Everything You Need to Know About Sales Enablement and ABM

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In order for your account-based marketing (ABM) campaign to succeed, sales enablement needs to play a significant role. Your sales team—whether it’s a one-person team or multiple sales representatives—must have a complete understanding of your ABM program, access to relevant content, and a solid grasp of the roadmap ahead.

If alignment between marketing and sales is impenetrable, your sales representatives are able to engage effectively with your target account list (TAL) and provide powerful, astute content and messaging that pushes them through the sales funnel and assists them in their buying journey. The more information sales has, the more straightforward the process, and the higher return you’ll see on the campaign as a whole. 

Sales enablement as it relates to ABM isn’t exactly the same thing as general sales enablement. Very similar yes, but together with ABM, sales enablement becomes an extension of the current sales process.

Here’s everything you need to know about sales enablement and ABM.

What is Sales Enablement?

Sales enablement is the process by which the sales team becomes equipped with the information they need to sell a product or service to prospects. In short, it’s the compilation of the entire team’s integrated efforts. This isn’t just content, though; sales enablement involves ensuring all the tools and processes are in place to create and maintain team alignment.

Example of Sales Enablement:

ABM may have an agreed-upon basic definition in the B2B world, but that doesn’t mean it’s always translated the same across industries, companies, or even teams. Because of this, a sales playbook is absolutely necessary to onboard your sales team prior to the launch of an ABM campaign. This ensures everyone is on the same page when it comes to whom to target, how to begin outreach, and how performance will be monitored.

Download The ABM Agency Sales Playbook here.

Why Do You Need Sales Enablement for ABM?

Sales enablement is necessary to run an ABM campaign for three key reasons (there are several, but these are the top three):

1. Sales enablement allows for a more powerful way to identify and curate messaging, content, and channels to engage prospects. If sales knows what assets they have access to and feel confident in the overall ABM strategy, they’re better equipped to drive home sales and bring in revenue.
2. Sales enablement assists the marketing team in developing account-focused tactics and assets. Sales, instead of marketing, is usually interacting more closely with the targets and their buying committees. These interactions and insights should then be communicated to marketing to inform content creation going forward.
3. Sales enablement increases your ROI. Is there anything more important in ABM than the bottom line? According to Forbes, nearly 65% of a sales rep’s time is spent doing non-revenue-driving activities. Sales enablement is the solution, as it creates a more focused, driven sales atmosphere. Additionally, companies that utilize sales enablement see a 12% higher win rate than those organizations that don’t.

Think of it like the chicken and egg conundrum: You can’t have a profitable ABM program without sales enablement, but you need the ABM strategy to inform sales enablement.

What Sales Enablement Should Include

No matter the company or industry, sales enablement requires a few key items in order to contribute to growth and development. These include:

1. An open line of communication regarding ABM strategy

If you don’t have communication between sales and marketing, you don’t have sales enablement. Before any outreach or content creation, you must align on the following:

• Companies to target
• Relevant buyer persona
• Right messaging
• Content needed to support ABM strategies

As the campaign progresses, you cannot lose sight of the importance of alignment. Set up a weekly (or even daily) meeting between teams in order to continue to build a cohesive feedback loop.

2. Streamlined access to ABM materials

ABM is a content marathon—and if you’re running 1:1 or 1:few ABM campaigns, there will be several versions of each piece of content. There will also be content differentiated by the target’s stage of the sales funnel. It can get confusing and complicated pretty quickly—especially if there’s a time constraint or need for a quick sales turnaround. Sales enablement needs a system that gives the sales team access to accurate, organized content, campaign details, and performance metrics.

This leads us to the ABM tech stack.

3. Integrated, automated technology stack

According to Saleshacker, sales enablement is one of the five aspects of sales that should always be automated; with the right tools, you can “break the complexity of sales enablement into practical ideas through scalable and repeatable practices that will lead to increased revenue.” (Roderick Jefferson, Sales Enablement Practitioner)

But what tools and platforms should your sales tech stack include? At the bare minimum, you’ll need: a quick way to communicate (Slack or Hangouts), a CRM (Salesforce or Hubspot), a CMS (BigCommerce or Drupal), and visitor intelligence (Clearbit).

Best Practices for ABM and Sales Enablement

Sales enablement is a dynamic process that is continually evolving (just like ABM)—but there are a few best practices that should always be taken into consideration.

1. 1. Communicate, communicate, communicate. Schedule regular meetings between teams and invest in a messaging platform.
   2. Utilize sales input to tailor messaging by account and sales funnel placement. ABM is a team effort, and sales often has access to more information than marketing realizes.
   3. Leverage technology to your advantage. Most aspects of sales enablement can be automated—so let technology do most of the grunt work.

“It’s paramount to reframe the funnel and sales process with your teams in order to fully maximize your ABM efforts. Without a 100% buy-in from your sales teams, your ABM efforts will likely be negatively impacted by premature outreach and mixed or duplicate messaging. Patience and knowledge are the keys to success.”

Scott Rachel, Sales and Business Development at The ABM Agency