As a business owner, you’re always looking for ways to boost sales and grow your company. You may have tried various methods, but one key to success that you may not have considered is buyer enablement. Here is everything you need to know about buyer enablement, including how to use this strategy to increase your sales.
Buyer Enablement Strategy Explained
Buyer enablement is the process that provides customers with the information and resources they need to make an informed purchase decision.
This can include educational materials such as blog posts, infographics, e-books, written whitepapers, demos, free trials, and price quotes.
By making it easier for buyers to understand your product or service and its value, you can increase their chances of doing business with you.
In order to provide buyers with the best possible experience, you must understand their preferences before, during, and after they purchase. This requires adapting your tactics and strategies to be more focused on the buyer.
Buyers don’t want to feel pressured into buying from you. They likely have done their own research, and have already talked to peers about both you and your competitors.
Buyers today don’t want a sales pitch. They want more.
Buyer Enablement is a concept that refers to the process of helping buyers through the buying process. It is the act of empowering the prospective buyers of your product or service.
Adopting a buyer enablement mindset means turning your sales reps into subject matter experts (SMEs) who can provide buyers with the knowledge and advice to address their pain points. This approach will help your team close more deals and build deeper relationships with customers.
Sales reps who are informed about their products and services can provide a smoother experience for buyers. They can assess the buyer’s problems, analyze potential solutions, and more. This allows buyers to get the information they need to make a decision.
Rather than just selling to your prospects, help them navigate all the information that’s out there. This will engage them while establishing trust.
Instead of focusing on what your salespeople want, you need to understand what your buyers are looking for. Put yourself in their shoes and figure out what they want from the buying process.
Then, give your sales reps the tools and knowledge to do this.
Sales representatives who take a buyer-centric approach empower their customers to make informed decisions about their purchases. This is done by providing the customer with all of the necessary information about the product or service, rather than just trying to sell them it. By taking this approach, sales reps can build trust and credibility with their buyers, which will ultimately lead to more sales.
The biggest change needs to be made by salespeople. Buyers don’t care about marketing qualified leads, opportunities, or pipelines.
They want a simple, easy, and seamless experience when they purchase your product or service.
Who is in Charge of Buyer Enablement?
More than half of the sales process now happens before a prospect even talks to a sales rep. And over 23 of customers don’t want to speak with a rep at all.
This means that your salespeople have less of a say in the sales process and your marketing team has more.
After closing a deal with a client, sellers should leverage existing clients to grow their business.
In this market, loyalty is not a given.
Your customer success or account reps play a vital role in keeping your customers happy and informed about new offerings. By doing so, you can retain and grow those accounts.
When trying to empower your sales team, you need to enable your buyer.
If you want to enable buyers to make confident purchase decisions, you need to enable all of your revenue teams. This means providing them with the resources, tools and content they need to do their jobs successfully. By doing so, you’ll ensure that everyone is on the same page and working together towards a common goal.
According to research from research firm, Gartner, “buyer enablement” is “the provision of information to support buyers in completing their purchase.”.
Most organizations are deploying technology to salespeople to indirectly help customers.
The thinking behind this is that if we empower our salespeople with the resources they need to help their buyer make a purchasing decision, they will win more business.
That’s true, but buyers aren’t the only ones who influence purchasing decisions.
If you’re only enabling sales, you’re missing out on a great opportunity to help your buyers succeed.
How to Adopt a Buyer Enablement Strategy for Sales
While the concept of “buyer enablement” may be new to you, there are some simple steps that you can take to start implementing the strategy into your business.
1. Understand Your Buyers
This is one of the easiest things you can do, and even though it’s only simple, it can make a big difference.
If you want to create truly effective buyer personas, you need to go beyond simply understanding their pain points. You need to have a deep understanding of their entire buying process. Only then will you be able to create personas that truly reflect your target buyers.
What does your ideal customer look like? How do you want sellers to interact with them? Keep these questions in mind as you create your personas.
2. Streamline the customer experience
Purchasing decisions are complicated, and buyers have to juggle a lot of tasks before making a decision. They have to figure out their needs, research different vendors, get approval from all relevant parties, and so on.
It can be stressful, confusing, and time-intensive.
How can sales reps help here?
First, they can streamline their interactions as much as possible. For instance, they can leave a calendaring link to their meetings in their emails as they work to schedule a time.
By not wasting time on unnecessary back and forth, you can focus on your real priorities.
A sales rep can make a difference by providing easy to find contact information. By making it simple for buyers to reach out, they are more likely to do business with you. Email addresses, phone numbers, and social media profiles should be easily accessible so that potential customers can get in touch without any difficulty.
If a prospect can’t easily engage with you, they’ll go to someone else. Make sure you’re easy to contact and listen to your prospects’ concerns so you don’t lose them.
Finally, listen to their questions, concerns, and whatever else they have to tell you.
If you’re able to help with anything they need, do so. Too many sellers only try to pitch their product and don’t offer any assistance, so if you can, you’ll be remembered to make the buyer’s journey easier by helping them out. Therefore make every interaction count by including valuable content.
As has been mentioned in previous sections, you shouldn’t just sell to your prospects. Instead, you should add value to every interaction with them, which will lead to better results.
Sales Enablement, Marketing, and Product can all work together to improve the effectiveness of outbound prospecting.
When creating content, always keep your audience in mind. Ensure external content is just as valuable and well thought out as the internal material you receive. By doing this, you can ensure a positive experience for everyone involved.
If you want to add value to every interaction with a buyer, make sure the content you’re providing is geared towards buyer enablement. This type of content can simplify the buyer’s journey and enhance their experience, even if a sale doesn’t result from the interaction.
Content such as whitepapers, informative videos, templates, and other things along that line are useful and worthwhile to a buyer. They enhance the buyer’s experience by providing them with valuable information that can help them make informed decisions.
Conclusion
Buyer enablement is a key to sales success because it helps buyers purchase products or services more easily. When you simplify the buying process with excellent customer service, you’re more likely to earn repeat business and word-of-mouth referrals. If you’re looking for ways to boost your company’s bottom line, consider implementing buyer enablement strategies.
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