Your ultimate objective is to increase the value of your organization at the end of the day. Right? Your sales enablement can get your sales team and other departments on board to boost productivity.
Without a doubt, there are several chances to enable cooperation and assistance between the different teams. Top sales talent values effective onboarding just as much as sales leadership does.
When seeking new positions, 49% of high-performing sales representatives rate the availability of onboarding as “very to extremely significant” (source). Therefore, we can say that doing onboarding well may make or break your company.
So, what should you do to get your entire company on board? First, let’s dive into the post.
1. Utilize SMEs to enable your sales team
Every organization has SMEs or subject matter experts in particular fields. Sales enablement professionals should find and capture their knowledge and insights. Then they should enable SMEs to share the information with the sales force.
For example, SMEs such as:
- Your product managers know about all new products,
- Marketers are well aware of your company’s internal messaging,
- C-suite executive managers can show the right direction to reach the primary goal.
In other words, the faster and more effectively you move the appropriate information from the minds of your SMEs and put it into the heads of your salespeople, the better and more pleasing the onboarding will be.
Sales enablement technology is the best companion in this kind of situation. Statistics show that influential technology users outperformed ineffective technology users by 57% in training and developing sales personnel. (source)
2. Keep everything organized
An organized sales enablement schedule to communicate with your stakeholders, including the sales teams, appears very effective. How does it work?
- You can create a calendar to list down all of your initiatives, including training sessions, workshops, marketing campaign launches, demo certifications, onboarding new employees, etc.
- Next, creating a project tracker (maybe a project management sheet) is another helpful thing you can do. It will help you track the completed and ongoing projects.
- The final step is sharing the sheets, files, or folders you have created with your team members. To make it more effective, you may distribute a weekly executive summary that includes accomplished sales enablement projects and what to expect in the upcoming week.
Share data as much as possible with all relevant leaders to confirm further coaching.
3. Take advantage of content from every department
Look at the content that marketing, product management, and other departments have produced to see if there is a chance to modify it for use in a sales setting.
For instance, if product management produced a guide for a new product launch, pick out the sections that apply to sales and copy them into a presentation for quick learning for salespeople. Any educational content you or others create can benefit various departments of your organization.
4. Motivate your sales reps to learn from their peers
According to research, 55% of workers look to their peers for help when they wish to master a new skill. But less than 50% of companies have a formal peer learning strategy (source). With peer learning, your company’s collective expertise is complete. So include salespeople in the sales enablement process since they are, after all, on the front lines.
Ask your seasoned sales reps to share their best advice for success in the field. They can teach underperformers through self-produced videos and quick-hit information, and you can record these best practices, tips, and techniques for the benefit of all reps. In addition, representatives will value sharing experiences and finding common ground on achievements and difficulties.
5. Say yes to sales ever boarding
Everboarding refers to the ongoing onboarding and assistance of your sales personnel after their initial 30, 60, or 90 days. A great onboarding program (i.e., everboarding) puts your representatives up for success in the long run, while a good one only provides the tools they need to overcome challenges in the first few months.
Onboarding shouldn’t be the end of on-the-job training. Especially in sales, messaging, methods, product offerings, and marketing strategies are dynamic. Therefore, say yes to ever boarding for continuous learning.
6. Manage the entire process as a company-wide initiative
Getting the higher executives and management team on board is another fantastic strategy to inspire staff to participate in sales enablement. Good leadership communication is one of the main elements for a company to succeed at all levels.
Employees will be more inclined to participate in a company-wide initiative to share information with salespeople since they enjoy hearing directly from higher-ups about the business’s strategic initiatives. Also, everyone will feel that their contribution matters once positive outcomes appear.
You must understand as a leader that your bottom line is significantly impacted by how you design your onboarding program and empower them as much as possible. Unfortunately, many businesses are still in the dark and have not realized that assisting sales benefits the entire company and is not the sole responsibility of one department. However, if you operate in this manner, your time to revenue will go faster.
