Sales Enablement Developments for 2015

It’s no news that dig­i­tal tools are per­me­at­ing every sin­gle busi­ness prac­tice, and sales enable­ment is no excep­tion. We report­ed it back in Sep­tem­ber 2014, when our research proved that mobile is also rein­vent­ing how sales reps man­age cus­tomer rela­tion­ships. Ear­li­er this year, we dou­bled down on our efforts to sup­port sales enable­ment by announc­ing our DPS for Sales Enable­ment solu­tion.

In a world where 89% of sales and mar­ket­ing man­agers believe they need to shift their approach to sales enable­ment, things are chang­ing. That is why we want to help Euro­pean mar­keters accel­er­ate their sales cycles and bring their sales enable­ment tools to life, through a pow­er­ful mix of CRM, visu­al sto­ry­telling and mobile. But how, exact­ly, are things chang­ing? Here are three main devel­op­ments we think deserve your attention.

  1. Cus­tomers make more informed choic­es than ever

The best sales reps know that nowa­days cus­tomers are more informed, and the bar for dif­fer­en­ti­at­ing the sales expe­ri­ence and add val­ue is much higher.

We’re turn­ing that issue into an oppor­tu­ni­ty. With Adobe DPS, we com­plete­ly change the sales expe­ri­ence in two ways: the way infor­ma­tion is organ­ised, and the way it’s pre­sent­ed. With DPS, you can now empow­er sales reps with the most rel­e­vant mate­ri­als ahead, dur­ing and after any pitch meet­ing. This means they can now quick­ly access the mate­ri­als they need for a pre­sen­ta­tion, seam­less­ly organ­ise any notes and fol­low up actions, and leave cus­tom-made dig­i­tal ‘leave behind’ materials.

Adobe DPS also changes the way sales reps present their mate­ri­als: from slide shows, audio and video to HTML5 ani­ma­tions and panora­mas, the for­mats to tell a more com­pelling sto­ry are now more robust than ever.

This not only facil­i­tates a sales rep’s job when telling the sto­ry behind the sale, but it also increas­es over­all cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion with the lev­el of service.

  1. Cor­po­rate infor­ma­tion exchanges are faster than ever

Even in a cor­po­rate envi­ron­ment, things are mov­ing increas­ing­ly fast, and keep­ing your sales tools up to date is paramount.

The prob­lem is, paper mate­ri­als are cost­ly to pro­duce, and not that flex­i­ble to update with­out incur­ring more costs (or invest­ing often pre­cious time). As DPS inte­grates with Adobe Expe­ri­ence Man­ag­er and oth­er Con­tent Man­age­ment Sys­tems, mar­keters can eas­i­ly pub­lish con­tent quick­ly into the appli­ca­tion. There lie the advan­tages of a dig­i­tal solu­tion: infor­ma­tion is shared faster than ever, and sales reps are kept in the loop about crit­i­cal con­tent updates through high­ly tar­get­ed push noti­fi­ca­tions, mean­ing they have the most rel­e­vant mate­ri­als with them at all times.

Good­bye, out­dat­ed prod­uct whitepa­pers and cat­a­logues. Hel­lo, increased pace of prod­uct and ser­vice innovation!

  1. We need to assess the busi­ness impact of sales enablement

Jus­ti­fy­ing an invest­ment can often be hard when there’s no con­crete data to back our choic­es, but we know sales enable­ment requires sig­nif­i­cant resources to pro­duce the very best materials.

The prob­lem is: how do we know that a high-qual­i­ty video is more effec­tive than an intu­itive and detailed brochure? Sad­ly we can’t… that is, unless we use DPS’s built-in ana­lyt­ics to under­stand which mate­ri­als best res­onate with a cer­tain cus­tomer. This, allied with a pow­er­ful inte­gra­tion with Salesforce.com, allows sales reps to com­pare con­tent view­er­ship to sales and rev­enue impact, result­ing in a much more effec­tive process.

In a data-dri­ven age, it takes more than instinct to make an informed deci­sion; with DPS, you can make data your ally when explain­ing to your com­pa­ny which for­mats work, sav­ing every­one a lot of time (and mon­ey) in the process.

Of course, don’t just take our word for it. We’re already see­ing some very inter­est­ing uses of DPS for sales enable­ment with key customers.

Take Rémy Cointreau’s exam­ple, who are trans­form­ing their sales efforts by get­ting rid of bulky lap­tops and leave-behind print­outs; instead, they now focus on pre­sent­ing their cus­tomers with stun­ning videos and inter­ac­tive fea­tures as the dis­cus­sion evolves. One coher­ent, flu­id sto­ry, rather than a hard sales pitch. Or per­haps you’re more inter­est­ed in learn­ing how Sotheby’s Inter­na­tion­al Real­ty is deliv­er­ing proved ROI with their sales enable­ment app, now used by over 15,000 of their asso­ciates to present, sell and win listings.

Sales enable­ment, as many oth­er aspects of mar­ket­ing, is chang­ing. It’s our ambi­tion to help all mar­keters embrace and lever­age that change, by pro­vid­ing them with the right tools for the job, as well as the right insights. For those who are pas­sion­ate about where dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing is head­ed, we’d def­i­nite­ly rec­om­mend some indis­pens­able reads in our Dig­i­tal Mar­ket­ing Blog such as our Dig­i­tal Trends 2015 report.

If you want more ongo­ing insight on sales enable­ment, or the impor­tance of mobile and dig­i­tal pub­lish­ing for mar­ket­ing and sales, fol­low us on Twit­ter and LinkedIn.

If you’re inter­est­ed in learn­ing more about DPS for sales enable­ment, get in touch.