Why Budget for a Sales Enablement Tool in 2021?

It’s that time of year when companies start to plan their budget for the next year. To help make 2021 more successful, there’s one thing that every company should make room for: a sales enablement tool. Simply put, investing in one, will help your company to sell more. So let’s go through the top 3 reasons why you should include one in your 2021 budget.

1. Get a single source for all content & increase close-rates

Studies show that companies who keep their sales content in a centralised repository increase their close-rates by 18% compared to companies that have content in multiple locations. In other words; making sales material easy to find, makes it easy to use and helps sales teams sell better. Yet, on average, B2B companies keep their sales content in 17 different locations. In fact, 65% of sales reps can’t find the right content to present and 40% of sales content is never used, either because it’s unsuitable or not easily available.

With (right) versus without (left) a central sales content repository.

It’s clear that many sales teams would be more effective if they had a single place to get all the sales content they needed. This is what a sales enablement tool like Showell offers: quick and easy centralised content management that minimises administrative work and maximises sales time.

Sales reps spend up to 26 hours per week on administrative work.

2. Get well-informed sales reps & sell more

B2B sales are often complex and can involve multiple decision makers, each with their own demands. To make the sale, your reps need to fully know the product and be able to answer the buyer’s questions – especially if they come spontaneously. To make things harder, sales reps usually don’t get the opportunity to meet everyone involved in the deal and, in addition, there is often a buyer-seller gap where the buyer knows more than the rep. With a sales enablement tool, you can ensure that your sales reps have the right information at their fingertips. But there’s more to it than just information. It has to be convincing, well-visualised and easy to share. Clear visuals are important because people remember 80% of the information they see, compared to 20% of what they read and 10% of what they hear. A good sales enablement tool will also make presentations easy to understand, which is essential when they’re shared later with other decision makers.

Relevant content makes a purchase 2.8X more likely.

An easy tool to onboard new sales reps and to support continuous learning

Using a sales enablement tool is a great way to train sales reps. Reps not only get to learn about your products but also how to use your sales tools at the same time. This makes sure they have the right information and the right skills to sell in the field, and it does it quickly and efficiently. In fact, Showell has been shown to make on-boarding new reps 6 times faster!

3. Get effective virtual meetings and look like a professional

Virtual meetings have become the new normal in B2B sales. Even though most people are now used to software like Teams, Zoom and Google Hangouts, a good presentation can still be tricky to do, especially if it involves presenting more than one document. This is just one of the many challenges in virtual meetings. Not to mention the human element. This is often difficult to get across because body language is harder to see – making professional looking, well-visualised presentations all the more important. The success of your meeting might just depend on how well you succeed in making this element effective.

Free Guide: Master your virtual sales meetings

Get ready to sell

A sales enablement tool will overcome these difficulties by ensuring that your sales material is always easy to find and ready to present. Having content managed centrally, means that you can be sure to always look professional and on-brand. Switching between presentation documents becomes quick and easy and the presenter has more confidence – all in all, a better impression for the buyer. Better still, with a good sales enablement tool, these improvements are easy to scale up throughout your organization. Now your whole sales team performs better. Win!