The Secret to Building a Robust Sales Enablement Strategy in HubSpot

In 2020, HubSpot won the Top-Rated Award from TrustRadius, an achievement based solely on the reviews of users who leverage the tool for marketing automation, inbound marketing, and of course, sales enablement. It's true. HubSpot can streamline the lead nurturing process and make it easy to hand off sales qualified leads to the sales team. 

While HubSpot is an incredibly user-friendly B2B technology, many sales and marketing leaders who use it sense they're not using the technology to its full-potential or achieving a return on their investment. That's where developing a robust sales enablement strategy comes in.

What Is Sale Enablement?

Before we go any further, let's talk about what sales enablement is and why it's critical for achieving the best marketing ROI. Picture this: A qualified lead reaches the sales rep, and this rep has a complete catalog of resources they can use, refer to, and provide to the lead. 

Now, imagine a salesperson who is always winging it. They don't have many resources to draw from, so they often answer questions on the fly, occasionally giving a wrong answer.

Which sales rep will be more successful? Sure, the second rep may be a smooth talker, so they sound like they know what they're talking about. However, once a lead approaches the later stage of the buyer's journey, the rep can’t rely on charisma alone. They need to be able to identify and address the lead’s pain points as well as effectively communicate your company’s top differentiators. This is especially true for industries like B2B technology, which often have a long sales cycle. 

On the other hand, the sales rep with ample resources for every phase of the buyer's journey can work more efficiently to:

• Close more deals faster.
• Generate more consistent revenues.
• Better align with brand messaging to finish what marketing started.
• Create happier customers.

A customer working with the second rep feels you've answered all their questions and addressed any objections. They're confident in their smart decision and feel good about it. That's the kind of customer who writes those 5-star reviews that all businesses thrive on.

Sales enablement is the process of identifying the resources that sales needs in the form of content, information, and messaging — and then creating this content. 

Sales enablement is a collaboration between sales and marketing. Sales helps marketing understand where deals fall through, what customer objections or roadblocks are, and what customers need to convert at different buyer's journey stages. Marketing works to create these sales-specific resources. 

This collaboration not only enhances the communication and camaraderie between marketing and sales; it also directly increases the marketing ROI on the qualified leads who are sent to the sales department.

So, how do you build a robust sales enablement strategy in HubSpot?

How to Create a Sales Enablement Strategy

1. Leverage buyer personas.

You already know how essential buyer personas are in marketing. The more you can align sales and marketing through this concept, the better it will perform. Set-up CRM email templates for sales in HubSpot so that sales can continue to communicate with that persona in the same way marketing did, just at a later stage in the journey.

2. Coordinate content creation between sales and marketing.

Don't have marketing creating content that really doesn't address what sales needs. Set up a process to allow sales reps to meet with key marketing professionals. This shouldn’t be a one-time thing, either. With each meeting, you'll gain greater insight into how sales enablement content in HubSpot and platforms can support them.

3. Align the sales team around the Hubspot CRM.

Your HubSpot CRM helps you keep track of where sales qualified leads are in the pipeline, what activities marketing and sales have engaged in with that lead, and how sales is performing. Through marketing automation, you can automate many of these activities to improve follow-up and contact success with hard-to-reach prospects.

4. Build out the chatbots.

HubSpot has a great chatbot building tool, and you may be shocked to find out it's free. While full sales automation may not work for your company, automating what you can will make sales reps more efficient. Free them up from answering mundane questions repeatedly, and create a team that manages the exceptions, using their higher-level thinking and sales skills. This strategy not only improves productivity; it also can heighten job satisfaction.

5. Follow the lead of your high-performers.

Talk to your high-performing sales reps. Look at the areas where different reps perform well at various stages. Ask them about their processes and what's working for them. Then, look at how you can use that knowledge to improve sales and marketing automation. For example, if a successful rep follows up every so many days, by select methods, using a certain messaging for each subsequent contact, you can replicate this process in a CRM like HubSpot. Further, you can modify the sequence for different buyer personas to personalize the experience.

Sales Enablement Through HubSpot B2B Technology

By now, we know you're curious. What can a more robust sales enablement strategy in HubSpot do for your company? We'd invite you to see how sales enablement and marketing automation helped one of our clients get 20X their existing marketing ROI and increase lead conversion by 220%. Download the case study here.