Matthew Delman, Director of Product Marketing at LookingGlass Cyber, joins the show this week to discuss all things related to sales enablement strategy. Sales enablement helps businesses provide consistent messaging throughout all their content. This enables (Get it?) potential customers to have a seamless journey from discovery of a company to purchase of products or services. In this episode, Matt teaches us how to boost a sales cycle, streamline communication, and improve internal organization, all through the magic of sales enablement. Timecoded Guide: [02:48] Explaining sales enablement and how it fits into marketing strategy

[06:31] Transforming sales enablement into a faster sales cycle

[14:00] Integrating sales enablement into company culture

[20:20] Essential tools to include in your future sales enablement kit  

What is sales enablement and why is it important?

The core of sales enablement is ensuring your message gets out to your marketplace with consistency. During this process, Matt explains that your team is supporting the buyer journey with one-to-many messaging. This ensures a consistent flow in each stage of the sales journey and enables each department to touch on the same concepts. Essentially, sales enablement helps your customer avoid confusion and pain points so that they can go from first contact to purchase seamlessly.

“When your buyers read your content, or they download a white paper, or they go to an event, and then, they're contacted by your salesperson, they should get an extension of that same message.” –Matthew Delman

How does sales enablement convert into a faster sales cycle?

Sales teams are usually hyper focused on making sales. While this fits their goals and metrics, this one-track mindset breeds confusion if they can’t find exactly the materials they need when they need them. In order to save the sale with potential clients, your sales team might create one-off materials that are a good fit in that moment, but do not match what the marketing team is saying. Successful sales enablement streamlines internal processes so that sales teams have exactly what they need, when they need it.

“Sales enablement is about training your sales team to make sure they're confident in talking about your solution, but it's also making sure that they can find the collateral that they need when a prospect asks for it.”  How do you get sales teams to buy into sales enablement and use the organizational tools you create?

Sales enablement starts with sales leadership, according to Matt. If you tell the sales manager that your sales enablement strategy will help them close deals faster, essentially every single decision maker will sign on. Once you have the leadership on board, the sales team will follow their guidance. You might have to do some negotiation in terms of support and positioning for the team, but once the sales enablement leaders understand it will increase business, it usually becomes an easy sell.

“With sales enablement, your whole goal is to make the deals move faster, to make them smoother, to essentially smooth out the lumps in the sales cycle because you are responding to your prospects' questions in a timely manner with consistent information.” –Matthew Delman What are the key tools to include in a sales enablement kit?

Matt explains that a few tools need to be included in your sales enablement kit to ensure success. His list includes a unified pitch deck, educational videos or an educational call recording, high-level product trainings, and a few plug-and-play email templates. The pitch deck shouldn’t have the exact same slides for everything, but rather allow for customization within limits, a sample call can provide a real-time example of the sale, and trainings and templates make sure your sales team are knowledgeable and have structured responses ready at all times. 

“You want to have your main points for each slide in the deck, and basically say, ‘Here's the main points that you should hit on this slide. How you say it, I don't care. But here's the main points.’” 

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