Healthcare IT marketers: How focused are you on sales enablement? A lot, some, or not at all?
To be sure, it is an essential component of an organization’s commercialization strategy. Sales enablement involves providing sales teams with the tools and resources they need to close deals and generate revenue.
Often misunderstood as just creating sales literature, sales enablement should be a strategic endeavor that demands forethought, adaptability, and a profound understanding of the entire sales ecosystem. This includes buyer and user personas, procurement cycles, and the competitive landscape. In this blog, we’ll delve into the strategic aspects of sales enablement. We also explore its multifaceted dimensions.
Tailoring the Message
Sales enablement is about identifying and addressing the needs of your sales teams. How do you determine what’s needed and why? This isn’t about putting benefits and features on paper. It’s about:
- understanding the complexity of the problem your product solves
- educating sales about the various buyer personas and their needs
- teaching your sales force how to position the solution
This necessitates strategic prioritization. Meaning, figuring out what information matters most and tailoring it for different audiences.
The mistake of assuming marketing alone creates sales literature is a common pitfall. To create impactful collateral, you must first define what literature you need. Also, what information needs sharing, with whom, and in what format? This becomes increasingly critical as a sales team grows and diversifies. The strategic role of sales enablement ensures the messaging remains consistent, regardless of who is doing the “selling.” For instance, inside salespeople, account managers, or the CEO. It also ensures you’re tailoring messaging to each unique buyer persona or use case. And, that it remains aligned with the company’s overarching objectives.
Strategic Preparedness
Forethought is the cornerstone of effective sales enablement. Anticipating the questions prospects will ask, understanding their pain points, and identifying when more resources are needed are all part of this strategic orchestration. This involves putting the prospect’s perspective at the forefront. It also requires a deep understanding of the competitive landscape. For example, the ability to expect difficult questions and competitive disadvantages. Like, differences in features and functionality, or pricing.
Imagine your sales team stepping onto the battlefield armed only with your product knowledge. Now, imagine they also carry competitive battle cards—a strategic arsenal of information that compares your product to those of your competitors and equips your sales team to counter any objections.
This strategic preparedness is a hallmark of effective sales enablement. By putting themselves in the prospect’s shoes, sales teams can forecast questions, challenges, and concerns. They will arm themselves with compelling responses. This proactive approach transforms them into trusted advisors, eroding doubt and boosting confidence.
The Hunter-Farmer Duality
Sales teams come in all flavors, from experienced hunters to nurturing farmers. The distinction between them in healthcare IT sales is essential.
- Hunters venture into uncharted territories to secure net-new customers.
- Farmers cultivate relationships with existing customers by upselling new features or products.
Enabling both strategies requires a deep understanding of customer needs and an ability to position products as complete solutions. For instance, introducing a new product to a hospital radiology department requires the sales team to articulate the value to radiologists, administrators, and senior leaders. Whereas, selling to adjacent clinical departments involves re-articulating that value in context of (sometimes completely) different workflows, IT ecosystems, and strategic goals. This approach demands:
- strategic finesse
- strong understanding of each target market
- solid grasp of the product’s capabilities within each context
A strategic sales enablement effort acknowledges this diversity. This ensures salespeople, whether hunters or farmers, have the specific skills they need to be successful. For smaller companies lacking the luxury of industry-specific hires, this becomes even more vital. In this scenario, training is the bridge between unfamiliarity and mastery. A deep understanding of the sales process and buyer personas is the compass guiding the way.
Empowering Varied Sales Teams
Another consideration is your overarching sales approach. Does your organization sell direct? Or leverage channel partnerships? If your sales strategy encompasses both, your sales enablement efforts need to extend accordingly.
The strategic challenge here is to ensure your solution augments the value of your partners’. It also ensures your product messaging and value propositions align to complement your partners’ as well. This requires envisioning the various contexts, problems, and needs of your partner and your partners’ customers. Then, tailoring assets, tools, and training. The strategic element lies in creating enthusiasm among partner sales channels about the mutual benefits of collaboration.
It’s important to remember that sales enablement isn’t limited to the sales department. Support teams, too, play a vital role. Because they interact with your customers, they have a front-row seat to understanding how their workflows and challenges are evolving.
While support personnel are not typically sales experts, they should harness expertise to identify opportunities and collaborate with sales. This holistic approach enables smoother handovers, with sales framing conversations and support providing the technical backbone.
Sales Enablement as a Strategic Powerhouse
Sales enablement extends far beyond the creation of sales literature. It’s the fusion of understanding, preparation, and empowerment that propels sales teams to conquer challenges and secure victories. By recognizing the strategic dimensions of sales enablement, business leaders can elevate their sales force from good to exceptional. Doing so positions them to thrive in the ever-evolving healthcare IT marketplace.
Are you ready to take your sales enablement strategy to the next level? Our healthcare IT product marketing experts have experience developing multi-faceted sales enablement strategies that consider your target market, competitive landscape, and unique sales approach. Contact us to learn more.
