What is Sales Enablement within Manufacturing?

Did you know 50% of manufacturing sales teams’ time is wasted on unproductive prospecting? In today’s customer-centric landscape, it is essential that sales teams graduate from outdated tactics and ineffective sales methodologies. This is where sales enablement enters the scene. So, what is sales enablement?

Sales enablement is the set of practices, processes, and platforms that improve the performance of sales teams to increase revenue through new customer acquisition.

More and more B2B manufacturing organizations are partnering with a B2B sales enablement agency to assess their underperforming sales processes and recommend process optimizations and new technologies to improve sales operations and effectiveness. We further define what sales enablement is for manufacturing by highlighting its role and importance for your organization.

Sales Enablement Requires Sales & Marketing Alignment

Part of why sales enablement exists today is due to misaligned sales and marketing teams within manufacturing organizations. The traditional sales funnel where a lead is engaged through marketing and is handed over to a sales rep to close is ingrained in our minds. However, 65% of sales reps say they can’t find content to send to prospects. This is the most common complaint of sales teams.

This means either marketing is not sufficiently educating and ensuring lead qualification prior to the hand-off to sales or sales is not adequately leveraging existing marketing assets to continue educating and nurturing prospects into new customers. An aspect of sales enablement in manufacturing is recommending ways to bridge the gap between sales and marketing to seamlessly engage prospects through the buyer journey.

Sales Enablement Builds On B2B Demand Generation

While marketing is historically viewed as the owner of all B2B demand generation activities, it should be viewed as a shared responsibility between marketing and sales teams. Sales enablement in manufacturing builds on B2B demand generation by equipping sales with the assets they need to nurture leads into a closed deal.

44% of sales reps give up after one follow-up, yet 80% of sales require 5 follow-up touchpoints after the initial meeting. When sales teams have subpar lead follow-up times and an insufficient number of touches, much of marketing’s initial lead generation efforts are diminished. Sales enablement can help reduce follow-up response times to increase conversion to close rates and provide each persona involved in the buying decision with the information they need to make an educated purchase.

Sales Enablement Aligns with a Focused B2B Sales Strategy

Tying these pieces together is a B2B sales strategy aligned with the processes, platforms, and practices defined in a sales enablement engagement with an agency partner like Crafted. A critical part of a successful B2B sales enablement program is a clearly defined and focused B2B sales strategy.

The B2B sales strategy often includes how technology, such as a CRM, can be more effectively configured to streamline processes and provide valuable customer data insights. With 71% of sales reps saying they spend too much time on data entry, CRM enablement is critical to successful sales strategy adoption. Sales enablement works with manufacturing sales teams to access valuable customer insights through exercises that help you better understand your target audience, your customers’ buyer journey, and where each persona engages throughout the buyer’s journey.