If there is one thing I’ve learned during my career, it’s that salespeople cannot succeed without a strong, agile sales enablement team behind them.
I also know that sales and sales enablement teams have been put to the test throughout the past six months as businesses respond to the pandemic and our new normal. On my team, we’ve focused on building remote relationships with prospects, which means we’ve also created a dozen new problems a day for our sales ops team.
Here are four ways that my team connects with remote prospects and how the sales enablement team makes it happen.
Make the Video Background Work for You
On one hand, home-office video calls are a great way to show personality and individualism. On the other, if I leave the background entirely to the discretion of my 23-year-old reps, I’m a little afraid of what the prospects will end up seeing. OK, maybe I’m quite afraid.Here are some ways we’ve ensured that the video background is working for us, not against us:
- Provide reps with approved background images (in case they don’t want to show any part of their home).
- Send reps branded roll-up banners.
- Send reps swag to display in the background.
- Create a guideline of expectations, including what kind of personal items are good to display (such as books, trophies, or other conversation starters), and ways to avoid common Zoom fails.
Make It Easy for Sales to Send Prospects Swag
Every time my reps have a great sales call, I want to know how they’re going to follow up, how they plan to continue adding value, and how they’ll remain top of mind. Previously, that might have included lunch, drinks, or an in-person meeting. Now, we’ve had to find new forms of customer engagement.One of my favorites is to send every person who joined the call branded swag to thank them for their time. The prospect gets a physical reminder of that great call from a few days ago, and my rep has another positive reason to reach out.
The logistics around this, however, can be a huge burden. At Mimeo, we use our Marketplace platform to connect our swag inventory to a private e-commerce portal. Sales enablement sends swag to the warehouse, the warehouse publishes it to our Marketplace, and the rep can order brand-approved swag from there. For sales enablement and the rep, the process is a matter of clicks.
Make It Easy to Send Value-Added Content
Some deals take a long time, which means reps need to keep building relationships throughout the span of months. One way my reps do this is by sending relevant reports, case studies, or product specifics to the key stakeholders and decision makers in a deal.Of course, we can and do send some content via email. However, since the average professional receives 129 emails per day, we know that many of these messages are going unread.
My team breaks through the noise by sending printed content directly to prospects. We use our Marketplace to upload brand-approved content, which reps can order when they need it, with various levels of restrictions (such as how many copies they can order at a time). The sales enablement team takes five minutes to set up the documents, and Mimeo handles the rest.
Make It Easy to Send Personalized Content
If you were taking your prospect to dinner, you would likely say their name and ask about their family. You would get to know them, not immediately start spouting your talk track. That’s why I expect my team to send personalized content when they touch base with a prospect.You’ve probably figured out how to personalize online content with automation software. On my team, we personalize print content too. Again, the team only has to take five minutes to upload files into Mimeo. The rep then personalizes each field—including customer names, text blocks, and even images—when they place their orders.
As a lifelong salesperson, I can tell you that sales enablement is crucial to hitting my goals. These are just four ways our sales enablement team makes my team stronger. I look forward to discussing it further at the SELL Conference.
