There’s one thing that Disney does not receive enough credit for, and no, it’s not Avengers: Endgame — it’s their ability to provide seamless customer experiences both offline and online. Disney has helped to pioneer what it means to provide a consistent customer experience across various digital and offline channels. From Disney+ to Disneyland, we now have access to our favorite characters through whatever medium we choose.
Elevated customer experiences are no longer for consumer-oriented companies alone. In their new report, Building the Business Case for a Modern Sales Enablement Toolset, Forrester explores how modern sales enablement improves customer experience and drives business impact.
What did the report find?
Modern Sales Enablement Drives Marketing and Sales Alignment
Today’s sales landscape is more competitive than ever for B2B sellers which, in turn, has put pressure on marketing teams to produce more engaging content that sellers can use throughout the buyer’s journey. With data provided by the sales enablement platform, marketing can monitor content usage and performance and then create the content that their sellers need to successfully engage buyers at every stage. These highly personalized interactions help sellers establish themselves as experts. “Having salespeople on your side can do a lot to drive cross-team alignment,” says Kendra Pecan, a senior marketing project manager at Amplitude.
A modern enablement toolset also decreases the amount of time sellers spend searching for and creating content, further solidifying the alignment between sales and marketing. With more time spent on high-value activities that yield results, Forrester found that sales leaders saw an average 20% lift in commercial results.
While effectiveness and efficiency gains for organizations are exponential, prospects and customers are the biggest beneficiaries of these investments because they experience more tailored and meaningful interactions across a cohesive buyer’s journey.
Modern Sales Enablement Improves Productivity
Within the report, Forrester conducted a case study with Highspot customer Apptio and found that not only did a modern enablement toolset save their sellers time, the platform also improved their sellers’ productivity. Before the rollout, Apptio conducted a sales productivity survey and found that 75% of their sellers’ time was spent on non-critical activities. Post-rollout, sellers were spending 28% less time with CRM data entry and 23% less time working on low-value repetitive tasks. Apptio’s Sean Goldie, Regional Vice President of Inside Sales & Sales Development, stated: “It became clear to us that we needed to improve the way we were supporting our sales reps and sales leaders.” This savings in time has allowed Apptio’s sales team to spend more time engaging in higher-value activities, such as networking and setting meetings.
But productivity is about more than saving time. Sales leaders are also concerned with how long it takes new sellers to ramp and close their first deal. Forrester reports that sales enablement toolsets contribute to a 24% reduction in ramp time for new reps and an 18% increase in the average number of transactions per seller, which means significant commercial gains for sales leaders.
For enablement teams everywhere, a new seller’s first few months are critical. What’s even more important is understanding what worked to drive success. These insights are invaluable to enablement and sales leadership because they become best practices that can be shared with newcomers and tenured sellers. “When we look at sales enablement success, we look at the time to first and second deals, and we look at what assets are resulting in the most successful sales engagements,” said Sean.
Don’t Wait to Sharpen Your Competitive Edge
To provide today’s buyers with delightful customer experiences that keep them engaged, sellers need the support of a modern sales enablement toolset. Without it, they risk losing prospects to better-equipped competitors.
Learn how to improve your sales ROI while elevating customer experiences with Forrester’s guide for a modern sales enablement toolset.
