How to Increase Sales Acceleration with Sales Enablement Technology
Sales acceleration is the strategy combining sales materials, resources, and analytics to increase sales velocity. Along with the right sales enablement technology, these combined tools create meaningful experiences that motivate the buyer towards making a purchase. In today’s world where people have instant access to almost everything via the internet, it’s important for sales teams to move fast. Taking a long time to respond to a prospect can negatively impact the chances of making a sale. In fact, 57% of a buyer’s behavior is influenced by a sales rep’s response time.
Luckily, prioritizing sales acceleration drives efficiency and streamlines the sales process. In this article, we’re taking a closer look at sales acceleration and how the right technology enables speed and agility to ultimately increase win rates.
Why is sales acceleration important?
Along with a sales acceleration strategy, technology is used to simplify admin tasks and move buyers through the sales cycle faster. Using the proper tools to automate and streamline otherwise time-consuming tasks enables sales reps to spend more time actually selling. For example, sales reps often search for the right content on the intranet for hours. Sales enablement tech houses content that is updated and ready to be quickly and easily personalized for any prospect. This allows reps to serve up relevant, personalized content to prospects at the right time. This speeds up the sales cycle as sales reps are able to discover and personalize the most relevant content in a shorter time frame.
Moreover, B2B buyers want personalized experiences that offer educational information on how a certain solution solves their biggest business challenges. Meanwhile, sales reps seek simple procedures and tools that streamline their processes and boost productivity. Sales enablement technology helps simplify tasks and allows sales reps to focus on building the buyer/seller relationship. The right sales enablement platform will provide you with the analytics, content solutions, integrations, and tools for internal communication to help accelerate your sales cycle.
Technology You Need to Boost Sales Acceleration
Believe it or not, the average sales rep spends only 30% of their time actually selling. Often, sales reps spend most of their workday on admin tasks or searching the intranet for the right materials. These long periods of wasted time slow down productivity. However, sales acceleration is possible with the right tech supporting it. Let’s take a look at the three must-have sales acceleration tools in your tech stack.
1. Content Management System
Sales enablement technology will serve as a content management system giving sales reps access to all relevant and updated content in one central location. With all materials gathered in one place, sales reps don’t have to search through folders of outdated and useless collateral. The right tech will allow sales managers to organize content however they choose, with the ability to search for files by name. Thus, finding the right sales content is quicker and more efficient than ever.
2. Real-time Analytics
Sales enablement software will provide insights to help sales reps understand which content the buyer needs by tracking sales engagement. Consider the example of using insights to increase sales acceleration. Let’s say a sales rep just emailed an interactive presentation to a prospect. With the right sales enablement software, the rep is able to see how the prospect interacts with the sales presentation in real-time. With every click of a button, engagement with value calculators, and time spent on slides, the sales rep gains customer data, providing insight into the prospect’s interests. Now, the rep is no longer wasting time guessing at what the prospect might want to see next, thus boosting their response speed.
3. CRM & Email Integration
Sales teams can accelerate sales even faster by integrating sales enablement tech with their CRM. For example, a sales enablement platform will pull customer data from your CRM to personalize content directly within the platform. Whether it be personalizing an email or presentation, the right platform can boost sales acceleration by reducing manual input. Instead of sales reps spending time selecting brand colors or adding names to a presentation or email, the platform will do so automatically.
In addition, sales reps can send presentations and materials directly from the sales enablement platform to contacts in the CRM at the touch of a button. By merging a sales rep’s email account with the sales enablement platform, the time spent switching back and forth between platforms is greatly reduced.
The Benefits of Sales Acceleration
Simply put, sales acceleration software shortens the sales cycle. Sales reps are enabled to offer better customer experiences, hit their quotas at a faster rate, and drive more revenue. Below are just three benefits that sales acceleration tools can bring forth.
Sales & marketing align to increase sales acceleration
The right sales enablement platform will provide visibility across the sales content lifecycle for both marketers and sales reps. This ensures that both teams have insight as to which materials resonate with buyers at each stage of the sales cycle. By sharing sales data with the marketing team and vice versa, each team is better informed to create and use relevant content. Powered by the right tech, the marketing team is better equipped with the data they need to create content that provisions the sales team with materials focusing on selling value.
Data-driven decisions boost sales acceleration
When sales reps spend time guessing which content will be best to send to prospects, it slows down the sales cycle. A sales rep can continuously send the wrong content assuming they know what a prospect wants to hear. With sales acceleration tech, the rep can use data to make smart decisions to provide prospects with content they need based on behavioral data.
For example, say the data shows a prospect is spending the most time viewing a slide on life insurance. Based on the data, the next interaction between the buyer and seller should focus on the benefits of life insurance. With data-driven content tailored to a prospect’s needs, reps provide the best materials to their prospects at the best time. Thus, taking the guesswork out of the process allows sales reps to move faster and increase sales acceleration.
Opportunity to reimagine your sales funnel
Let’s be honest. The typical sales funnel is an outdated framework that no longer meets the needs of sales teams or prospects. Often, the top of the sales funnel is too large, leading to attracting unqualified leads that waste sales reps’ time. Sales acceleration tools enable teams to reimagine the sales funnel and speed up the overall sales cycle by attracting and converting best-fit leads. Considering a new framework, a customer lifecycle flywheel, as opposed to the traditional funnel allows prospects to become repeat customers and continuously drive revenue.
Moreover, the sales funnel we’re all used to has an end point. Once a prospect purchases, they are removed from the funnel. Whereas, in the flywheel model, customers stay in constant motion, engaging with the company and sales reps to eventually make another purchase. With a sales funnel, sales reps are constantly starting from scratch each quarter trying desperately to close new sales opportunities. Garnering new leads is still a priority with the sales flywheel. However, sales reps are better equipped to upsell and resell to customers who have already made a purchase. Therefore, the flywheel provides more opportunities to drive revenue at a faster pace.
Final Thoughts
There are dozens of ways to increase your team’s sales acceleration. But, a great place to start is with the right sales enablement platform. The right platform will provide sales reps with insights and resources to increase sales velocity and drive revenue. Speeding up the sales process has always been top of mind for sales managers. But the way in which innovative solutions, like Prezentor, accelerate sales is a true game changer.
Be faster than your competition — the time to speed up your sales acceleration is now. Reach out to Prezentor to receive your personalized demo.