Sales Enablement Essentials: Tools, Materials and Tactics for Winning Deals

Introduction

The most coveted goal for each salesperson is being able to close a deal. Even better if you could close more deals within a shorter amount of time. However, closing deals isn’t an easy feat and it definitely doesn’t happen overnight. It takes a lot of planning with a timetable of at least a month before.

In order to be able to close several deals you need to be able to:

• Have the right tools
• Possess and produce enough resources
• Have solid step-by-step strategies

These three are essentials in closing deals faster. We are going to go into details into each of these points to broaden your understanding of how to maximize all the weapons in your arsenal.

So, let’s dive into it!

CRM

The center of your sales process is always going to be your CRM. It is the most important tool you’ll ever invest in. So, when you’re choosing a good CRM for you, choose one that is able to facilitate a better workflow and is able to integrate the rest of your sales stack. Be careful in assessing your specific needs and afterward choose the CRM that will grow along with your organization.

One of the best CRM tools that you can invest in is HubSpot. If you want to try it out, the basic version is free. It fits especially well for new teams and seamlessly integrates with Intercom. However, you also have the option to upgrade when you want access to more advanced features as your needs grow.

Sales and Market Intelligence

What is usually considered a great start? You need to know your prospect’s name or email. However, that information alone is not enough as it won’t tell you whether that person or their company will be a qualified buyer for your service or product. Your sales and market intelligence tools are helping you provide the details in order for you to make informed sales decisions quicker and better.

If your business has a LinkedIn account, definitely check out the LinkedIn Sales Navigator. It allows you access into their massive network in order to learn more about your prospects and identify all the key decision-makers.

Lead Handling and Prospecting

When it comes to your sales motion you want to be able to quickly identify all promising leads, qualify them and be able to get them nurtured and converted into a sale.

A powerful tool that can help you route your leads to the right rep as well as attribute new business to sales and marketing campaigns. It has a drag-and-drop functionality which means that you can quickly build complex routing logic for your leads and contacts as well with opportunities and accounts.

Analytics and Reporting

All your time spent collecting data from your possible leads is rendered next to useless if it’s just stored but not actionable. Incorporating analytics and reporting tools allow you to be able to visualize, analyze, and mobilize decision making by making the data accessible by stakeholders in more impactful ways.

A tableau is a tool that you can connect to a variety of data sources that can include your CRM, your backend data warehouse in order for you to be able to visualize your overall customer data. It is critical to enabling especially those working in sales operations to see and understand your data.

Process and Training

The one thing that will save you an immense amount of time, effort, and frustrations is by improving your most common sales processes. By that, we mean constantly working on improving it. It’s not just a one-time thing. It’s important to invest in tools that will help you reduce friction, speed up your common tasks, and get new sales team members on board quicker as well.

You don’t want to hassle your customers, much less those who are still prospects, with asking them to sign, scan, print, and email a document back to you. It will cost them time doing all these things. We suggest that you check your e-signature tools such as DocuSign. You can use it to complete order forms and master service agreements in just hours instead of days. The best thing about it is that you can do this from almost anywhere in the world which comes in handy if you’re a global company.

Blog Posts

If you don’t mind sparing some time to read a 5-6 minutes long blog post, then this will be perfect for you. Blogs are a great source of learning quick tidbits of knowledge that you can apply to your sales throughout the day. They’re best consumed in the morning while your mind is still fresh while you drink your morning coffee.

May we suggest that you check out HubSpot’s Sales Blog. It’s easily every salesperson’s go-to blog where you can learn more about emerging trends and all the best and newest practices in sales today.

Another blog to add to your list is The Savvy Marketer blog for regular topics on B2B sales and marketing information.

Case Studies

Aside from blog posts, case studies are a great addition to your content. Case studies help boost your brand reputation, giving your clients and prospects alike transparent insight to how you have helped other brands. Your prospects will always appreciate knowing and seeing that data of how you’ve helped solve the same problems they are struggling with.

Product Sheets / One-pagers

Product sheets or one-pagers are helpful ways to describe what your business is all about, what problems you’re trying to solve , what your needs are and what actions you want your audience to do.

When constructing these, remember to make them clear, crisp, and concise so as to immediately capture your customer’s attention.

Competitor Comparison

One thing you have to be aware of is what your competitors are offering and what their strategies are. Gather as much information as you can about their methods, it’ll make formulating your own competitive edge.

Presentations

Make sure that the clarity and consistency of your presentation are never compromised. It’s essential that marketing and sales work closely together. The role of your marketing team is to generate content while your sales team is in charge of giving heavy input into the content.

Email Templates

Now, aside from all the other written content like your blogs and newsletters, providing your sales team with different templates appropriate for all types of occasions is also something you should incorporate. Remember, it’s not just about closing a sale, but about building relationships and establishing their trust in your brand. Your list of special emails should include follow-up emails, outreach emails, check-in emails, and so on. Make them as personalized as possible, customizing them to each type of customer that you have.

Podcasts

If you’re the type that has a little too much on their hands, subscribing to some good sales-focused podcasts are a better match for you. Whether you’re working out at the gym or driving to and back from work, letting a podcast play in the background not only gives you company but educates you and gives you better insight into the sales process.

Outside Sales Talk is hosted by Steve Benson. This podcast is an awesome resource where you can learn the same strategies that made industry experts such as Victor Antonio, John Barrows, Aaron Roos, and Anthony Lannarino so successful.

YouTube Channels

From silly cat videos to helpful DIY content to everything business, there is nothing that you cannot find on YouTube.

Among the many sales savvy channels out there, we recommend you check out Victor Antonio, Jeffrey Gitomer’s Sales Training Channel, Grant Cordone, and Brian Tracy’s channels. They all cover a wide range of different topics such as how to become a great salesperson and how to deal with the most common obstacles you can face in sales as well as how you can properly prepare yourself for your next sales interview. Others talk about how to build the right attitude in order to close more deals, and more. Overall it’s a good resource to learn more about closing sales as they also provide the visual information to go with it.

Free Courses

If you can dedicate a day or two in a week to just learning, there are many sales courses out there that you can sign up for. The best part is that they’re for FREE!

There are many free courses online that you can choose from. Some are a little longer while others are shorter. Choose whichever course would suit your schedule best to gain more valuable knowledge directly from top sales experts around the world.

A good example is HubSpot Academy. They offer a 3-hour course on how the inbound sales methodology works.

Callbox also has its own free email course that teaches about all the key concepts and ideas for managing prospects and leads in a multi-touch, multi-channel pipeline.

So, whether you’re more into watching, listening or reading, free courses will help you find your ideal piece of content.

Sales professionals are constantly expected to close successful sales and generate the best win rates. The great news is that there are numerous different sales strategies and techniques that have been developed over the years.

First, it’s essential to note that the way our consumers make their purchasing decisions constantly changes. Taking that into consideration, you need to constantly reevaluate your sales strategy.

When planning out your strategies, remember that the overarching theme should be that your customer always needs to come first.

Identify the Decision Maker

It goes without saying that knowing who the decision-maker is is crucial to quickly close a deal. It’s not uncommon that decision-makers will usually send someone else to get all the information they can from your company. If this happens, you have to put yourself into the headspace of the decision-maker in order to be able to customize your sales pitch to their interest.

The best bet to closing a deal, however, is being able to set up a meeting with the decision-maker himself, so try your best to be able to meet with them instead of a representative.

Be Genuine

You know how dogs can sense a person’s fear? Well, your clients can tell if someone is being ungenuine during a sales process. You have to make sure that your client knows and feels that you care about their business and that you genuinely want to help them and don’t just care about closing a deal.

If you come off too calculated, they’ll automatically get turned off. Don’t misunderstand. There is nothing wrong with being prepared. In fact, you have to be prepared when giving a pitch and your prospects will greatly appreciate it, just make sure that you don’t come off too rehearsed and as if you don’t care about their best interest.

Sense of urgency

Whether you’re close to sealing a deal or not, it’s an excellent strategy to attach a deadline in order to give your prospect an incentive to commit to your sales pitch. Think of a discount or a freebie to attach to your deadline so as to make your prospects feel that they have the upper hand in the deal. Of course, this isn’t to pressure or rush them, instead it just simply gives them more reason to see your product/service as the right and best choice.

Knowing Your Competition

In order to know what areas you can improve your strategies on is by checking out your competition, and making sure that your approach will be more competitive than theirs. Being on top of the game is tough in the business work, so be sure that you do diligent research and take note of things you’re doing that your competition isn’t. You want to be able to offer your customers something that no one else is, automatically giving you the upper hand.

Conclusion

These are all the basics that you need in delivering a successful sales pitch that will lead to more closed deals. It may seem like a lot of things to do, but it just takes careful planning and of course you can customize each of these points to suit the nature of your business.

We hope that this eBook has helped broaden your perspective and given you inspiration to further innovate your sales and marketing strategies to get out and rake in those sales!