Survey: Easy Access to Content Key to Successful Sales Enablement Efforts

The recent “Sales Enablement Practitioner Survey 2016” from Highspot and Heinz Marketing found 70 percent of respondents agree that sales reps must have easy access to content in order to improve the quality of customer conversations.

Other top actions sales enablement teams are taking to improve sales effectiveness include increasing efficiency (75 percent), sharing best practices (63 percent), and improving training (63 percent).

However, respondents agree that working in CRM, researching target accounts, attending internal meetings, and searching for content are all time-consuming activities that take away from their selling time.

Surveyors note that, “Though content is the foundation of successful sales conversations, creating and searching for content remains far too time-intensive. These are additional categories in which sales enablement can dramatically improve content quality, reduce non-selling time, and increase conversions.

These findings are significant because sales enablement efforts are driving results in B2B sales performance. Half of survey participants with sales enablement in place experienced more than a 10 percent improvement in sales conversion rates.

As a result of this, nearly 80 percent of organizations are investing in sales enablement, up from 35 percent just a couple of years ago. Researchers note, “This is one of the fastest growing trends in the sales and marketing space.”

In organizations with more than 10 sales reps, 66 percent said their sales enablement budgets had increased by at least 6 percent since 2015. An additional 36 percent increased budgets by at least 11 percent.

B2B Marketers and Sales Reps Struggle to Share Content

The “State of Sales Enablement 2015” discovered that 55 percent of B2B sales reps and marketers have three or more channels for sharing sales content, further complicating the delivery process for both sides.

In addition, more than 70 percent of respondents claimed that they relied on email to get marketing content into the hands of the sales team. Less than 50 percent used a CRM, while 40 percent utilized a cloud-sharing system. Only 12 percent of respondents stated that they had a sales enablement technology in place in 2015.