The user experience can make or break a sale. If your salesperson contacts someone too early in the buying process, it can negatively affect their perception of your company and sales methods. Once someone is handed off from marketing to sales, if the messaging and materials don’t match up with what they’ve been hearing and seeing so far, they may become confused and distrustful of your offering.

No one likes to feel like they’ve been the victim of even an unintentional bait-and-switch, so it is critically important that marketing and sales are in lockstep. Some companies are tasking marketing teams with sales enablement. While there are a lot of possible facets to it, at minimum it means marketing should regularly talk to sales, assess their needs, and create effective, flexible sales tools for them.

Match tools to your sales team’s process

Create compelling, effective, on-brand tools that align with the sales process, so your sales team can close deals as quickly and efficiently as possible. True sales enablement happens when each part of the sales process is fully covered. Don’t let sales get distracted from selling, while they create their own potentially off-brand and less polished materials to fill a perceived void.

Train your team and listen

Introduce new tools to your sales team through training (and use their feedback from the field and win-loss analysis to make improvements over time). Even the best tools will perform poorly if your team doesn’t receive training and guidance to use them effectively.

Help channel partners succeed

Make it as easy as possible for your channel partners to promote your co-branded offering with channel programs, tools, and go-to-market materials that meet their special needs.

Want your sales team and channels to be more successful?