sales enablement - Revenue Pulse (RP)

Hi Joe,

I’ve just been put in charge of the Sales team at a relatively small company. So far, things have been great – but there are definitely some limitations.

Compared to the last company I was with, we don’t have nearly as many resources for the Sales team to use.

We’re hitting a plateau right now, and I’m unsure how to break through it. Any advice on how Sales can work more efficiently and effectively with what we have?

Thanks,
Efficient Emma

Hi Emma, thank you for the question – I’ve been in your shoes before.

Helping your company grow past a plateau, especially with very limited resources, is a serious challenge.

Here’s some advice I think will go a very long way in helping you get through this.

Understand your tools

I can’t emphasize this one enough.

If your company has a dedicated CRM (Customer Relationship Management) platform that is integrated with a marketing automation platform like Hubspot, it’s crucial that you know how it operates and how you can get the most out of it.

These are essential tools that will guide your sales process, allowing you to track and define the different stages of leads as they progress from lead to contact to opportunity closed and so on.

After that, see if your company has any other tools like Outreach or Salesloft that will optimize outreach campaigns and communication. You can learn more about the 4 pillars of a Sales tech stack here.

Sync with marketing

Alignment between sales and marketing is key. Especially when resources are low, every dollar must be used as efficiently and effectively as possible.

Keep direct lines of communication open with your marketing team, so sales can stay up to date with relevant campaigns, inbound and outbound programs, and other materials that marketing has put in place. These are materials sales can leverage, including:

whitepapers
product comparisons
product demos
case studies, and
customer success stories.

Ideally, marketing sees what happens before prospects get to sales, so make sure to leverage any intel you can get to increase your understanding of clients – which brings us to our next point.

Personalize communication

Having limited resources doesn’t mean you can’t personalize your emails, phone calls, or any other communication channel. In fact, it’s even more reason to ensure every reach-out is as effective as possible.

Doing this will require using tools such as LinkedIn Sales Navigator to get detailed insights into the pain points of possible leads, which will help you tailor your messaging and create effective, targeted communication points that can increase conversion rates.

If you don’t have access to software that can help with this, or you’re at a stage where you simply can’t afford to invest in a data enhancement tool, then I encourage you to do as much manual research on your leads as possible. Depending on your business, even 2 to 3 hours of extra research on a single lead is worth it if it means closing on a sale.

Once you’ve collected enough data on leads, you can work with marketing to create an ideal customer profile (ICP), as well as key personas that will aid communication strategies going forward.

Automation is your friend

If your team is hitting a plateau, one way to accelerate productivity is to automate anything you can. Find yourself entering the same pitch, message, CTA, or value offer more than once? Make it into a template!

And if you’re working closely with marketing, you should have a good understanding of what each persona in your ICP needs to hear at different stages. This will allow you to create templates with reusable content for every scenario, so you can spend more time personalizing your message.

You’ll find yourself sending higher-quality messages to more prospects this way.

Stay patient

If a certain approach or sales strategy isn’t working right away, it’s okay to persevere and see it through for a longer time.

I’ve seen far too many sales teams give up on a strategy after a single week if the email open rates weren’t ideal, only to realize later that their strategy needed more time and a larger sample size to produce meaningful feedback that can guide future decisions.

Of course, it’s good to persevere – but do so within reason. If you’ve been following the same sales strategy for months without success, it’s time to experiment with new approaches.

And when you’re trying something new, KPIs and deadlines are your friends. Adding specific numbers to benchmark against (such as reaching a minimum of 1,000 prospects in 3 months, for example) will make the process easier to control, measure, and replicate.

Follow the points above, and your sales team will certainly be getting more out of the limited resources that you currently have.

If you still need more help to push past this plateau, Revenue Pulse is here to help.

You’ve got this,

Joe

Hi Joe,

My Sales Ops team has been growing rapidly over the past year or so. With that growth, we’ve also added a Sales Enablement team. But the problem is, I feel like our two teams just aren’t on the same page lately. There seems to be a lot of confusion about which team is responsible for what and things aren’t getting done.

How can I turn this around and make sure everyone is collaborating smoothly again?

Thanks,

Team-Player Taylor

Hi Taylor,

I’m happy to hear about your company’s recent growth! It’s always exciting when things are looking up and I want to congratulate you and your team on this success.

But with growth comes, well, growing pains. What works for smaller teams won’t necessarily work as you scale up your organization. Things can break along the way. So how do we prevent this from happening? Here are a few key points that will help.

Organizational Structure

As your teams grow, it’s important that at all stages of expansion (whether you have a sales team of 3, 30, or 300), there is a clearly defined vertical hierarchy or chain of command.

Of course, it is essential for teams to collaborate cohesively and support each other, as you know. But if your company lacks this vertical structure and the hierarchy is “flatter”, there will often be problems where team members don’t know whose job it is to do a certain task.

I’d also recommend the use of stakeholder maps to help all team members gain a clearer understanding of who is depending on them and what they’re accountable for. Stakeholder maps are not only very practical for refining and communicating the responsibilities of everyone involved in each project, but they’re also a great tool for guiding new hires on who can offer them support, who to approach with queries, and who can approve decisions to keep projects moving forward.

Clearly Define Roles & Responsibilities

There can be a lot of confusion in a company – especially a growing one like yours – between Sales Ops and Sales Enablement. Many members may not fully understand the difference: Where does Sales Ops end and where does Sales Enablement begin?

This is common in my experience so don’t worry, you’re not alone. The two teams are closely related, but they differ in important ways. I would start by laying out a clear definition of the roles, responsibilities, and parameters of the Sales Enablement team in comparison to Sales Ops. If everyone can agree on this, you’re already halfway there!

One way I like to communicate this is to look at Sales Enablement as the “execution arm” of Sales Ops.

Here’s a quick example to illustrate what I mean by this:

Let’s say Sales Enablement realizes many leads become closed lost during the middle of the funnel. The buyer had the initial introduction and pitch, but then the proposal is sent a few days later and things fall through. Sales Ops receives this information and takes a closer look at the operational level – where they discover their sales reps don’t have enough content (case studies, whitepapers, etc.) to send proposals sooner.

This is where Sales Enablement comes back in and goes about producing that needed content (which could mean acquiring collateral from marketing, content creation, etc.). They are effectively enabling the execution of Sales Ops by making sure the buyer experience is everything that it can be – hence the “execution arm”.

Calibrate Expectations

Once everyone in Sales Ops and Sales Enablement is on the same page about their roles and responsibilities, it is crucial to set up continuous points of communication between the two teams to calibrate expectations.

At all times: Sales Ops must know what data they’re expected to report to Sales Enablement, and Sales Enablement must know the type of support they’re expected to provide so Sales Ops can execute at their highest potential.

At first, it might take some time for members to fit into their new teams, and that’s okay. With clear roles, responsibilities, and expectations defined through active communication, I’m confident that you and your teams will be more productive together than ever.

You’ve got this,

Joe Pulse

Tag: sales enablement

How Can Sales Succeed With Limited Resources?