Time is our most valuable commodity – this is especially true if you’re a salesperson. Yet, many sales professionals find themselves drowning in administrative chores, duplicating efforts, and searching for the content they need. This inefficiency not only hampers productivity but can also lead to surprising financial losses for businesses. Keep reading as we explore the business impact of sales enablement, backed by statistics and insights from industry experts.
The Cost of Poor Sales Enablement
According to IDC, ineffective sales enablement efforts can cost a $1 billion firm approximately $14 million in sales and marketing expenses, as well as a staggering $100 million in lost opportunity. These costs are a result of time wasted on non-revenue-generating activities and the inability to find relevant content promptly. True sales enablement is the ability to provide content in context and ensure that sales reps can access the materials they need when they need them.
And contrary to what many think, the obstacle to this isn’t the lack of content. In fact, Spotio estimates that enterprises lose over $2.3 million each year because of opportunity costs associated with underused or unused marketing content. Research from Forrester/SiriusDecisions digs deeper, having found that as much as 70% of the content created by marketing organizations goes unused, wasting approximately 26% of the annual marketing budget on content creation.
Unlocking Sales Efficiency
Sales organizations often face challenges in meeting their annual quotas, with only 60% of sales reps achieving their targets. Harvard Business Review reports that U.S. businesses spend $800 billion annually on sales force compensation and an additional $15 billion on sales training. However, improving sales efficiency is not just about minimizing costs but rather maximizing revenue contribution potential.
Gartner reveals that today’s sellers spend 16.4% of the sales cycle managing internal complexities, and a third of their week is devoted to finding or creating sales content. This time-consuming process arises from the content being scattered across multiple repositories, leading to reps creating content that already exists and reduced customer engagement time. Content curation and governance play a crucial role in sales enablement programs that deliver results.
Striving for Sales Effectiveness
While sales efficiency is essential, the focus should also be on sales effectiveness. IDC reports that B2B sellers spend 26% of their week on administrative tasks, hindering their ability to prioritize important sales activities. Achieving sales effectiveness requires access to relevant content tailored to specific customers, their challenges, and the buying team’s personas. Simultaneously, it requires the burden of administrative and non-revenue-generating tasks to be alleviated, through AI and automation, for example.
To be successful, sales representatives must also possess deep knowledge of the company’s offerings and their relevance to customer use cases. Unsiloing and promoting information sharing about new product launches or service offerings can help sales reps seize opportunities to upsell and cross-sell. Simply improving efficiency without addressing effectiveness may result in faster execution of the wrong tasks.
Understanding True Content Costs
Many B2B marketing organizations struggle to identify their true content spend accurately. The costs of internally developed content are often overlooked, leading to a lack of understanding regarding the actual investment in creating valuable sales resources.
SiriusDecisions’ Cost of Content Survey shows that enterprise-size organizations spend roughly twice what they think they do on content while emerging growth organizations spend more than ten times the estimated cost. Outsourcing sales content creation to sales enablement providers can be a cost-effective solution that allows businesses to better predict costs while leveraging their expertise and technology. It also has the advantage of being fully customizable, which can increase team engagement.
Sales enablement isn’t a luxury, it’s a smart investment
Investing in sales enablement can lead to remarkable business outcomes. When sales teams no longer waste time searching for content or creating and modifying it themselves, they can maximize their customer engagement time. The right sales enablement tools can deliver a significant revenue lift of up to 20% within just 12 months, as highlighted by Forrester.
Companies with excellent sales enablement programs experience a host of benefits, including 32% higher team sales quota attainment, 24% better individual quota achievement, and 23% higher lead conversion rates, according to Aberdeen Group.
Why choose TEG’s Sales Enablement program?
When it comes to sales enablement, TEG’s methodology stands out. By curating, simplifying, engaging, and measuring the seller-to-customer interaction journey, TEG empowers sales, marketing, and customer-facing teams to optimize customer engagement across all channels.
To truly unleash the potential of your sales team and drive significant business growth, investing in a comprehensive sales enablement solution is no longer a luxury but a necessity. Don’t let your organization fall behind; embrace the power of sales enablement and set your sales team on a path to success.