Too Much of a Good Thing?
Can you really have too much of a good thing? Well, if it is dark chocolate maybe not, but if it is content, especially content developed to close sales, the answer quite often is yes!
The marketing world is awash in content and when things are not working as they should our default reaction is – more content! It’s not more content that matters, it’s the right content, put in the right context that can be the game changer.
Let’s look at a typical sales scenario. A new qualified sales opportunity comes in. The sales rep has to learn about the company, possibly the industry, and who the decision makers, stakeholders and company influencers are. They have to uncover where the buyer is in the sales cycle: seeking information, evaluating solutions, ready to buy. Then in this scenario the sales rep either trots out the usual presentation materials, sale sheets and brochures or frantically scrambles to find or create something unique for this prospect.
Or it could go something like this. The same opportunity presents itself. Only this time the sales rep taps into a well-designed, well-organized knowledge management system that provides the rep exactly what they need for this prospect in minutes. The rep already has a customized designed portal and playbook for this customer’s industry, size or location complete with product information, presentations and video customer testimonials for social proof. The company CRM system has fed the knowledge based detailed customer profile information, the Marketing Automation system can tell the rep what nurturing campaigns this customer has been offered. The rep has access to an asset management system where they can personalize and localize the sales content for this exact sales call.
That’s the power of Sales Enablement Knowledge Management. What we call Enablement KM. It shifts the focus of the marketing and sales process from content production and delivery to contextual empowerment.
Our research shows that with an effective Enablement KM system, the reps win rate increases significantly and they make their quota faster: often cutting time to quota from 9 months to three.
Getting Enablement KM right isn’t easy. It takes a complete understanding of all seven components of Enablement KM: Asset Management and Resource Center, Distributed Marketing Platform (Portals), Content/Campaign Management Systems, Personalization, Localization, Presentation Systems and Metrics.
It takes a thorough review of the vendors and solutions available for each component and solid action plan for deployment and change management.
That’s why we’ve produced our complete guide, Enablement KM: Insights, Landscape, and Vendor Analysis as part of our new Solutions Series.
Effective Sales Enablement is a multi-stage process. In our Sales Enablement Solutions Study Series we examine each key stage of Sales Enablement from initial marketing and sales alignment to the final deal close and revenue capture. In addition to Enablement KM, we examine CRM, Marketing Automation, CPQ, Sales Communication Tools and Sales Intelligence.
We’ll be introducing Enablement KM and the entire Solution Series at our Sales Enablement Virtual Summit on April 3rd. We hope to see you there.
