What Is a Sales Enablement Platform?

Sales and marketing departments need to be as integrated and connected as possible. However, changes in the sales landscape can bring about new challenges with effective integration.

Applying technology to these business challenges is the easiest way to solve them. A sales enablement platform makes this possible and delivers a lot of advantages for both individual departments and the organization as a whole. 

What exactly is a sales enablement platform?

Sales enablement software can best be defined as an integrated platform that contains all the tools, processes, content, and information that sales and marketing need to interact with buyers. Each individual solution has various components that enable sales and marketing alignment. 

Organizations can position this software—and its centralized repository—as a single source of truth for content. It contains everything the sales department needs, including the assets that marketing uses to provide sales with opportunities to engage and educate prospects. It also contains sales training content so that new reps can onboard quickly and consistently. 

This type of platform also allows you to streamline compliance and control. It is a secure platform and is manageable from a central admin panel. This allows for the creation of unique permissions that ensure the right content is available. 

Another essential part of a sales enablement platform is analytics capabilities. The most robust software can record content activity and track usage so that marketing gets feedback on the content that works best at converting. 

What benefits does a sales enablement platform deliver?

When companies are considering ways to boost marketing and sales efforts, they often rely on technology. For many years, the focus has only been on customer relationship management and marketing automation. Although these are both very critical to driving revenue and customer satisfaction, they don’t bridge the operational gap. That is where sales enablement software serves its users. 

The benefits you can expect from a sales enablement solution include:

Ensuring Sales and Marketing Alignment

Marketing teams deliver relevant, accurate content to boost sales interactions with prospects, and sales teams offer real-world feedback on customer challenges. With a single source of truth, sales and marketing can be firmly on the same page. 

Enabling Faster and Smoother Onboarding

This helps new sales team members get up to speed quickly and feel they have the tools they need to be successful. In fact, organizations using a sales enablement platform have an effectiveness rate that is 29 percent higher than organizations without one. 

Allowing for Easy Scalability as Your Team Grows 

The bigger your team gets, the harder it is to stay organized. Sales enablement software can keep you on track with all the tools and content sales teams need in one spot. 

Improving Productivity for Sales and Marketing 

Sales won’t need to waste time looking for what they need, and marketing won’t have to spend time on unnecessary tasks or content revisions. Everybody wants to use their time as efficiently as possible instead of living with frustrations that impede it. 

Reducing Hidden Costs of Poor Document Management

These can add up fast and may include IT and labor expenses. 

Increasing Sales Wins 

Sixty-five percent of organizations that deploy sales enablement software outperform their revenue goals. When sales reps have the appropriate tools and content to align with where a buyer is in their journey, it can improve the bottom line.

Standardizing Best Practices

This can help ensure consistency and prevent employees from guessing or doing their own thing when it comes to processes. They’ll be able to access best practices in minutes. 

Providing New Analytics Data

Valuable insights on interactions with buyers can close the feedback loop for marketing. They can obtain clear information on the content that is enabling sales and focus on creating more with the same attributes. 

Does your organization need a sales enablement platform?

There are a lot of pain points that you can heal with a platform. If these challenges sound familiar, then you should start considering a solution.

• Sales and marketing are in silos or at odds. This is not a healthy relationship for stakeholders, and it can hinder your company from finding greater success.
• Sales professionals aren’t adhering to set practices. If you have reps that are “going rogue,” you can reel them in with sales enablement solutions. 
• Document management is haphazard or inconsistent. If you’re using multiple file-sharing systems or none at all, that is a productivity issue.
• Inaccurate and outdated content is making its way to customers. If this happens, it could cause confusion and customers to flee. 
• There is high turnover in sales because of a lack of resources. You could lose great talent because they weren’t empowered. 
• Inefficiencies are eating away at revenue. Lost productivity, redundant work, managing multiple platforms, and other factors can impact your bottom line. 
• Sales isn’t using marketing content to support revenue generation. That could be because it is off the mark, or they don’t know where to find it. 

What are some questions to ask when considering platforms?

If you’ve decided a sales enablement platform makes sense for your company, these are the questions to ask before making your decision:

• Can you assign permissions for each user?
• Are users able to use it offline?
• Does it have analytics features? If so, what can you track and measure?
• Can it easily support video or other important content types?
• Does it integrate with other platforms?
• Can it send out push notifications when new content is available?
• What security protocols does it have?
• Does it provide analytics on platform and content usage?

Ready to learn more about sales enablement platforms?

Deciding to deploy a sales enablement platform can resolve challenges and put your sales and marketing teams in a position to collaborate and improve sales numbers. We invite you to check out our software. vablet is a leader in sales enablement tools. Our application delivers on features, functionality, and ease of use. Experience it today by requesting a demo.