Time to Consolidate the Sales Enablement Tech Stack and Do More With Less

With the uncertain economy, safety restrictions due to the pandemic, and tightening budgets, making quota is tougher—and more critical—than ever.

If you support a sales force—as a sales trainer, content or product marketer, or sales enablement pro—you must equip your sellers to produce at the highest levels.

But knowing which technology you need to train, coach, manage content, and deliver results isn’t obvious. Many organizations rely on multiple tools. But this fragmented approach can lead to poorly trained sellers—and ultimately hurt your bottom line.

Read this article to find out how to streamline your tech stack so you can deliver the knowledge, content, and insights your sellers need to drive revenue in the next normal.

Get the latest research findings on working, learning, training, and collaborating in the pandemic and see how to plan for new priorities in the year ahead. Read this article to learn:

• 5 essential capabilities of the new sales enablement tech stack
• How a consolidated approach can cut costs, reduce overhead, and increase adoption
• Which tools you must keep, retire, and add to improve sales enablement
• Benefits of integrated learning platforms that offer a holistic approach to sales enablement

Table of contents

Deliver Next-Level Sales Enablement
It’s Time to Evolve Your Sales Enablement Approach
Build Your Best Tech Stack
How to Do More With Less: Benefits of Tech Stack Consolidation
With a holistic approach, you can
5 Essential Capabilities of the New Sales Enablement Stack
2021 Sales Enablement: Tech Stack Checklist
Modern Sales Enablement With Allego’s All-In-One-Solution

Deliver Next-Level Sales Enablement

Sales enablement has arrived. If you support a sales force— as a sales trainer, content or product marketer, or sales enablement pro—this is your moment.

That’s because it’s more important than ever for companies to equip their sales teams to produce at the highest levels. With the uncertain economy, safety restrictions due to the pandemic, and tightening budgets, making quota is tougher—and more critical—than ever.

Sales enablement—when done well—is proven to drive results. High-performing sales organizations are twice as likely to provide on-going training as low-performing ones (SiriusDecisions). And the use of sales enablement solutions has grown by 567% over the last three years (Smart Selling Tools).

Given its powerful impact on the bottom line, next-level sales enablement is no longer optional. It’s a crucial element for survival, growth, and success in today’s ultra-competitive economy.

It’s Time to Evolve Your Sales Enablement Approach

2021 will be a very different year for sales organizations. Entire teams shifted to virtual selling overnight in 2020. With distributed teams, sales enablement managers must clear a high bar to engage and equip sellers. Budgets are being level-set or cut.

Organizations need to rethink headcount, processes, and tools. Being effective will require careful planning to rebalance resources.

Don’t operate in a silo. Today you need to take a holistic approach to meet long-term needs. Innovative sales learning and enablement technology can help you deliver the knowledge, content, collaboration, and insights to drive results in the next normal—and you don’t have to spend a fortune on multiple solutions to do it.

Will your sales enablement plans and processes set you up for future success?

Build Your Best Tech Stack

In recent years, the number of learning and enablement tools has skyrocketed. According to industry analyst Josh Bersin, there are more than 200 LMS vendors, more than 30 LXP vendors, and thousands of vendors who build collaboration tools, mobile learning tools, content development tools, and analytics tools.

In fact, the global average of learning tools and platforms in use today by any given company is 23—double the number that companies were using in 2011. Sales reps alone use an average of six tools.

The typical stack includes a Learning Management System (LMS) or Learning Experience Platform (LXP), Sales Content Management (SCM), and tools for call coaching, role play, reinforcement, video engagement, and more.

Building the right tech stack is not an easy job, but the benefits are huge. Selecting the most efficient and effective tools requires evaluating multiple options. Most sales enablement leaders are stretched too thin to manage this increasing burden. Corporate training and enablement teams don’t have the time or resources to continually check out solutions, never mind figure out how new tools will integrate with current ones.

While it’s great to have options, managing multiple systems comes with a price. In addition to subscription fees, there’s the time and effort to maintain each platform. Adoption, engagement, and efficiency also suffer when users have to familiarize themselves with a variety of systems and switch between platforms to accomplish different tasks. Consolidating your tech stack may be the answer.

Today you need to take a holistic approach to meet long-term needs.

How to Do More With Less: Benefits of Tech Stack Consolidation

You know from experience that the more complex the learning process is, the less likely sellers are to embrace it. A fragmented approach that relies on multiple tools for different training and enablement initiatives hurts adoption, leads to poorly trained sellers, and ultimately hurts your bottom line.

Tech stack consolidation makes sense from a financial perspective. And with fewer tools to learn and manage, your team will see greater adoption and more satisfied users. Ask yourself what tools can you keep, retire, or add and still have the same—or even more—capabilities?

Replacing siloed tools such as LMS, CMS, coaching/role-playing, reinforcement, and call coaching with an all-in-one solution is a practical decision for several reasons. You gain system-wide benefits that you’re not able to realize unless you have a comprehensive platform.

With a holistic approach you can

1. Gain a 360-degree view of behavior and content correlated with success, instead of making assumptions and drawing correlations based on the content reps are sharing or the exercises they performed.
2. Reduce workload with a seamless administration of a single solution versus management of multiple separate platforms.
3. Increase user adoption with a frictionless experience for reps who can access, create, and share content, get training, and collaborate with their teams without switching tools.
4. Cut costs by eliminating subscriptions to redundant tools.

5 Essential Capabilities of the New Sales Enablement Stack

There’s a new breed of integrated learning platforms that offer a holistic approach to sales enablement. These solutions accelerate the sales cycle, drive higher average contract values, and boost profitability in the sales organization. Read on to learn the essential capabilities of the modern sales enablement tech stack.

Onboarding and Training

Sales training includes onboarding new hires and supporting them with continuous learning and reinforcement on product information, messaging competitive positioning, and the skills needed to have valuable interactions throughout the virtual sales process. The most effective sales enablement programs bolster training with collaboration tools to make sales training continuous.

Content Activation

Sales enablement drives the creation, distribution, and management of customer-facing sales assets and internal sales training content. All content needs to be readily discoverable, easy to consume, trackable, and reusable across the sales organization. It’s not enough to simply make assets available, sellers must know how and when to use these resources to deliver maximum impact to their prospects. Teams who know what’s working—and what’s not—can improve sales content to be even more effective.

Collaboration

Sale enablement facilitates communication within the team and across other functions. In particular, alignment and continuous collaboration with the marketing team are essential. Without it, reps miss out on the insights marketing is gathering from its top-of-funnel campaigns, and marketing misses the chance to shape its campaigns based on first-hand sales conversations. Technology that helps your team empower reps with information from all departments is crucial.

Coaching

Sales enablement extends not only to sales reps but also to sales managers. Equipping front-line managers to inspire, motivate, and support reps with good coaching and communication skills improves seller productivity and leads to better results. You need a tech solution that supports formal and ad hoc coaching for reps and managers to hone skills and prepare for selling situations. Recorded call coaching capabilities with actionable, AI-powered insight enables managers to provide the most effective point-in-time feedback.

Analytics

The final component of a modern sales enablement tech stack is measurement. Meaningful metrics include average sales cycle length; the number of reps achieving quota; and average deal size. Measurement and reporting extend to the overall success of the sales enablement program. Teams who know what content and actions are advancing deals can continuously iterate and optimize the process.

2021 Sales Enablement: Tech Stack Checklist

Make sure you can equip your sales force to drive results in 2021 and beyond. Use this checklist to see which capabilities your organization needs to succeed in today’s dynamic business environment.

Onboarding & Training

• Equip new hires with continuous learning and reinforcement on product information, messaging, and competitive positioning.
• Develop the skills to have valuable interactions throughout the virtual sales process.

Content Activation

• Create, distribute, and manage customer-facing sales assets and internal sales training content.
• Ensure all content is readily discoverable, easy to consume, trackable, and reusable across the sales organization.
• Activate sales collateral with messaging, talk tracks, and win stories.
• Guarantee sellers know how and when to use resources to deliver maximum impact.
• Learn which sales content is moving the needle and which isn’t working in the field.

Coaching

• Equip front-line managers to inspire, motivate, and support reps with good coaching and communication skills.
• Support formal and ad hoc coaching for reps and managers to hone skills and prepare for selling situations.
• Enable point-in-time feedback with recorded call coaching capabilities and actionable, AI-powered insight.

Analytics

• Consolidate learning, coaching, collateral usage, and call performance analytics.
• Learn which sales conversation topics are correlated with success.
• Determine which sales content is most and least effective.
• Understand buyer engagement to tie actions with outcomes.

Collaboration

• Make it easy for your team to share information and best practices with each other.
• Facilitate communication within the sales team and across other functions.
• Align with the marketing team to share insights from top-of-funnel campaigns.
• Create a feedback loop from sales conversations to inform marketing campaigns.
• Give sellers a way to tap into the expertise of subject matter experts.

Modern Sales Enablement With Allego’s All-In-One-Solution

The advent of mobile video-sharing technology has finally delivered a comprehensive enablement solution that works for sales teams. This new breed of technology brings critical face-to-face coaching, collaboration, and just-in-time learning into salespeople’s pockets via their mobile devices.

Thriving in a buyer’s world means investing in the right tools and content. You could cobble together multiple platforms with a range of capabilities, but the most efficient approach is having learning, content, and collaboration all in one place. When you implement a robust sales enablement platform, you save time and resources.

Allego is built for dynamic learning, content, and collaboration anytime, anywhere. You can empower your organization with mobile, interactive technology built for the way today’s virtual teams work—all through a single platform.

Source: Allego