Get the Right Sales Enablement Technology for Success

3 minute read

Upland Admin

sales enablement infrastructure and technology

Did you know that increasing sales effectiveness was the second highest objective voiced by top sales professionals in 2014, yet only 27% of companies had a dedicated sales enablement/effectiveness staff?

When alignment fails, sales enablement fails. But, with the right motivation and processes, sales enablement can be a big asset to your company.

Only 27% of companies have a dedicated sales enablement/effectiveness staff.

One of the first steps to improving your sales and marketing alignment is getting both teams to adopt the same technologies.

Smart investments in marketing and sales technologies—and the adoption of those technologies—empower cross-departmental visibility and communication.

This is important because both marketers and salespeople benefit from insight and visibility into what each function is doing. Marketing teams need to know about key prospects in a company’s CRM system in order to produce content that is specific to them. Similarly, sales teams need access to digital asset libraries to pull relevant content during sales conversations.

Which Technologies Do You Need?

There are at least 947 marketing technologies out there. But top-performing companies know there are only a few systems you really need to be cost effective and impactful at the same time.

  1. Content marketing software (like Kapost)
  2. Marketing automation (like Pardot, Marketo, or Eloqua)
  3. CRM (like Salesforce, or LeadMaster)

Content marketing software is where modern marketing starts. It provides marketers with applications for content planning, ideation, production, distribution, collaboration, and analytics. With these platforms you can pump out digital materials that make up the bulk of your marketing efforts.

Content marketing software is the factory where content assets are made, stored, analyzed, and optimized.

Marketing automation software is the conduit through which content is distributed. Email is by far the most popular way to get and share information. In fact, 69% of people in a 2014 study said that they prefer to receive content via email, and 77% said they prefer to share content via email.

Marketing automation is the tool that ensures your message reaches the right people at the right time.

CRM systems house a bulk of the data, closed-won cycles, and touchpoints a prospect experiences on their buyer’s journey. This information can be used to assess the results of your content marketing, and provide the most relevant information about which marketing-created assets influenced with successful buyers during their sales cycle.

CRM systems are powerful tools for tracking the effectiveness of marketing and sales efforts.

With these core technologies in place, you marketing and sales teams can not only produce quality messages for the core prospect list, but can see which of those developed pieces authentically connect with buyers.

Aberdeen Group found that top-performing companies for sales enablement have a significantly higher adoption rate of these three technologies than average companies.

With the right technologies in place—marketing automation, content marketing software, and CRM system—your marketing and sales departments have a much better chance of being aligned. Give your business the opportunity to have sales enablement success.

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