Have you ever tried to buy something from an online store only to get frustrated at how difficult it is to buy a product? You're not alone. Some companies make every sale far more complicated than it needs to be. Even if the customer is yelling, "Take my money."
Millions are spent annually on sales enablement, equipping sales reps with the knowledge and tools to seal the deal. Little thought is given to ensuring it's incredibly easy for a buyer to buy, however.
Just realising the problems with your business? This guide will run through buyer and sales enablement and explore the pros and cons of both strategies.
We'll also cover:
- Key differences between buyer and sales enablement
- Top sales enablement tools to boost your conversion rate
- Must-use strategies to help buyer enablement
Key Takeaways
Buyer Enablement
- Focuses on the buyer and their journey through the sales process.
- Aims to provide buyers with the information, tools, and support they need to make a confident purchasing decision.
- Seeks to reduce friction and streamline the buying process, making it easier for customers to make a purchase.
- Requires a deep understanding of the buyer's decision-making process and their needs at each stage of the buying journey.
- Improvements in customer satisfaction, loyalty, and conversion rates often measure success.
Sales Enablement
- Focuses on the sales team and their ability to sell effectively.
- Provides salespeople with the training, tools, and resources they need to close deals more effectively.
- Targets sales performance metrics such as conversion rates, deal sizes, and sales cycle lengths.
- Requires ongoing training and development to keep up with evolving products, competitive landscapes, and customer needs.
- Sales performance metrics and overall revenue growth typically measure success.
What is Buyer Enablement?
Buyer enablement is a sales strategy that aims to remove all obstacles preventing a buyer from making a purchase. It ensures every buyer has the right information, interactions, and tools to advance a transaction.
Think of a sale as two elements: the seller and the buyer.
Companies often focus on the former, believing they're the missing link in their sales strategy. However, it's the buyer who really drives the sale forward – it's their choice.
Buyer enablement argues that a strategic focus is on the buyer's decision-making and purchasing process. That could mean creating specific solution-focus content, showcasing products, and experiences, or rethinking your check-out process.
What is Sales Enablement?
Don't think sales enablement isn't critical. This strategy equips and trains the seller to be a marketing machine. Put simply, sales enablement helps sellers sell, while buyer enablement helps buyers buy.
The former looks at the seller's style, lead generation tools, ability to convey their product's benefits, and convert browsers into buyers.
The more deals the sales team makes, the better this strategy looks.
Buyer Enablement vs. Sales Enablement: Pros and Cons
No company has unlimited resources. Sooner or later, you've got to make a decision whether to prioritise one of the strategies – even if you still use both overall. So, what are the pros and cons?
Buyer Enablement
Pros:
- Customer Focus: It puts the buyer at the centre of your strategy, ensuring they have all the information and tools needed to make a purchase decision.
- Reduced Friction: By focusing on removing obstacles from the buyer's journey, you make it easier for them to purchase, increasing the likelihood of conversion.
- Improved Buyer Experience: Buyers appreciate the transparency and ease of purchase, leading to increased customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Cons:
- Requires Deep Understanding of Buyer Journey: In order to enable buyers effectively, companies need a comprehensive understanding of their buyers' decision-making process, which can be complex and time-consuming to develop.
- Constant Updating: As buyer needs and behaviours change over time, the content, tools, and resources used for buyer enablement must be regularly updated, which can require significant resources.
Sales Enablement
Pros:
- Improved Sales Performance: It provides the sales team with the knowledge, tools, and training they need to sell effectively, leading to improved performance metrics like conversion rates and deal sizes.
- Better Alignment Between Marketing and Sales: It helps align marketing and sales teams, boosting collaboration and driving more effective sales strategies.
Cons:
- High Initial Investment: Developing the right sales enablement tools and training programs can require a significant initial investment.
- Ongoing Training Required: To keep up with evolving products, competitive landscapes, and customer needs, continuous training and development are necessary, which is costly and time-consuming.
Top Buyer Enablement Tools
Your sales team is facing a tough challenge. As transactions go increasingly virtual, sellers are expected to become experts. A 2022 Salesforce survey found that 74% of sellers said their jobs were less transactional and more consultative. Customers expected a deep knowledge of the customer, the product, and the market.
That's not all – no longer can sellers use their in-person charm or expertise. They're selling from behind a screen. Little wonder 58% of sellers said virtual selling is harder than in an office.
You wouldn't send a mechanic to fix a car without the right tools. So too, your sales team needs the right sales enablement tools to succeed. Try these out:
trumpet
(Okay, that's us. Just hear us out.) Get more information on your prospect's actions with trumpet. The platform allows you to create personalised microsites ("Pods") in minutes to target your buyers. It'll track their actions and identify key sales signals to help your sales team act with flawless efficiency.
HubSpot
As an all-in-one inbound marketing, sales, and CRM platform, HubSpot is a leading sales enablement tool. Expect comprehensive features for lead management, deal tracking, and sales analytics. Nurturing leads and closing deals is easier than ever.
Acquire
Try Acquire – a versatile, multi-channel customer communication platform. Skyrocket your conversion ratio with its advanced communication tools like live chat, co-browsing, and AI chatbots. It's the perfect tool for real-time customer engagement.
Customer.io
Renowned for its powerful automation and personalization features, Customer.io is dedicated to creating highly targeted communication strategies. You can create complex workflows to help funnel customers toward a sale. Best of all, it works seamlessly with other customer analytics tools like Segment and Heap.
Slack
Keep your sales reps in close communication with Slack – the premier professional chat platform. Your team can immediately share insights, leads, and feedback; and it integrates with other CRM tools making it a must-have asset in any sales tech stack.
Must-Try Strategies to Boost Buyer Enablement
Get a Champion
Your sales team works continually to enhance and refine your sales process. Who's doing the same for your buyer enablement?
The answer: your champion.
Forget He-Man. Your champion's role is to plan and enact a strategy to help remove all friction in the buyer's journey. They've got a question that needs answering? Your champion ensures the relevant content is written and ready. They want to see a product demo? Your champion has it filmed and formatted.
Create Helpful Content and Resources
The buyer's journey is best thought of as a series of increasingly specific questions. It starts with the buyer learning about a problem or opportunity and ends with them purchasing a solution. Along the way, they ask questions about the problem, the solutions, and the specific brands.
Your job is to create content and resources that not only answer their questions but answer them the way they prefer. That means creating eBooks, listicles, how-to guides, FAQs, podcasts, webinars, videos, and more, depending on your target audience's preferences. Every piece of content you create should work to move a customer one step closer to a sale – and explain why your product or service is the solution they're looking for.
But content also blends buyer and sales enablement.
Sales teams are often given flashy presentations and brochures that look nice but are irrelevant to a specific buyer. These buyers must then translate these materials into new resources to showcase to their internal team. The buyer is doing the sales team's job!
Buyer enablement means providing the buyer with the tools they need to make the purchase. That includes the resources they actually need to navigate their internal buying process.
Develop Buyer Personas
Who is your buyer? What's the buying process? If you can't answer these questions, how can you enable them to buy?
As you gain a greater understanding of their needs, pain points, and goals, you can better devise tools and resources to help speed up the buying process. For example, in B2B transactions, asking BANT questions (budget, authority, need, timeliness) can help you know what information the buyer needs to decide.
Better still, you can create persona-based content. Think about content designs to address specific pain points, measures for success, or buyer POVs.
The Verdict
No comprehensive sales strategy is complete with both buyer enablement and sales enablement. The answer lies in finding the right balance for your business. Your salespeople cannot be hamstrung by poor training and tools just as the market gets harder.
Remember, however, that a great buying experience not only influences the current transaction but leads to repeat purchases and customer loyalty.
Want to learn more about creating better buyer journeys? trumpet works to aid your sales team and improve the buyer experience through auto-personalised microsites and real-time customer tracking. Book a demo today to learn more.
