From: http://www.bizjournals.com/

Studies have found that organizations benefit in major ways from a long-term effective sales enablement strategy.

SiriusDecisions reported that “B2B organizations with tightly aligned sales and marketing operations achieved 24 percent faster three-year revenue growth and 27 percent faster three-year profit growth.”

In addition, continuous training as part of the enablement process yielded 50 percent higher net sales for each employee, according to The American Society for Training and Development.

What will doubling the effectiveness of sales teams mean to your organization’s bottom line? How can companies create and implement a sales enablement strategy that is scalable and supports their front line?

The following business-proven steps will show you how to create and implement an effective sales enablement strategy:

1. Create improved organizational processes

The Harvard Business Review surveyed 31 companies and 26,000 people to uncover the four areas that improve execution— structural changes, motivator alignment, information flow design, and decision rights clarification.

A free flow of information, a clear understanding of individual roles and enhanced accountability are a few of the traits found in effective organizations.

2. Deliver content in context

Soft skills are necessary to address prospect questions in full and not steamroll over concerns on the way to a sale. Marketing collateral should exist for each specific stage of the buyer’s cycle. Listen first, then respond.

3. Thoroughly train salespeople

Sales are your front line, and they need content tailored to their needs and not another generalized presentation. Make the effort.

4. Foster understanding between departments

Company culture should reward open communications and provide the tools to use technology collaboratively. Stakeholders need to buy in to the objective and enable individuals to rise to the challenge.

Start with the culture, then:

5. Choose sales enablement technology with end users in mind

Technology must integrate well with other processes and platforms, be easily accessible and go much of the way to meet the overall objectives of the business case.

Is it user-friendly? Is it designed for my use case? Can it be adapted to future needs? These are all useful questions to ask.

The right platform can result in a significant shift in pace with more sales in the same timeframe.

6. Love the numbers

Create a business case for use and outline clear expectations for the top and bottom line metrics.

Those invested need clarity on benefits to drive support. Be detailed with suitable benchmarks and realistic numbers.

7. Start small and dream big

Create a targeted use case with select high performers to establish benefits and benchmarks. Demonstrate correlations in key areas for other teams to see the improvements in marketing and operations support with fewer interruptions and increased sales productivity.

With a successful pilot under your belt, continue the rollout to all other teams. Invest the time in planning and execution to reap the best results.

With the right sales enablement strategy in place, marketing can be more effective and sales can move faster with the necessary information at the right time to nurture their prospects along.