all of your content under one roof. Unify your marketing and sales teams by giving them a platform to share, collaborate, and manage sales assets and materials from one central location.  

A good CRM (customer relations management) program like HubSpot offers users 360-degree insight and transparency into sales pipelines and marketing/sales tools for easy, cross-team collaboration.   

Want to create your own Sales Enablement Strategy? Our sales enablement team can help you create a customized program that’s right for your business. Let’s start a conversation!

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