3 Ways to Enable, Empower, and Wow Sellers

In addition to marketing to buyers and customers, marketers today have one more important function - marketing internally within their organizations.

One of the most important constituencies within an organization is the sales team. While the definition of Sales Enablement varies from organization to organization and is still a relatively new field, mature organizations have been enabling sellers since over a decade.

When I worked at Microsoft, the term was "Sales Excellence" and the responsibility was shared between both the Sales and Marketing orgs.

"We need better content." - ever hear that from sellers?

Sellers are similar to buyers in many respects. There's a lot they have to learn. Their time is extremely limited and valuable (should they be pinging buyers or learning about product updates?). Their attention spans are low unless they are talking to a customer.

And sellers have an important challenge - how to get attention and action from buyers who are busy? Sellers are often asking marketing for "content that works." One of the hallmarks of content that works is short, impactful, pertinent content.

Imagine Mark and Johnny are sellers at your company. Both are trying to get their buyers to move closer to signing a deal. Mark sends his busy buyer, Kathy the CIO, a link to an hour-long recording that covers the key benefits and risks of purchasing their product.

Johnny, on the other hand, has figured out that Kathy is busy. It's really hard to get a meeting with her because of her schedule. Even her email replies are terse. He decides to send her two, short clips from the webinar that touch upon the key benefits and risks, and acknowledges that Kathy's time is precious so he has done the homework for her to allow her to consume the content she needs and get the confidence to move forward.

Which seller do you think is more effective?

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Here are three ways to enable, empower and wow your sellers.

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Enable with bite-size video education.

Sellers need to be constantly educated on all that is new and changing. Typically, this includes new products, features, integrations, pricing, and more. If sellers are not educated properly all the great work done by the product and marketing team goes to waste.

Takeaway #1 - Educate sellers with bite-size videos. Don't make watching hours and hours of training mandatory. Give sellers the key moments and let them learn on their own time and based on needs.

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Empower with email-ready content.

Sellers need content. Content needs to be concise and punchy. The primary channel that most sellers use is email. It is the undisputed #1 channel.

Sellers often need a good mix of salesy and non-salesy content. There are many times when a seller is simply trying to stay in touch and top of mind (read about the Availability Bias and how effective it is) while the lead is moving towards a decision.

It's good to offer sellers some non-salesy, nurture content that allows them to earn more respect with buyers. Have a bias towards something that is quick and short.

The seller also needs to see the content before they send it out. They are much-less likely to send something that is so long that the seller hasn't reviewed yet.

Takeaway #2 - Provide sellers with short, punchy content that's ready for their email tool. Minimize the work sellers have to do because every friction point reduces the likelihood of sellers using the content provided to them. Want to have an impact? Just give it to them on a platter.

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Wow 'em with automation and documentation.

Many organizations have invested in Sales Enablement platforms like Seismic, Highspot, etc. Many others use intranets (like SharePoint) to accomplish similar goals.

These tools are like an empty house. The builder built it but there's nothing inside. You have to furnish the house to make it livable and lovable.

A brilliant marketer (Parmonic customer Genesys) found out that her sellers really liked getting bite-size content in a Word doc so they can choose what to send and when. The sellers felt more in control when content was make available to them without hurdles.

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Takeaway #3 - If you are using an intranet portal or a dedicated sales enablement tool, populate it consistently with content that is worth sharing. Bite-size videos are the most popular, most respectful content format. You can embed these directly in most platforms that support basic embedding (via JavaScript or iFrame). If your platform does not support embedding (or you don't have rights to embed) you can drop video files directly into the system.

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Bite-sized video content helps your sales team sell.

Sales is a critical component of converting a company's products and services into revenue, and Marketing has an extremely important role in making Sales successful.

We hope you'll embrace these recommendations to have an outsized impact on Sales. If you'd like to learn how to automate bite-size video creation for Sales, book a demo with us. We've worked with companies like Symantec (our first customer who used Parmonic for Sales Enablement), Verint, and many more.