Not too long ago, the term Sales Enablement didn’t exist. Today, if you search ‘Sales Enablement’ online you’ll get nearly 20 million results. Why the sudden jump in popularity? Why are companies like Twitter, Disney, Cisco, and Pepsi so convinced with the idea of using a Sales Enablement strategy that they are investing critical resources to implement one across all of their sales channels? The answer is simple, because it works!
For a large part of the past decade, Sales Enablement was a term that only floated around the meeting rooms of large multi-national brands and sales organizations. At first it was just a strategy, and while it remains a strategy at its core, powerful tools including CRM Software Systems, were eventually developed in order to help sales organizations implement it effectively. These tools and resources were typically designed for advanced users with large budgets and left the small-to-medium sized companies out of the loop. This was because the tools were too complicated, difficult to integrate, and too expensive for small and midsized companies. In the end, CRM adoption has proven to be a steep mountain to climb for most sales teams that are already overwhelmed trying to synchronize the growing pile of tools and platforms they are required to be experts at to do their jobs.
So, how is adding more tools going to make it easier? Because sales enablement tools are not meant to reinvent the wheel, they’re designed to help it move faster and more efficiently. In most cases, sales teams know what they have to do they just need help so they can do it at a much faster rate, on a larger scale, and most important of all, without having to do everything themselves. In other cases, they’re struggling due to an overcomplicated CRM, a disconnected sales team, or a lack of a process to deal with sales objections. The good news is that TigerLRM delivers a platform that solves all of the above obstacles and declutters the mess. It connects the team to critical resources, delivers learning and coaching, takes care of tedious tasks, and offers meaningful assistance so you can streamline the many moving parts of the sales process and take some pressure off of your team.
So, how does Sales Enablement help you push leads through the sales cycle? Let’s take a look at a traditional lead cycle and how TigerLRM can help your sales manager and sales team every step of the way. We understand that lead cycles and sales processes can vary greatly between businesses, the below examples are just some of the ways that TigerLRM’s sales enablement tools and services can help your team push more sales across the finish line.
Perhaps the most difficult part about hiring a new sales person is teaching them your sales process. Studies show that nearly 84% of sales training is completely forgotten within the first 90 days. This can become incredibly time-consuming especially if you find yourself having to train multiple people at the same time. For the most part, it will require your best sales rep to stop what they’re doing for a few days, or even months, and do their best to teach the new recruits their strategies and best practices. Success is not guaranteed, but two things are certain, your best sales rep will have to spend more time away from selling and your turnover rate will skyrocket (if it hasn’t already).
To solve this, TigerLRM offers a unique solution. First, they give users access to an advanced Learning Management System that lets them build and deploy onboarding and training programs in a fraction of the time and without having to rely on their top-performers to also be top-teachers. When choosing a CRM, make sure it has a learning management system. Secondly, they equip each account with a built-in Sales Playbook that can be filled with sales strategies, performance insights, best practices, and more. For those new to the concept of a Sales Playbook, it is a powerful tool that some of the most successful brands in the world use to increase their sales process adoption and to create a positive work culture.
Without an easy way to keep producing new leads no business can be successful. Since prospecting for leads isn’t as exciting as closing them it can often be overlooked, which in turn results in leads that don’t close because they weren’t given the care and attention they needed to close. Business owners know the cost of providing their team with lead prospecting tools, so the frustration they feel when they see that those tools aren’t being used is understandable.
Most business owners and sales managers underestimate the negative impact of allowing outdated, inaccurate, and/or inconsistent sales materials to float around from one sales rep to another. As a business owner you must realize that unproductive prospecting is more than a waste of time, it can double the cost of acquiring new accounts. This is where TigerLRM’s innovative tools for assisting teams with lead prospecting comes into play. What TigerLRM does first is give sales reps direct access to updated and approved sales materials through a built-in Sales Content Manager. According to a study by Spotio, 42% of sales reps feel they don’t have enough information before making a sales call, which naturally will result in low win rates. With a centralized system for storing and sharing sales content you’ll make sure that your team has the materials on-hand to avoid letting that sale slip away.
The speed and efficiency in which you process new leads, enter them into your system, and assign them can determine whether or not you’ll even have the chance to offer them your solution. If there are too many delays that are slowing down your lead capture and follow up process, it won’t matter how good your sales pitch may be, it will be too late. That’s why reports show that businesses that follow-up within 5 minutes of a lead being submitted are 9x more likely to close the sale. On the other hand, if a business still collects leads from various sources and uploads them manually, the chances they have to convert them will be slim.
This is where one of the most powerful tools that TigerLRM provides pounces into action, TigerChat. Our integrated lead form simplifies the process and makes it easy for customers send their contact information to your sales team. Once we integrate it directly to your website or landing page it can instantly start sending submissions to your TigerLRM dashboard.
Once a lead is in your system, how long does it take before a sales rep follows-up? Who assigns the lead and who is making sure it gets handled properly? These and other tasks are part of the multi-step process that most sales teams have to go through in order to start working on a lead. For organizations that deal with large volumes of leads that all need to go to different departments or to specific team members, adding additional steps to the lead management process can be overwhelming. That means that sales managers are busy doing administrative tasks and aren’t able to focus on pushing their team to the close more deals.
TigerLRM offers a unique resource as part of their sale enablement add-on services that solves the lead management conundrum. For a small monthly fee they offer a sale enablement team that will take care of the entire lead management, distribution, and monitoring process virtually. That means your sales manager will no longer have to spend time coordinating leads, assigning them to the right rep, or making sure they are receiving the proper follow-up. They will be able to count on our team of sales enablement experts to do that for them, so they can focus on more important tasks.
Can you think of any sales cycle where a salesperson doesn’t need sales collateral or sale material of any kind? Whether they need to store it, organize it, or deliver it, every sales person needs easy access to your best and most updated materials. These days, most sales collateral comes in digital form, like PDF flyers, case studies, comparison charts, infographics, explainer videos, testimonials, eBooks, just to name some examples. This is the stuff that businesses pay a hefty price to have produced and nothing irks a business owner or marketing manager more than to see sales reps sharing outdated and inaccurate sales collateral with customers. Avoiding that scenario starts with implementing an efficient way of managing sales content so you can streamline the sales cycle and move the pipeline faster.
TigerLRM’s Sales Content Management system is one of the features that most users start using immediately. This is because it produces nearly instant benefits when it is offered to new-hires during their sales training and onboarding. Nothing helps an overwhelmed trainee more than being able to quickly find answers to their questions. With TigerLRM you’ll connect sales reps with critical resources and gives sales managers a reliable way of getting new sales collateral to their team, regardless of their location.
In a recent study, it was found that only a tiny fraction of sales are closed during the first point of contact, only 2% to be exact. When you consider that closely, it means that 98% of sales will absolutely require a follow up and it also means that your follow-up strategy will decide how many deals you close each week. In some instances it can be something as simple as the fear of being rejected, but in most cases it’s due to an overcomplicated or non-existent sales process. The story repeats itself time and time again in sales rooms across the world. A lead comes in but sales reps don’t see it or are too busy so it goes unattended, or someone reaches out to a lead and promises a follow-up but forgets to make the call. As a result of the lack of persistence, or forgetfulness, leads are lost and business owners are left to wonder how to stop the bleeding.
Luckily, TigerLRM was designed with the purpose of solving this very issue. With automations that can be setup in just a few clicks, sales reps can target multiple leads at once and program follow-ups and drip campaigns to run on auto-pilot. That means no matter how many leads or tasks they may have on their plate that day, following up will not be a problem. Another big advantage of TigerLRM is that reps can follow up by sending text messages (SMS), emails, and make calls all from within the platform. This goes beyond sales; your CRM using Sales Enablement is essential for Customer Relationship Management. It’s important to keep in mind that while SMS messaging and integrated telephony are built into TigerLRM, they are premium add-ons that require an additional fee to be used.
Closing a sale is definitely the most exciting, but perhaps the most difficult, part about the sales process. It is the ultimate goal that drives everyone and everything within a business, and it marks the end of the sales process and the beginning of the customer relationship. Many factors can make closing a deal more difficult, which in turn increases the chances that it won’t happen. Some things can seem small but have a major impact overall, take for example, accepting payments. Most businesses connect their CRM with whatever payment gateway options they are given by their CRM provider. This certainly gets the job done for the most part but when given a closer look, some problems with relying on a 3rd party payment gateway become apparent.
Luckily, TigerLRM comes with a built-in payment portal that simplifies the closing process by keeping it all within the same system. There is no need to integrate, or to make sure that both systems are compatible, or to jump from one system to another during the most critical moments of the sales process. This also allows businesses to keep more accurate records, report fewer errors, and spend the time they’ll save focusing on more profitable pursuits.
In the grand scheme of things, sales enablement is the all-in-one solution for sales teams that want to see more closed deals, optimize their sales process, and empower their sales reps to improve their performance. Businesses that are serious about improving their sales are encouraged to open a free TigerLRM account and request a personalized tour from one of our sales enablement experts today.