Does marketing stop where sales start? We certainly don’t think so.
Our work can’t stop after we get leads in the door – we need to enable our Sales team to deliver all the information the consumer needs (and when they need it) to cross the finish line and commit to the purchase. After all, marketing can be more than a cost center–it can be your top revenue contributor.
"The first thing [to understand] is that [Sales] Enablement should be taken seriously. It’s going to make money, it’s going to make more money, it’s going to improve your pipeline, things are gonna move faster for you."
Gaurav Harode, Founder and CEO, Enablix
In this Marketing Expert Chat episode, Gaurav Harode, Founder of Enablix, covers how B2B SaaS marketers can determine how to:
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Equip Sales teams with the necessary materials
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Provide Sales with relevant content to deliver to the right people at the right time
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Repurpose existing content for Sales enablement
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Share assets with context as to how Sales can actually use them to their advantage
There’s lots of good stuff in this episode that will help you grasp the true importance of enabling your sales team and not just passing on assets. Tune in now to hear Gaurav’s advice and start improving your content creation today!
Video Transcript:
CAROLINE: Hi today, I am here with Gaurav Harode. Gaurav is the Founder and CEO of Enablix and Enablix is a very cool software that helps marketing teams really organize and create their content to make sure the sales team has the right pieces of content to help them close deals faster. So, Gaurav, thank you so much for being with us today.
GAURAV: Thanks Caroline, thanks for having me.
CAROLINE: So, I’m really excited about this talk today because I feel like sales enablement is kind of, it’s super important, and yet when you talk to people about sales enablement, especially sales enablement content people think about this one pager brochure, kind of old school marketing, and really it’s not and it deserves way more attention than what it usually receives. So, I’m really excited to talk about this. And so, my first question Gaurav for you is, as marketers think of content creation, are they kind of dropping the ball when it comes to creating content for sales and thinking that the role stops at bringing the leads in, instead of going all the way to closing the deal?
GAURAV: Yeah, I mean I think we see that all the time because as an industry, marketers are still measured on MQLs, so you will see marketing teams all the time investing in websites, and marketing operations tools, and inbound marketing, and top of the funnel content like webinars and e-books, but they don’t see beyond an MQL. So once an MQL is handed over to the sales team and an opportunity is created, it almost seems that marketers think that their job is done, primarily because their management is asking them that, “Hey, how many MQLs did you generate?” They’re not asking them how you have enabled sales?
But it’s such a big miss for companies and for marketing teams, because as a buyer if I am engaging with your website and engaging with your webinar, and now I’m an interested buyer and I’ve moved from just being a lead to an opportunity, I demand consistency, right? So, I’m moving from a domain that was owned by marketing to a domain now that’s owned by sales, or sales rep. So, I’m demanding consistency, and more importantly I’m now demanding like more data.
So, because I already know what’s on the website I already have done my research, so now I’m looking at your sales rep and looking at her or him as a trusted advisor. And the sales rep needs to be enabled, they need to be empowered with information, and they need to be empowered in some cases where top of funnel information, in some cases more detailed information, and that’s where I think that companies miss the enablement need, right? And they think that if a sales rep is engaged and if a human is talking versus a website they would be able to share all the right information, which is not the case.
CAROLINE: Right, right, and so can you tell us more about then how marketing can partner with sales to make sure that they have the right information at the right time to close the sale? And I think part of the problem is also because if it’s not tied to anybody’s KPIs, then you end up with disparity in the content that you’re sharing, right? Like it might be an old case study, it might not be the best piece of content. So, what’s the best way to approach that?
GAURAV: Yeah I think that the first step is to for marketing teams to observe how the deal progression happens. Second, similarly along the same lines like, talk to the sales reps and see how they’re closing the deals what are the objections that they are facing? One interesting phenomenon that we are seeing for most companies is because of like explosion in the tech industry, every tool that you bring to the market there are five other alternatives for your prospects. And I mean, at Enablix we get asked about how we fair against our competitors, right? How are we different? Why should they choose us versus others? And I bet that other sales organizations are facing the same questions. And if the answers aren’t compelling, if the answers aren’t educating the buyer, then they are going to miss the boat. So, the first step is to like engage with the sales process and understand what their needs are.
The second idea is I believe that, I mean the industry has always focused on like top of the funnel content and with like middle of the funnel and bottom of the funnel content, and there are different assets. But there is also a huge opportunity for marketing to leverage top-of-the-funnel content for middle of the funnel discussion, right? So, I find the webinars on sales enablement, there are nuggets of information and knowledge, not the entire 45 minutes but then maybe like a five-minute clip or two-minute nuggets on how to implement enablement or what are the KPIs.
Marketing is in a unique opportunity to repurpose the content and again, marketing talks lot about repurposing the content, but it’s again very much on top of the funnel. “Oh, I did a podcast, now I just converted it into a blog, and I just converted it into social media tweets.” But what about taking that podcast and arming the sales straps with the right messaging? So that now I have my intro meeting or a discovery call with the prospect I can say, “Hey, you know check at minute 22 in this podcast that we talk about so-and-so that we discussed in our meeting.” So, it has to be personal, it has to be educating. So that’s another opportunity to like partner with sales.
And finally, there is a lot that has to go into messaging. So, as you mentioned earlier, traditionally marketing focuses on like product sheets, and brochures, and like sales decks, but there is a lot that gets lost because it’s not in a file format or a video format, which is like messaging, right? Like one of the things that we see like marketers who believe in enablement invest in is, how should you share the content? Like if I’m sharing an eBook with you as a prospect, what should be my message? Because the prospect is going to read the email first and then access the eBook. So, the messaging part is also like things that marketing and sales can partner on and benefit the enablement process.
CAROLINE: Alright, and that’s a really good, really, really good piece of advice because I think that it’s very rare that marketers are gonna go and actually look at what that messaging is, and how to use the pieces of content. It tends to be like, “Hey, we created this piece of content, here you go you can use it.” but there is not, it’s more like, I’m gonna give you something that’s really enabling reps to use it.
GAURAV: Exactly, I think most of the stuff today that happens is that marketing is throwing something on Google Drive or SharePoint, so they’ll basically get like, “Hey, here’s a webinar or here’s a PDF or here’s a datasheet, you know like knock yourself off and use it.” and they’ll send this one folder. And I’m not saying that’s bad, I think that’s a good start. But once you start taking enablement seriously, there are avenues for you to track engagement. You can see what content is working for sales teams, what content isn’t working for sales reps and for prospects. And that 360-degree loop can help you be better at the entire sales process.
So, it’s very common for marketers to understand that, like for example, blogs which are traditionally used for SEO can be an excellent enablement asset when you are nurturing your prospects. Or if I am sharing a proposal with my prospect and along with the proposal if I can include like an introductory demo video, or a webinar, and a blog that’s value addition, you are adding more value to the prospect. So, there are these opportunities but I think the first thing is that enablement should be taken seriously and should be taken, it’s going to make money, it’s going to make more money, it’s going to improve your pipeline, things are gonna move faster for you.
CAROLINE: Great, great, exactly well, thank you so much Gaurav. I really appreciate it. For everybody that wants to do a better job at sales enablement, I know that Enablix has a lot of resources on their websites so you should go and check it out, and they also have a really, really cool platform so you should definitely check that out, too. Alright, thank you so much.
GAURAV: Thanks.
