Get More B2B Leads with Sales Enablement Tools

As B2B sales get more complex, the sales toolset gets more sophisticated to balance customers getting more educated on the products they want to buy and SDRs honing their hard and soft skills to win deals.

Having a Customer Relation Management (CRM), email and marketing automation, Business Intelligence, and a handful of B2B lead generation tools as a staple in their sales tech stack, many revenue teams realize that sales enablement software should also be thrown in the mix for better performance and higher lead conversion rate.

Even when content is solid and teams are strong, what is one of the most common problems in today’s B2B sales? Lack of alignment between marketing and sales. Sales don’t start with an account executive smashing a lead’s objections. And a deal cannot be closed in one touchpoint. 

To be effective, the long, multistage process of B2B lead generation and appointment setting requires not only content, processes, and workflows in place but also guidance and technology. It’s not enough to set up a steady stream of business leads. Every sales opportunity must be optimized with easy-to-access information on the product.   

What is sales enablement software?

As can be inferred from the name, sales enablement tools assist sales teams in their selling activities. Technically, sales enablement allows marketing and sales to systematize their knowledge and resources on the product and services in such a way that each team can easily access it and share with B2B leads and customers. Thus, good sales enablement should be customer-centric.

Marketing people who are good at writing and shaping the narrative prepare useful content – articles, videos, case studies, statistics, playbooks, etc. – whereas sales use it to sell the product to leads better and get back to marketing about what else they need in terms of new materials to respond to leads’ questions and requests more effectively. Sales enablement tools facilitate communication between teams and optimize information sharing. 

Here are six key things that potential customers and leads are looking for in SDRs when they move through the sales cycle and sales enablement helps improve:

• Competence – SDRs know the product or service and are helping leads and customers, bringing value into a conversation and answering their questions;
• Responsiveness – SDRs can quickly access content libraries and answer leads’ questions and requests quickly as competition is high and responses are to be immediate;
• Credibility – SDRs share credible content and rarely come across a lead that knows about the product more than they do;
• Personalization – SDRs show leads that the solutions they are offering are tailored to leads’ challenges;
• Consistency – SDRs are telling the same story as marketing because all teams within their company are aligned;
• Omnichannel – SDRs engage with leads wherever they can be found – digital touchpoints, face-to-face touchpoints, offline.

How can sales enablement help?

Now, let’s examine sales enablement through the lens of sales teams. Sales people are well aware of their fast-paced and hard-demand environments. Most SDRs labor under the assumption: If you’re not selling, you’re wasting your time. Sales enablement ties up all the loose ends for sales reps, in particular:

Technological sales orchestration, providing technology resources

Content management and development, facilitating searching content and supplementing it with new data

Human resources management, onboarding and coaching new employees, conducting performance analysis and evaluation

Customer satisfaction, improving the sales funnel, and tweaking the buyer’s journey according to new data

Internal sales team collaboration, aligning and enabling communication across teams

In a nutshell, sales enablement removes obstacles from the path of sales reps. Teams develop long-term strategies and streamline their messages and conversations with business leads. Each new representative gets a structured, systematized playbook, onboarding, and access to best practices and content libraries with on-demand materials.       

Sales enablement tech stack

To be successful and effective, a sales enablement strategy cannot make do without well-tailored sales enablement tools. From free, jack-of-all-trades software for startups to expensive enterprise solutions, there are many options to fire up your sales teams and increase revenues.

HubSpot’s CRM is a winning option for your sales enablement efforts because it offers 24/7 customer support. Whatever you choose to do – customize an onboarding plan, switch your CRM systems, migrate customer data, personalize your conversations, or align your marketing and sales – the HubSpot team is always there to help you free of charge.

Accent Accelerate’s biggest strength is AI-assistance in all functions. Marketing insights, content management, sales management, sales analytics, guided selling, and customer satisfaction get to the next level through the power of automation, optimization, and standardization. Sales reps receive not only BI tools and built-in dashboards to visually follow buyer’s journeys but also marketing and sales insights on B2B leads, scoring, and the right deals.

HighSpot provides terrific visibility to how buyers engage throughout their journey with instant feedback about open rates and CTRs and time spent in the email body. AI-empowered, HighSpot helps with online presentations, landing pages, and other lead generators providing personalization insights and easy-to-access content libraries (many users compare its search functionality to Amazon). Easy integration with most digital platforms and tools.  

Seismic’ most strong points include AI-empowered analytics and content management. Seismic enables guided selling and insightful reporting for enterprises, giving sales reps control over who sees what and when. Available both as a web-based tool and an app, Seismic has wide functionality, multi-layered architecture, and multiple integrations.

Zendesk’s functionality is a great fit both for small businesses as much as large enterprises. Combining CRM’s data storage, email automation, BI reporting and predictions, lead scoring, and smartphone dialer, Zendesk is a one-in-all solution for SDRs who want to improve their performance and grow revenues.

Klyck was specifically built with B2B sales in mind for such industries as biotech, industrial automation, and measurement and control. With direct Microsoft integration, Klyck enables sales through intelligent content sharing, custom presentation creation, smart insights into sales opportunities, content ROI, personalized messaging, and onboarding practices.  

SetSail uses artificial intelligence and natural language processing (NLP) techniques to suggest SDRs leads for nurturing and tidbits for inclusion in conversations. Using past deal data and conversation topics, the system predicts issues, weaknesses, and obstacles, simultaneously entering new data without sales reps’ assistance.

Veelo does all sales enablement activities – training and coaching, lead engagement and nurturing, sales optimization and analytics, and sales asset management – at the level of mid-size market and enterprise companies. Using machine learning and neuroscience knowledge, Veelo easily enhances productivity and learning in sales teams and makes onboarding quicker and more efficient.

Finding leads through lead generators

Having a constant supply of high-quality leads is a common challenge for businesses of any size. So far, there are two options: in-house teams and outsourcing.

Using an AI-based lead generator

Sooner or later your in-house sales operations can run out of B2B leads in their pipelines. Then they can use an AI-empowered solution to find leads with the characteristics of their past deals based on their current database.

Hiring lead generation companies

Another option is to outsource lead research and lead qualification to a third party. Lead generation companies have large lead databases and either sell high-quality lead lists or curate lead hunts according to your ICPs. Keep in mind, lead generation agencies have the best lead generation software and email spam checkers and are skilled in solving the most common issues of generating business leads like email deliverability, spam filters, sending reputation, etc.

Whatever option businesses choose, sales enablement provides lead scoring systems and helps SDRs make informed decisions.  

Need help in sales enablement and lead generation?

Sales enablement often acts as a bridge between functions at companies – account management, services team, marketing team, and sales team. Keep in mind that the sales enablement solution you finally choose should be tailored to your business and customers’ needs. First, spend some time coming up with your sales enablement chart by design and not by accident. Second, don’t aim to be broad and cover all imaginable functions. Only use what you need.

If you want all your teams synchronized, revise your sales tech stack and make sure they are all in alignment. Although all our clients know Belkins as a lead generator, we can assist with optimizing your toolset as well. It would be a crime against your revenue not to make the best use of sales tools existing today.