4 reasons why you need to invest in online sales enablement tools

Have you ever thought about using a sales enablement scorecard to more effectively empower your sales team?

A one-time onboarding sales training isn’t going to cut it if you want to ensure your sales team is prepared to receive, handle, and close deals. Instead, you need an ongoing sales enablement strategy that provides sales members with the tools they need when they need them.

Investing in sales enablement software is an excellent way to provide:

• Managers with better coaching tools
• Sales reps with better skills and resources
  
  

When managers and salespeople have the sales enablement tools they need, your whole sales team (and organization) will thrive.

But what exactly is sales enablement, and why is it so important?

In this article, we’re discussing the value of sales enablement. You’ll learn all about sales enablement technology and what the best sales enablement solutions are.

Keep reading to gain a greater understanding of how online sales enablement solutions can benefit your sales team.

How do you define sales enablement?

Did you know that 25% of sales reps believe they don’t receive adequate training?

But that the ROI of training could be as high as 353%?

Sales enablement is the process of providing your sales team with all the training, coaching, tools, and resources they need to make sales. It means making sure you prepare and equip your sales reps to handle the day-in and day-out of the sales process.

A sales enablement strategy also allows for quick adaptation and implementation of necessary processes if managers or salespeople recognize holes in the processes or skills needed.

Modern managers have to balance increasing numbers of direct reports and a distributed workforce. And in a hybrid selling environment, there’s an even greater need for superior human skills that allow sales reps to quickly adapt to buyer preferences and deliver excellent customer experiences. All of this means that sales managers need enablement tools that allow them to effectively coach, train, and build skills at scale.

Without the right sales enablement tools:

• Managers won’t know how to best lead and guide sales reps toward goals
• Salespeople won’t know how to move potential clients through the sales process
  
  

When managers have practical, data-driven coaching tools, they become sales enablers—increasing the confidence and productivity of their salespeople. And more confident, productive salespeople lead to more sales and increased revenue.

So, having good sales enablement systems in place greatly benefits every member of your sales team. Which begs the question, “What are the best sales enablement solutions?”

The answer: sales enablement software!

Sales enablement software not only provides sales training and content in one place, but it also builds better coaches through guided feedback and action plan flows.

The power and value of sales enablement software

Sales enablement software is an online platform that houses all your training and sales reports. Online sales enablement technology allows you to streamline your sales processes, keeping everyone on track and in the loop.

Here are four of the top features and benefits of an online sales enablement platform.

1. Centralized, organized content

What did we go over and talk about last week?

What does “great” look like when closing a sale?

Is there new information or training content available?

These are all questions that can arise when team content isn’t well organized in one place.

Sales enablement software provides managers and sales reps with a centralized, easy-to-access platform for all things related to sales. Instead of searching in multiple places across different platforms, your sales teams can easily access anything related to sales.

Sales reps can quickly start or continue necessary training activities. They can also retrieve all the sales materials they need before, during, and after a sales call.

Managers can quickly revisit old conversations and review employee feedback. In addition, they’ll have the ability to collaborate with employees and create action plans—ensuring everyone’s on the same page.

Whether trying to remember an old conversation or locating a piece of training, online sales enablement tools help keep everything organized.

2. Engaging and customizable training solutions

A second reason to consider investing in sales enablement software is to house and deliver engaging, customized sales training.

Engaging sales training

Long pages of text and hour-long training videos don’t cut it anymore. Instead, you need to invest in training content that’s easy to digest to drive learner retention.

Today, engaging content looks more like micro-learning videos or gamified training:

• Micro-learning videos: These short, bite-sized segments are available on-demand and fit easily into your employees’ schedules. They use live-action, animation, and screencast tutorials to command attention and drive learner retention.
• Gamification: Custom eLearning games make training fun again! Gamified training content merges competition and learning to heighten attention, sustain focus, and drive action.
  
  

The best sales enablement solutions allow you to implement training modalities that are engaging, fun, and interactive. By modernizing your training content with micro-learning videos or gamification, your employees won’t just complete the training—they’ll also enjoy it.

Custom sales training

But providing engaging training on its own isn’t quite enough. You also want a training program that’s customized to your company’s brand and your employees’ needs.

A custom training program will provide your employees with content that’s:

• Conversational and easy to understand
• Relevant and specific to their roles
• Engaging and fast-paced
  
  

Plus, custom training that’s housed in a software enablement platform allows for adaptability and flexibility. You can change, alter, remove, or add training at any time, so your training is always fresh and up to date.

With online sales enablement technology, you can create a training program that’s engaging and unique.

3. Practice and skill-building opportunities

What good is engaging, custom sales training if it only teaches theories and concepts?

The idea of playing golf is simple enough—hit a small, white ball into a hole as quickly as possible. You can watch pro golfers or “how to play golf” videos all day long. However, until you pick up a gold club and start practicing, you won’t actually improve your personal ability.

Sales is the same way!

Good sales training moves beyond content and starts building human skills. Instead of simply showing your reps what sales should look like, software enablement platforms give them the opportunity to practice and hone their skills.

With Spoke® sales enablement software, managers can improve sales readiness through video coaching workflows. Sales reps can apply product knowledge or refine best practices through video simulations. As they put their skills to the test, they’ll receive AI-based or coaching feedback helping them identify areas of strength and opportunity.

They say that practice makes perfect, and that’s definitely true when it comes to sales.

4. Real-time sales enablement scorecards

To become good sales enablers, your managers need to know what’s working and what’s not. They need the ability to measure trends, insights, and competency progression over time so they can:

• Recognize skill gaps
• Deliver more relevant training
• Know who’s reaching goals and who’s not
  
  

An online sales platform provides managers with a sales enablement strategy scorecard for each employee. These sales enablement scorecards give managers a real-time snapshot of:

• Engagement and progress over time
• Areas of opportunity and growth
• Employee competency
  
  

Having access to these metrics helps managers make better, data-driven decisions regarding training and developing their sales reps. They can come alongside employees to create actionable plans to encourage growth and drive success.

Ready to invest in sales enablement software?

Does your sales team have everything they need to succeed?

Do you have a sales enablement strategy in place?

Do you know what sales enablement is?

Sales enablement means making sure your sales team has all the tools and resources they need to handle sales from start to finish. These tools and resources could be:

• Relevant training programs
• Sales guidelines and procedures
• Marketing materials
  
  

But making all of your sales content easily and quickly accessible isn’t simple. Therefore, it can be beneficial to look into online sales enablement systems. These online platforms provide:

• A centralized, organized content hub
• The ability to deliver engaging and customizable content
• Managers with real-time sales enablement scorecards for each employee
  
  

With sales enablement software, you can ensure that your sales team is ready and prepared anytime they meet with a prospective client.

Are you ready to invest in a sales enablement platform?

At Unboxed Training & Technology, we’ve created an award-winning coaching and learning platform called Spoke®. With Spoke, you don’t need to choose between coaching software and employee training software—they both fit inside Spoke. It’s a powerful online software platform that provides:

• Managers with AI-driven feedback to help them know where to focus and how to help their teams improve
• Employees with a central hub that contains all the training, resources, and tools they need for more effective selling
  
  

Spoke is one of the best sales enablement solutions because it makes coaching easier and training simpler. And, it promotes Skill Agility—the ability to keep your employees’ skills evolving with your industry.