How to choose the right Sales Enablement Platform for your business
Today, many businesses are turning to intelligent sales enablement platforms in order to improve sales performance, increase productivity and achieve overall business growth. Sales enablement platforms are essentially integrated systems that supply sales teams with everything they need to connect with customers and sell more effectively.
But with a wealth of platforms to choose from, offering a variety of features, you may be wondering, which sales enablement platform is the best for your business?
Key considerations when choosing a sales enablement platform
To give you a helping hand in determining the right solution for your enterprise, we’ve shared several key factors to consider when making the purchasing decision.
Quick implementation
A key consideration when selecting a sales enablement platform is how long it will take for successful implementation. The quicker you implement it, the more value it will provide for your business.
We recommend choosing an experienced, sales enablement platform vendor, who will work with you on a bespoke solution that integrates with your existing technology. They should also provide on-going support to ensure the platform continues to meet the needs of your business.
Ease of use
Your sales enablement platform must be easy to use in order for your workforce to adopt it successfully. It should have a central hub that provides easy access to the content required by your sales team to carry out their jobs effectively. Your sales enablement platform should also make it easy for your marketers to update content for your sellers to use. Having easily accessible documents can avoid content duplication, saving time and improving consistency across the board.
In addition to centralized file storage and content management, look for a solution offering advanced search functionality. This will give your sales team access to the information they need to address your buyers’ needs in real-time, improving efficiency and productivity, whilst also delivering a more valuable pitch.
Facilitating collaboration
Another factor you must consider is whether the sales enablement platform will facilitate and encourage collaboration between your sales and marketing teams. A good solution will allow for knowledge and information sharing across departments, reducing silos within your enterprise and up-skilling workers for greater productivity.
Features such as live chat, personalized announcements and news feeds can help increase awareness across your departments, improve communication between teams and encouraging collaborative working.
Tracking and reports
A robust sales enablement platform will offer a seamless experience for your customers too. Remember, successful selling relies on delivering an exceptional customer experience, so you need to make sure they can access the information they need. Your sales enablement platform should use real-time tracking to shape your customers’ online journey, ensuring they access relevant information, personalized to their requirements and don’t get told the same thing twice.
Comprehensive reporting is another key consideration. Sales largely focus on numbers and with a platform like Unily, you can benefit from an accurate measurement of performance. With powerful visualizations and comparison features, you can evaluate engagement, measure your return on investment and have all the information you need at your fingertips, to make key decisions for future development.
Customization
Something you may need to consider when choosing a sales enablement platform is whether it needs customizing for your business. Some may find an out-of-the-box solution works perfectly well, however, others may need a few tweaks to tick all of the boxes.
We’re not saying you need to scrap your budget and build a sales enablement solution from scratch but rather work with a vendor willing to create custom integrations to meet your needs.
Security
It should go without saying but it’s vital that the sales enablement platform you choose meets your security requirements. Choose a reputable and experienced vendor to give you peace of mind that they are using industry best practices and complying with laws and regulations, such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which plays an important role in customer relationship management.
Unily adopts high levels of data security and offers a variety of features such as data encryption, GDPR compliance, continuous back-ups and intrusion detection (to name a few) as standard. We’re always happy to discuss security in more depth and will ensure your solution is fully tailored to meet the needs of your business.
It's all about meeting the needs of your business
The key take-away here is that it is essential to identify your business needs in order to choose the right sales enablement platform. The considerations outlined in this article should give you a good idea of the features and benefits you need to look out for, as well as the type of vendor you want to work with. Don’t be afraid to quiz vendors about their products. After all, you need to make sure that your investment is wisely spent.
For more information about our fully customizable sales engagement platform, please contact us and a member of the Unily team will get in touch to discuss your needs further.
