Sales Enablement Archives – Page 4 of 4

What’s the difference between marketing automation and sales enablement? On the surface, the two solutions seem very similar; however, they serve different purposes. In this article we’ll compare and contrast marketing automation with sales enablement.

Primary User

The first difference is with the primary user. Sales enablement is used by sales people whereas marketing automation is used by marketers. Now, don’t get me wrong – sales enablement can be used by people in roles outside of sales, but we’re talking about the primary user here. Marketing automation is more advanced than sales enablement and is designed to meet the demands of different types of sophisticated marketing campaigns. For example, marketing automation actions can have different business logic (rules) wrapped around the actions while sales enablement actions have no additional criteria. Marketing automation also has a number of different action types, such as the ability to change field values, delete records, sync records to a CRM, distribute leads, and more. On the other hand, sales enablement has only a handful of actions commonly used by sales people when doing outreach, such as emails, handwritten letters, text messages, and postcards.

Where Do the Emails Come From?

The second difference between marketing automation and sales enablement is the way that email messages are sent. With marketing automation, emails are sent through the marketing automation provider’s network. Emails sent through sales enablement are sent through the company’s email server. This is typically an Exchange server, Google, Office 365, etc. With sales enablement businesses have more control over their messages, typically better deliverability, and optional unsubscribe text in the emails.

Email Tracking Differences

The third major difference between sales enablement and marketing automation is the level of email tracking. Marketing automation solutions typically track opens and clicks; however, they do not typically detect when someone replies to an email. On the contrary, sales enablement solutions can detect replies, out of office notifications, forwards, and more – making it easy to automatically take action based on this outcome. With sales enablement, people can be automatically removed from the flow when they reply to a message or the conversation can be paused for a defined period when an out of office occurs. With marketing automation, prospects need to be manually removed, or removed with an automated action, if they need to be pulled out of a workflow. Ideally, your marketing automation platform is used for building an already established relationship; whereas sales enablement is ideal for creating brand new relationships. As a result, the need to manually remove people from a marketing automation workflow is much lower if the focus is on building an existing relationship.

Who You’re Targeting

This is a great segue into the last difference between the two systems, which is who the solution targets and where the solution is used in the overall buyer’s journey. Because of its simplicity and sales-friendly setup, sales enablement is ideally suited to fill the top of the funnel. Relationships are usually not forged yet at this stage, and sales enablement can help build those connections. Companies with an inside sales team, business development reps, or reps focusing on major accounts will benefit from using sales enablement. Marketing automation is ideal for people in the middle or bottom of the funnel, when a relationship already exists. Since communication is sent out through the providers network its important to follow the providers rules and sending policies, and send to only prospects with whom you have a relationship with who want to get your email. With sales enablement, emails go through your company’s servers. How you send messages and to whom is up to you.

In Summary

Feel free to use the below summary to forward to your friends and colleagues to help them better understand the differences between marketing automation and sales enablement.

For a demonstration of Lead Liaison’s solution to sales enablement and/or marketing automation click here. Also, learn more about marketing automation strategies here and learn more about sales enablement strategies here. If you care about account based marketing, this strategy will be helpful to beef up on too!

Hope this helps!

Marketing automation:

is used by marketers
is intended for middle to bottom of the funnel people
is perfect for nurturing warm prospects, building stronger relationships, onboarding/upselling customers
delivers emails through Lead Liaison’s network
requires a process to be setup to remove people from an automation
emails require an unsubscribe link

Sales enablement :

is used by sales
is intended for top of the funnel sales activities
is perfect for Account Based Marketing (ABM) and prospecting
sends emails through your company’s email server
automatically removes people that reply from any automated communication stream (Lead Liaison Rhythms™)
emails do not require an unsubscribe link
is a platform to set sales goals

What are the dangers of no-shows?

You have a limited amount of time to sell during the week. Every time you set aside a block of time and there is a no-show, you lose 5% of your income for that week. If and when you do reschedule, you have lesser value and a lower perception of importance to the prospect as you appear to be the needy one in the relationship. You have also lost out on time spent chasing other opportunities.

Top reasons for no-shows:

Rare and tragic personal issue/illness. It happens – people get sick and are unable to come to the office. With this, I would suggest a different strategy.

You didn’t create importance and interest in the meeting. Thus, other things became a higher priority.

The prospect lacks the ability to buy. Though they were curious about your offering, you failed to qualify if the buyer had the ability to buy your product if you were able to show them a path to success.

The prospect does not respect your time as a professional because your introduction was weak.

How do you combat no-shows?

Pre-qualification. By asking a lot of probing questions before the meeting, you are letting your prospect know that your time is important. You are also letting them know that you see a potential fit between their need and your capabilities. Lastly, you are letting them know that your meeting isn’t just a “getting to know you” session; but instead a bonafide opportunity to fix their pain points. It’s an opportunity that they can afford to invest in and execute.

Every introductory sales meeting should have a defined, but simple agenda. This agenda can be provided as a friendly reminder of the sales call the day before the meeting. This way, the prospect can fill in any blanks or important points that they may want you to address in detail. It’s also a great way to find out if other people will be attending the meeting from their side.

When someone does no-show, send a simple note letting them know that you arrived but they were not available. Instead of chasing a no-show prospect, put them into an automated workflow to educate and build their interest. If they are serious about doing business with you, they will suggest another time for a meeting. If they no-showed because they lack attention/interest/desire/action (AIDA), they are probably going to be in the same situation a week from now. Recognize that you scheduled your discussion too early in the process and start over. It’s your job to rebuild AIDA through education that does not require a lot of your time. The exception to this rule is personal tragedy/illness. In those cases, be human and let them know that you are available to talk again if/when their situation clears up.

Note: This is a very simple workflow that you can enact with Lead Liaison’s Marketing Automation or Sales Enablement solutions. With the push of a button, I cancel my meeting and put the prospect into a very simple/well-thought-out flow which benefits both the prospect and the salesperson.

One last note. I know that a lot of business development people are going to turn to ask what should you do when a prospect fills out a “contact us” form, or asks you for a meeting? These opportunities can be huge home runs, or fool’s gold. The first thing that I do in this situation is use a solution like Lead Liaison’s ProspectVision™ to better understand how much the client knows about my company. I want to know how they were referred to my site (was it a partner, an article, a search engine, etc?). I also want to know what the prospect knows about me. For example, if they have spent hours and researched dozens of pages on my website (including the pricing page) before calling me, then they have essentially pre-qualified themselves. On the other hand, I am always wary of prospects that know little about my company but want a demo/discussion. Such prospects are likely to set up dozens of meeting with dozens of competitors simply to learn, with no goals or buying decisions on the horizon. In such situations, cancellations are very likely. Again, through a simple ProspectVision™ analysis, I’m often able to identify and overcome potential no-shows before the happen.

To see a personalized demonstration of the solutions we offer to combat no-shows, let us know about your interest here!

What’s the difference between marketing automation and sales enablement?