Sales training is tough. Being an effective B2B salesperson requires a huge amount of knowledge about your company’s product and its competition – and most brands can’t afford months of training for new hires before they have to start performing. Often, new salespeople are thrown into real sales situations underprepared, with a “sink or swim” mentality that isn’t good for the new employee, the company, or the customer. Digital sales enablement tools represent a concrete solution to the issue of undertraining.
It doesn’t help that today’s customers are more informed and more demanding than ever. 94% of B2B buyers do online research before making purchasing decisions – even when the final purchase is made offline. When your prospect reaches a salesperson, they likely already know about your company, your product, and your competition. Because of this, first contact is less likely to be an exploratory meeting and more likely to be a complex conversation about anything from product specs to custom requests to addressing concerns that have been voiced by existing customers. The value of a sales enablement tool is the ability to put all the knowledge of a veteran salesperson at the fingertips of a green salesperson via a fast, easy-to-use mobile app. Resource libraries, product comparison tools, and cost calculators represent answers to some of the most difficult questions a lead can pose. Outside of sales situations, sales enablement tools are also the perfect encyclopedia of knowledge for new hires to study from or to use to prep for an upcoming opportunity.
Veteran salespeople, too, can benefit from sales enablement tools. Especially with highly complex B2B products where cost of ownership can fluctuate with any given customization, it can be impossible for even the most seasoned employees to know everything off the top of their heads. For simpler sales, too, it never hurts to have a reference to confirm information and a visual aid to show your leads just what you’re talking about.
The steep learning curve inherent to sales can result in delayed or lost sales. A digital sales enablement tool can make sales training faster and more thorough.