Five Key Sales Enablement Takeaways from 2015

It sounds cliché, but it’s hard to believe that the year is almost over! 2015 has been full of unexpected twists and turns for many organizations, and when it comes to sales enablement, it’s been a year of unprecedented growth. At the beginning of 2015, data suggested that less than 15% of the market had a formal sales enablement initiative. Recent surveys, including our State of Sales Enablement report, indicate that 30% of enterprise and mid-market organizations have a formal sales enablement team and nearly 30% plan to initiate one in 2016.

With those people in mind, I thought it would be interesting to take a look at the top five learnings some of our clients have reported as they’ve rolled out sales enablement this year. These are concepts to keep in mind as you plan your sales enablement initiatives for the new year and beyond.

1. 1. Conquer sales content management, no matter the size of your library.Sales enablement isn’t just about content creation or lead hand-offs mid-funnel — it goes all the way to the sale. This can be challenging when your marketing library holds more than 10,000 pieces of content, as does Concur’s.

      This year, Concur rolled out Highspot to its 1,000 sales reps worldwide, including over 10,000 pieces of content. And the sales reps are delighted. Adoption is consistently high, with 95% of sales reps using the platform each month, and Concur estimates that reps save four hours a week finding content, which adds up to significant savings across 1,000 reps.

      No matter of the size of your library, the right sales enablement platform can save measurable hours, resulting in more time selling!

1. 1. Enabling your inside sales team to engage with prospects speeds up the sale, especially in matrixed organizations.With hundreds of pieces of content that were continually being refined and a fast-growing sales organization, the marketing team at BookingSuite (a division of Booking.com) needed a way to make sure inside sales was using the latest and greatest content. In return, sales wanted a simple, easy-to-use way to share content with prospects and get real-time alerts on prospect engagement.

      By rolling out Highspot, inside sales reps are more effectively engaging with customers and closing sales faster. Marketing ensures reps are using the most up-to-date content by pushing version updates to everyone worldwide. Sales reps get instant alerts when a customer opens, downloads or views an email or piece of content. And reps spend less time searching for content, saving an estimated three hours per week per user.

1. 1. Help agency client services get a handle on customer-ready material.Not all client facing teams are in Sales.

      In the case of Lenati, a marketing and sales consultancy, everyone in ‘Sales’ is first and foremost a solution consultant. Their job is to help sales and marketing teams work more effectively. One of the services they offer is implementing and improving sales enablement solutions and processes in a variety of industries.

      Lenati evaluated the full spectrum of sales enablement platforms and chose Highspot for their internal operations and as their recommended solution for clients.

      Initial surveys of reps across all client implementations gave Highspot high marks, with 90% indicating that Highspot is significantly helping them get their jobs done. That’s a pretty high success rate!

1. 1. Everyone wins when you let internal organizations do what they do best.One of our customers decided to strengthen the alignment between marketing and sales by creating a closed-loop process for improving content quality. As a result, its sales team has been freed up to do what it does best: generate revenue.

      By implementing Highspot to organize content and track performance analytics, marketing closed the gap with sales and created a real-time process to measure content effectiveness. Sales reps automatically get the latest versions as they’re released, and can use Highspot to flexibly share content with customers via both email pitches and live pitches with screen sharing. And marketing can measure what content is engaging customers and driving sales. Both sides of the table know what works and why, thanks to advanced content analytics.

1. Integrating with Salesforce streamlines processes.PayScale faced a challenge that is all too common in organizations large and small: sales reps didn’t know what content was available and had a hard time finding content, because it was stored in many different places.

   By rolling out Highspot and integrating with Salesforce, reps can now find what they need directly within the Salesforce opportunity record and effectively target to prospects based on opportunity characteristics. By coupling two tools together, sales reps estimate they save an average of three hours per week—which translates directly into more time to generate revenue.

According to a new report from Aberdeen Group, more than 60% of best-in-class organizations have a formal competency in sales enablement. In fact, Aberdeen found that organizations with structured sales enablement programs saw:

• 62% higher team quota attainment
• 205% higher revenue growth
• 725% higher sales velocity
• 23% higher lead conversion rate

Those are impressive stats, and we’ve seen the results in real life time and again through our clients. There’s a reason that sales enablement is a hot topic amongst analysts and industry pundits right now: it works.

Want to learn more about how you can plan and deploy a sales enablement initiative in 2016? Our Definitive Guide to Sales Enablement is a good place to start!

Happy holidays, and we look forward to helping you bridge the gap between sales and marketing in your organization in the new year.