Sales and marketing are often distinct departments, but executives know their outcomes are conjoined. In fact, supporting the sales team with brand-compliant materials can become a major lift for marketing personnel. Or, at least, that’s the case at organizations that haven’t deployed a sales enablement strategy.
With strong sales enablement, sales reps get empowered with tools and resources they can use to close more deals. Customers get presented with decks and messaging that build trust and drive engagement. And marketing can rest easy, knowing this is all happening in compliance with brand and regulatory guidelines.
So, what is sales enablement? And how is it evolving to become even more effective? We teamed up with our new partner, Pitcher, to give you a closer look.
Sales enablement 101
Historically, the manual creation of sales content like pitch decks was a big lift.
Plus, there was other administrative work for salespeople and the teams supporting them. That was exacerbated by the need to access several systems throughout the day (e.g., customer relationship management [CRM], order management, content management system [CMS]) to get the necessary information.
While coaching to improve the performance of reps has always been a key part of sales enablement, it often lived in a separate platform like a learning management system (LMS), if it was captured digitally at all.
Fortunately, things are changing. Sales enablement platforms streamline processes and set reps up for success. Better yet, the new wave of sales enablement — like Pitcher’s AI-forward platform — leverages artificial intelligence to save reps time on admin work, freeing them up to focus on customers. That results in an improved buyer experience that drives more deals.
"AI-driven sales enablement optimizes the entire rep experience so that revenue teams have the ability to focus on what truly moves the needle. Reps are empowered to build relationships, deliver value, and close deals. From Pitcher's own customers, I've seen firsthand how personalizing content for each meeting, automating admin work, and providing reps with personal coaching in minutes with AI improves buyer engagement and unlocks revenue at scale."
— Thomas Stone, Director of Sales, Pitcher
What strong sales enablement can do
#1: Content creation and optimization
With a good sales enablement system in place, reps can easily find, create, and personalize the content they need. That includes both pitch decks and follow-ups.
By facilitating content creation through the sales enablement platform, teams can build in brand compliance and pull pertinent lead details from other sources, like customer relationship management (CRM) and configure, price, quote (CPQ) systems.
#2: Coaching
As its name suggests, sales enablement enables salespeople to perform their best. That should include coaching to improve their pitches, including roleplaying so they can explore various selling scenarios and feedback on calls.
#3: Seller effectiveness
A strong sales enablement platform streamlines the administrative work required of reps — from deck creation to order taking. This allows salespeople to direct their time and energy toward nurturing leads so they can meaningfully move toward close.
#4: Customer engagement with a buyer-first approach
Leading-edge sales enablement puts resources into reps’ hands to strengthen customer relationships. That might include, for example, dedicated, customized micro-sites with prospect information like product details, meeting recordings, and chat support. It can also facilitate multichannel communication on buyers' preferred channels, like text or WhatsApp.
#5: Analytics to improve performance
Tracking how tactics and materials perform allows teams to refine their approach. Good data delivers better decision-making to improve performance and close more deals.
“This new way of digital selling not only saves costs through efficiencies but drives up revenues through more relevant content and increased client engagement.”
— René Affolter, Managing Director & Deputy CEO, gateB
Enabling even more with AI
A sales enablement platform that sets reps up for success, streamlines the administrative side of their job, and supports consistent, brand-compliant messaging for prospects goes a long way. But with AI, it can do even more.
New-wave sales enablement — what Pitcher calls Sales Enablement 2.0 — encompasses the entire suite of what sellers need.
Specifically, this next generation of sales enablement delivers:
Generative AI for personalized communication and presentations
Augmented reality (AR) for real-time visualization (e.g., of in-store displays)
Stronger brand-compliant pitch decks that can be created with a single click and allow ordering straight from the presentation
Call prep, meeting rehearsal, and post-call feedback to direct sales reps toward success
Video coaching and roleplay, paired with just-in-time micro-targeted learning to support salespeople’s development
Next best action recommendations through business intelligence logic directly in the platform
Analytics to refine strategies, content, and sales processes
Unsurprisingly, with so much functionality on offer, sales orgs in a variety of industries have moved to bring AI-powered sales enablement to their teams — and teams have embraced it.
When Pitcher was deployed, it had a daily app usage adoption of:
0%
at a leading CPG company
0%
at a leading publisher
“We are seeing a tremendous willingness in organizations across financial services, CPG, pharma, medtech, and publishing to embrace the next generation of sales enablement, or Sales Enablement 2.0.
gateB is leading the charge with market-defining thought leadership, agency, and implementation services that are perfectly aligned with our shared mission of driving faster time-to-value for our mutual customers.”
— Kevin Chew, CEO, Pitcher
The benefits of AI-powered sales enablement
Teams can probably imagine how Sales Enablement 2.0 can deliver wins. But you don’t have to guess at it. The Pitcher team told us how they’ve seen their platform transform sales orgs.
Take, for example, what the platform unlocked for one global snack food giant. The company had struggled to sell physical product displays to store managers, primarily because reps were challenged to effectively demonstrate how these displays could drive sales.
They tapped Pitcher to help.
The platform delivered AI-driven revenue projections, enabling reps to show each store the value the display could bring. The sales enablement platform also facilitated display recommendations tailored to each store based on the specific store’s past sales. The data was made digestible to store managers in automated dashboards.
Pitcher also delivered real-time, augmented reality displays so store managers could better visualize how the display would actually look.
The results were clear.
Over 1,200 reps were up and running with Pitcher in a matter of days
Over 75% of the sales team adopted Pitcher
30,000 displays were sold in the first six weeks
After a successful pilot program, the snack food company decided to continue using this sales enablement platform across its sales organization.
Because of wins like this, our team at gateB is excited to partner with Pitcher. With AI to power the personalization of sales materials and coaching and analytics to help refine selling tactics, this platform can streamline reps’ processes and help them close more.
And we can mitigate a lot of the challenges that come with deploying a new platform for your sales org. For help with implementation, integration with the rest of your sales and martech stack, and training and support, contact our team at gateB.
Olaf started building gateB in 2009 with a focus on helping companies digitize and optimize their marketing processes. Today, digital transformation touches and affects all business areas. As a result, Olaf has further developed gateB together with the management team. Now, the company is globally positioned and supports renowned organizations in fully tapping their digital potential and strengthening their customer relationships in the long term.
Sarah is the Managing Director of gateB Consulting, Inc. (USA) and is responsible for leading and developing the implementation and consulting business in the American market. She has years of experience in marketing and consulting for large companies. Sarah knows exactly what drives brands and how to strengthen them through digitalization.
René has been working in the field of enterprise software for more than 15 years, eight of them as Head of European Business Development for a provider of license accounting software in London. Since 2014, René has been responsible for marketing operations, brand experience and content management as Managing Director at gateB, as well as Deputy CEO for Business Development of the gateB enterprise. He also has extensive experience in the evaluation and implementation of digital asset management (DAM), marketing resources management (MRM), enterprise content management systems (CMS), brand portals and marketing planning systems.
Marco is a consultant with a focus on driving business value through the use of data and technology. He is a member of the gateB leadership team and has helped shape the company’s growth path from its inception to a leader in data-driven customer engagement. As Managing Director, he is responsible for customer intelligence and customer experience.
Robert is a pioneer in data-driven marketing with over 20 years of experience in direct marketing. A lecturer at multiple universities, he specializes in digital and data-driven strategies. Since 2015, he has led business development for intelligent customer engagement at gateB, helping companies leverage data to enhance customer relationships, optimize experiences, and drive profitability.
Laura is our HR Manager and has been working with gateB for many years. Together with her team, she is responsible for the entire employment lifecycle. Simultaneously, she acts as the point of contact for all concerns relating to human resources. With a lot of heart and soul, she takes care of the well-being of gateB employees and, in doing so, significantly contributes to gateB’s success.
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