SALES ENABLEMENT SERVICES
Everything You Need to Know About IT Channel Sales Enablement Services
Struggling to close deals in the IT market? You’re not alone. Complex solutions and increasing competition can leave even the most experienced sales teams feeling overwhelmed.
The answer? Sales enablement.
At Marketopia, we’ve been on the sales frontline with MSPs and vendors for years. We’ve seen firsthand the struggles you face, and we’ve helped countless channel partners overcome them with sales enablement solutions expertly crafted by our team.
This comprehensive guide explores how sales enablement services can be your secret weapon. We’ll break down the specific challenges MSPs and vendors face and show you how a strategic approach can turn your sales team into a revenue-generating machine.
What is Sales Enablement?
Sales enablement is the strategic, ongoing process of equipping your internal sales team with everything they need to consistently win deals. It’s more than just sales training – it’s an end-to-end approach that provides the tools, content, knowledge and coaching to ensure your team is prepared for every sales interaction. Sales enablement is important for aligning sales and marketing teams and addressing the challenges faced by sales representatives, including being consultative, adapting to virtual selling and dealing with economic uncertainty.
Here’s a breakdown of the key benefits sales enablement delivers for MSPs and vendors:
Improved IT sales techniques
Effective communication and negotiation skills are crucial for closing deals. Sales enablement provides ongoing training programs that hone these skills, ensuring your reps can confidently navigate complex IT conversations and handle objections with ease.
Streamlined MSP sales process
A consistent and repeatable sales methodology is essential for efficiency. Sales enablement helps define and implement a clear sales process, ensuring every rep follows the same steps to qualify leads, nurture prospects and close deals.
Enhanced knowledge of IT solutions
In-depth training on your MSP offerings or vendor products allows your reps to become trusted advisors. Sales enablement equips them with the technical knowledge they need to effectively present solutions, answer customer questions confidently and identify upselling opportunities.
By implementing a strategic sales enablement program, you can expect to see a significant impact on your bottom line.
Why Sales Enablement Matters for MSPs and Vendors
Are you noticing your sales team keeps facing the same questions from prospects, or your target audience doesn’t seem to grasp the full value of your solutions? These are classic signs that your sales team might be missing something.
This isn’t about a lack of individual skills. Your team is likely the best at what they do, but having good salespeople isn’t enough in an industry experiencing exponential growth year-on-year. In fact, the global MSP market is expected to grow by more than 13% by 2030. Sales enablement materials give your team the tools, knowledge and strategies they need to navigate complex conversations, differentiate your services and, ultimately, close more deals. Here’s why it matters:
Decoding Tech Speak
Customers don’t need to understand intricate technical jargon. They need clear value propositions. Sales enablement content creation equips both your sales and marketing teams with materials that easily translate complex features and services into benefits that resonate with prospects – jargon-free.
Staying Ahead of the Curve
According to a 2022 study by Dooly.ai, only 20% of salespeople believe their companies provide them with the training they need to stay ahead of the competition. Sales enablement provides ongoing training programs, ensuring your team remains industry experts, armed with the latest knowledge to dominate sales conversations.
Standardizing the Sales Process
Sales enablement helps create a clear, repeatable sales methodology specifically designed for MSPs. This ensures every rep follows the same proven steps for qualifying leads, nurturing prospects, and closing deals, leading to increased efficiency and higher win rates.
Fast-Tracking New Hires
The IT sales talent pool is competitive, and new hires often require significant training. Aberdeen Group, a research and advisory firm, found that companies with strong sales enablement programs tend to experience faster onboarding time for new salespeople. Sales enablement provides a structured onboarding and training program, equipping new reps with the necessary knowledge and skills to become proficient sellers quickly.
A sales enablement manager plays a crucial role in developing and executing these training programs for new hires, ensuring they are well-prepared to meet their sales targets.
Key Components of a Sales Enablement Strategy
While robust, top-of-funnel marketing plays a crucial role, a strong sales enablement strategy, bolstered by modern sales enablement platforms, is equally important. These platforms improve training, efficiency and overall performance of sales teams by providing essential tools and resources. Both must work in tandem for optimal results.
By equipping your sales team with the right tools and resources, you enable them to connect with customers on a deeper level, drive deals forward and, ultimately, achieve consistent sales success. It’s crucial to regularly evaluate and improve sales enablement processes to ensure they align with company goals and drive sales performance, and this all starts with a strategy.
Here’s what goes into a sales enablement strategy:
Diagnose and Define
The first step is to identify any roadblocks within your current sales process. What are the recurring challenges your sales team faces? Are leads getting stuck at specific stages? By analyzing your sales funnel, you can pinpoint areas for improvement.
Map the Customer Journey
A study by Forrester found that 74% of B2B buyers conduct online research before making a purchase. This means B2B decision-makers tend to be well-educated on potential solutions before even engaging with a salesperson, highlighting the critical need for a customer-centric sales enablement strategy.
When developing a strategy, you’ll need to map the customer journey for your ideal customer profile (ICP). This involves understanding their pain points, information needs and decision-making process. Aligning your sales enablement strategy with this journey ensures your reps are equipped to address customer concerns at every touchpoint.
Consider the Specific Sales Collateral You Need
You may already have some usable sales assets that work well, or you might need to start from scratch. It’s a good idea to assess what you have and what you need based on the problems you’re encountering in the sales process. Common sales enablement materials you might want to include if you haven’t already are:
- Battle cards: Battle cards are information-packed one-pagers arming reps with product details, competitor intel, pricing strategies and customer counter-arguments – everything needed to win deals.
- Objection handling: Objection handling guides outline common customer concerns and proven strategies for overcoming them. This helps salespeople to confidently address objections, turning roadblocks into opportunities to close deals.
- Best practices: Best practice documents are a collection of successful sales tactics from top performers. They accelerate team learning and elevate overall sales performance by sharing winning strategies.
- Industry-specific messaging: Tailored communication guides specific to your target audience’s needs and challenges ensure your message resonates deeply with prospects, leading to more meaningful conversations.
- Sales documentation process: Setting clear instructions for crafting professional and consistent sales presentations, proposals and other materials creates a unified brand experience for prospects and streamlines the sales content creation process.
- Email/call/demo scripts: Offer templates and guidance for effective prospecting calls, email outreach and demo presentations to equip salespeople with a strong foundation for communication, saving time and increasing the effectiveness of sales interactions.
- Product and feature information: Product sheets are in-depth resources providing comprehensive details about your products and services, including key features, their corresponding benefits and available integrations. This is ideal for meeting customers at the start of their journey, during their research phase.
Align Marketing & Sales Strategies
Sales enablement doesn’t operate in a silo. Bridge the gap between marketing and sales by ensuring alignment on messaging, lead nurturing strategies and ideal customer profiles.
Does Sales Enablement Work?
Sales enablement is a strategic investment, but as with any investment, the question is: does it truly deliver a return? The answer is a resounding yes.
At Marketopia, we’re passionate about helping sales teams to achieve peak performance. We’re a team of seasoned sales enablement specialists with a proven track record of success. We’ve partnered with countless MSPs and vendors around the world, helping them implement customized sales enablement strategies that deliver real results.
Look at the testimonials below to hear directly from our clients about the positive impact our sales enablement programs have had on their businesses. See how we’ve equipped their teams with the tools, knowledge and confidence they need to consistently win deals and drive revenue growth.
