Don’t Procrastinate On Buyer Enablement

By Author: Suzanne Harp
Total Articles: 33
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With over a million new start-up businesses forming each year, competition between them is fierce, and they all face the challenge of figuring out successful marketing strategies to get them to peak sales performance.

Unfortunately for most of those startups, 58% of them are destined to fail in the first year. Many businesses are playing with a losing hand, but don’t know it until it’s too late.

One of the areas that successful start-ups are focusing on is buyer enablement and there’s a simple reason why – it’s making the processes of buying easier and more intuitive and that’s resulting in big ROI.

Buyer enablement bridges the gap between marketing and sales
The buying experience that prospects have come to expect has gone through dramatic changes over the past ten years. More so than ever, consumers are expecting their B2B buying experience to mirror their B2C buying experience. What does that mean?

The B2C experience has focused on giving consumers all the tools they need to make their buying decision right at their virtual fingertips rarely if ever, having to interact with ...
... a salesperson.

But B2B has typically done business in an exactly opposite way, with salespeople acting as gatekeepers between influencers and decision-makers and the information and tools they need. Ostensibly this is done for benign reasons, with sales teams wanting to act as a sherpa to a prospect buying journey, but more often than not, prospects don’t want to have anything to do with interacting with a salesperson until they’ve done the majority of the research process themselves.

The key to a successful buyer enablement strategy is finding a pathway to providing the information to your prospects, in a thoughtful, curated manner, while also providing supplementary tools such as ROI calculators, simulators, benchmarking tools, etc. that provide a tangible benefit for decision-makers and influencers who are on fact-finding missions related to big purchases.

Providing that experience is key, and prospects who aren’t finding that experience on their buyer journey are increasingly taking their business elsewhere, to companies who do.

Why should companies adopt Buyer Enablement?

Despite the best efforts put in by internal sales teams, the buying process can be notoriously difficult for customers. Influencers can be overwhelmed by the idea of researching their decision-makers, wading through hard-to-find information, data that is locked behind gatekeepers, and the lack of sophisticated buyer enablement tools. The process might even be so difficult as to put a customer off a buying decision.

One reason why sales teams adopt a buyer enablement strategy is to boost their sales enablement programs. Companies integrate buyer enablement into their process by giving prospects the ability to take the next steps in the buyer journey through automation, rather than tethering them to a rigid structure imposed by an inflexible sales strategy.

With content being king in the world of sales, the content that a company chooses to put forward not only gives prospects the first impression of an organization but the quality of that data can mean the difference between a prospect continuing their buying journey with one organization or taking their business elsewhere. A successful buyer enablement solution will audit existing content for areas of improvement and develop new content and tools to aid in the buyer journey.

Salespeople also perform better with enablement tools in hand. Helping make the buying experience better for the prospect also lets salespeople be more efficient with their time. With more emphasis on the buyers’ journey, many companies are being rewarded with more customers, shorter sales cycles and higher conversion rates.

Create a Prospect Data-Driven Buyer Enablement Strategy
Flobile helps sales teams create an engaging buyer journey to create a fluid conversation with qualified prospects. The innovative B2B buyer enablement process can lead to a 20% increase in sales opportunities and conversions.

Using a data scientist-developed AI system, Flobile allows businesses to build a meaningful relationship with their target audiences and create effective buyer journeys through omnichannel experiences.