Smarter Selling: Building A Case For Just-in-time Enablement

Companies today are pivoting from capacity to efficiency. The focus has shifted to driving sales effectiveness instead of hiring more sales reps to drive revenue growth. 

However, the hard truth is that only some reps in your sales team perform at peak levels. Studies show only 24.3% of salespeople exceeded their quota last year. 

The reps who do exceed quota do things differently. For instance, high-performing sales reps spend about 6 hours weekly researching prospects. 

But how do you replicate the deal-winning behaviour of your high-performing reps across your sales team? 

The answer lies in intelligent enablement, delivered just in time in the seller’s workflow.

While legacy sales enablement platforms are useful for content management and onboarding, they don’t truly support reps every step of the way in building trust with buyers and winning deals.

Understanding Just-in-time Enablement

Your sales rep is drafting an email for a prospect, say the CRO of an Israel-based firm, looking for a cybersecurity solution. The rep may share information that is irrelevant to the buyer persona, does not reflect the regional nuances of data security laws in the EU, or is outdated - if the rep is using content saved on a local drive.

Does this sound familiar?

Context is everything when working on a deal.

Effective sales enablement gives sellers the tools and information to address buyer challenges at every stage. Reps need visibility into the context of every deal and easy access to the most up-to-date information, including product pitch decks, competitive battlecards, customer evidence and more at the right moment to help build credibility with buyers and move the deal forward.

Just-in-time enablement meets the rep wherever they are in their workflow, helping them be contextually relevant, without the need to wait for answers or search for information.

In the above example, after evaluating the prospect, their industry, geography, designation, and the deal stage, just-in-time enablement provides relevant recommendations that are more likely to resonate with the prospect, giving them the information they need to get closer to making a purchase decision.

Stop Losing Winnable Deals

Most reps lack the tacit knowledge to close deals. 

In a study by SiriousDecisions, 71% of sales reps said they don’t have enough knowledge to move deals forward.

Legacy enablement platforms are of little help here.

Broken search is the most common grievance sales team have from their content management platforms. 

First, reps need to know what to search for. Your best sales assets can lie unused in your content library, if reps don’t know they exist or how to search for them.

Second, many CMS platforms often show irrelevant results even when searching with the right keywords.

Just-in-time enablement understands the context of a deal and allows sales reps to access the right content without spending hours combing through bundles of folders and files.

Sales reps no longer need to send outdated collaterals or feel overwhelmed by irrelevant search results. Instead, they can focus on building a relationship with the prospect and closing the deal. 

Buyer Engagement

Legacy sales enablement platforms are like rabbit holes. While enablement teams consistently churn out new content, sales reps often spend hours searching for relevant collaterals. 

They also don’t have enough information to understand how buyers are engaging with the content they share. 

Enablement platforms need to be able to analyze customer engagement across purchasing stages. You can then leverage these insights to develop content that resonates with buyers. 

Onboarding vs Everboarding 

Increasing sales productivity seems straightforward: hire the best talent, train them, provide the necessary tools, set their targets, and monitor their performance.

While sales training programs are undoubtedly helpful, reps often feel overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information. This leads to reps forgetting nearly 70% of what they've learned within a week of training. 

With quotas remaining unchanged despite hiring freezes, reps have a stronger need to feel supported.

Instead of taking the one-and-done approach to training, revenue teams need to focus on enabling reps at every step of the way - by making just-in-time coaching a part of their workflow.

Contextual learning makes information easier to assimilate. This includes facilitating learning within the seller’s workflow, including email, CRM, LinkedIn, etc.

Alternatively, you could also use RPO providers to save costs on tools and maybe even on the workforce.

Integrations With Other Tools

In today’s digital landscape, sales enablement platforms need to support integrations with various platforms, from Google Drive and HubSpot to Slack and Outlook. 

It’s essential to look at the tools your reps use in their day-to-day interactions and ensure they can all be integrated into your sales enablement platform. Sellers can avoid jumping between multiple applications and smoothly progress their pitch.

Benefits of Just-in-time Enablement

Sales Productivity

65% of sales reps say they can’t find content to send to prospects. 

Just-in-time enablement provides sellers access to all the information they right in their work flow. There’s no time wasted on search-and-discovery missions. So, when on a call with a prospect - sellers can focus on what matters most - selling.

Sales Effectiveness

Sales effectiveness begins with ensuring reps have access to all their tools and knowledge at every stage of the sales funnel. Equipping your sales reps with the relevant information about the potential buyer, including their industry, designation, current pain points, etc., is no longer negotiable.

The more information your sellers have on their prospects, the better they can tailor their pitch to meet specific customer needs and handle objections with confidence. 

Just-in-time enablement allows reps to understand what will resonate with buyer needs and interests and increases the likelihood of closing a deal.

Faster Sales Cycles

The buying process is more complex today, with more stakeholders involved. Consequently, the sales cycles are longer too. 

An effective way to shorten the sales cycle is to provide an exceptional buying experience, sharing the most relevant information with different stakeholders of the buying team in a timely manner.

With just-in-time enablement, buyers are better positioned to make a more informed buying decision, and faster.

Measuring Impact 

Effective sales enablement delivers against business outcomes, not just process improvements or output metrics. 

With Just-in-time enablement, it is easy to measure how the platform is helping elevate rep performance at every stage of the sales funnel.

Gauging both leading and lagging indicators simultaneously provides a holistic perspective of the impact. Leading indicators look at the road ahead, including scheduled meetings, pipelines created, average opportunity size, etc. Lagging indicators examine the road traversed through content performance, revenue, sales cycle length, etc.

Showcasing the revenue impact is the best way to make top management understand why just-in-time enablement deserves the sales organization’s time, attention, and effort. 

The Final Word

With the changing buying landscape in an uncertain economic climate, sales reps need to evolve and fast. 

Legacy sales enablement platforms prioritize sales training and a maze of resources without understanding the sellers’ needs or workflows. 

Unsurprising, most of them struggle with rep adoption.

Just-in-time enablement is focused on elevating rep performance, supporting them with the tools and knowledge required to perform at peak levels.

Truly enabled reps don’t lose winnable deals.

GTM Buddy enables sales reps with the right information at the right time from within their workflow, so they can build credibility with buyers and close more deals. Reach out to us for a free demo