3 Challenges Facing Sales Enablement Professionals

When you Google “selecting a sales enablement solution” you’ll come across multiple articles that discuss what factors sales enablement professionals should look for in a sales enablement solution to ensure they’re providing their sellers with the best tools to impact revenue and increase quotas.

Recently, Mediafly Chief Evangelist Tom Pisello connected with Tad Travis, Research Director at Gartner responsible for the CRM sales research agenda, to discuss what the biggest challenges are for sales enablement professionals when selecting a solution. Based on his conversation with Tom, I listed what Tad considers as the top three challenges.

Warrant the need for a growing technology stack

With the advancement of technology, sellers have more solutions available to them than ever before. It’s easy to argue that solutions like CRM, interactive tools, sales enablement, etc. are necessary to help increase sales productivity and effectiveness, however, the cost can quickly add up. Today’s solution providers need to better justify the cost of a solution up-front to help economic-focused buyers overcome executive and procurement resistance. Once deployed, the purchased solution must show a return on investment to prove value and drive continued expansion.

Justify mobile device capability

Before making the final decision on sales enablement technology, ensure that you understand how the technology works across every channel that your sellers need. Often, companies select a technology that looks great on paper but does not run consistently from desktop to tablet to mobile device. This is extremely important as many of today’s sales conversations aren’t occurring in offices or boardrooms. Rather, many sellers are out in the field selling on location and need a reliable platform to ensure a quality sales conversation.

Sales enablement professionals must research products to guarantee that the application they deploy provides a consistent and unified experience across every channel. This is especially true for B2B sales organizations that rely on channel partners to sell their products or solutions. If a sales application provides a poor experience, you will see a dip in adoption and engagement from your sellers.

Content and resource recommendations

Do you know the quality of your sales application’s search results? Are sellers receiving the right content recommendations? Is it difficult to tag content for improved search effectiveness? Why is this important? Think about companies that you interact with on a daily basis like Amazon and Netflix. Each day, these companies share personalized options for you based on your viewing or purchasing habits. This saves users time and provides relevant options. Similarly, B2B buyers expect a personalized buying experience with relevant content at every stage of their journey.

With the need for personalized sales interactions, sellers must have access to the right content at the right time. When selecting a sales enablement technology, keep in mind that automatic tagging, natural language processing, and machine learning all contribute to the effectiveness of search and your ability to optimize content recommendations.

As you complete your evaluation of sales enablement technologies, take into consideration the three points above. Additionally, be able to ensure the following:

• Find a vendor that is capable of quantifying the value their solution will bring to your business on the context of your business goals or challenges to drive the best possible sales outcomes.
• Select a multichannel platform so your sellers can access materials and personalize sales interactions, anywhere, anytime, and on any device.
• Confirm the sales enablement platform can help sellers curate the knowledge and content buyers need to motivate purchase decisions.

By incorporating these considerations into your sales enablement evaluation, you can feel confident that sellers will adopt the platform, maximizing the return on investment of your sales enablement solution.