Sales enablement technology: What are the options?
Technology is ever-growing in the world around us and as a business it is ever more important to keep up with technological trends. Look at the automotive industry at the turn of the century. The companies that adopted the new technology of the assembly line came out on top while the manufacturers that continued the assembly on a car by car basis ended up on the bottom. The same goes for the sales department. Imagine if there were still a company that hires door to door salespeople and how they would do in today’s world against modern call centers, automation, and the internet. Sales enablement is a good way to get your company up to speed with various technologies which will ensure maximum productivity and sales numbers. Below are some technology options that sales enablement can provide.
Customer Relationship Management
One key aspect that sales enablement technology attempts to improve is the salesperson and buyer relationship. To accomplish this one technology that is adapted as an indicator is Customer Relationship Management which while it is a form of management carries many technical evaluators. One such evaluator is customer retention analytics which looks at individual buyers to see if there are repeat visits to buy or if there are missed sales from returning customers. Customers coming back again, and buying is an indicator of good customer satisfaction as well as a good indicator or good sales practices by salespeople. Another indicative technology is post-call or interaction surveys administered to customers. These are direct indicators as questions like “How likely are you to buy again?” or “How would you rate your experience today with our sales rep?” give clear answers to how the customer feels. The answers to these questions are then utilized to manage and guide reps to the optimum sales methods to increase customer satisfaction and retention.
Marketing Automation
Automation is a large technological development in the business world within the past few years and is an area of ever-growing products and new technologies. The goal of automation is to eliminate tedious repetitive work and make it occur automatically with the utilization of technology. A very simplified example of automation that everyone has experienced is a signature line in an email. This signature line is something that you would have to type every time you sent out an email without automation. One popular marketing specific automation tool is Marketo. With a huge selection of avenues to reach buyers it is easy to see what makes the platform so popular. Email Marketing, Lead Marketing, Consumer Marketing, Customer Base Marketing, and Mobile Marketing are some key features Marketo brings to the table to seek new customers and keep retainment up. Marketing automation enables the marketing team the tools to be more competitive within the marketplace.
Analytics
Analytics are perhaps the single most important technologies to implement within a business. From financial analytics to marketing analytics, these technologies are able to tell you where your company has been, where it currently is, as well as a project where your company will be in the future. With this information you are enabling employees to change future trajectories and see how alterations improve function and sales.
Overall there are many technologies to choose from regarding sales enablement. The key to finding the technology that will benefit your company the most is to observe where the greatest amount of time wasted is. This analysis will weed out the technologies you don’t need while showing you the technologies that will most likely increase efficiency. Sales enablement often includes this analysis as a part of the process to determine the technology tools that will provide the most benefit.