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How to Prep Your Team for Digital Sales Enablement

Guest post by Meghan Rees, Digital Communications at Mediafly

Sales and marketing teams in the financial services industry have their work cut out for them. Marketing teams struggle to create content and processes that will be well-received by the sales group. Salespeople, in an effort to be more client-centric, tweak materials themselves, creating “rogue” content that is not compliant with regulatory and brand standards. When compliance approvals and procedures are bypassed, the firm is exposed to significant risk.

To some extent, all investment firms struggle to create and present client-focused content that is on-brand and compliant. Weighed-down by the risk of penalties and the pressure of working in a competitive business environment, financial services companies are turning to digital platforms to streamline their efforts and improve engagement with prospective clients.

Adopting a sales enablement solution may be the obvious choice to help with content automation and effective sales engagement, but building a case internally and setting expectations with the teams are crucial to a successful implementation.

Here are 4 Best Practices for Sales Enablement Success

Identify key stakeholders

Pinpoint the main players. This will be two groups of people. First are the people who will be adopting and the new technology. Second are the people who are concerned about the outcome. Set expectations for what they can expect as far as how this technology will shape their day-to-day processes and benefits they’ll gain from this solution.

Lead with vision

Paint a picture for the stakeholders of what you are trying to accomplish with the sales enablement solution. Minimizing the risk of violating compliance standards is an obvious one, to begin with. Discuss the way the business processes will transform and share transformational success stories of similar companies who have adopted this strategy.

Benchmark your current state

In order to measure the success of any technology, it’s important to identify where you started. Decide what needs improvement and develop a plan to help you meet your goals. This can be anything from time saved during the week on administrative tasks to an increase in revenue.

Create a centralized content repository

Prepare your sales and marketing teams for a shift to an easier way to distribute, discover and prepare content. Creating a “one stop shop” works best when content is up-to-date and easy to discover. Take inventory of what content you have (and don’t have), what works (and doesn’t work), and what you need (and can eliminate). A successful sales enablement solution will require a content management system to have the most recent and relevant materials available.

Read more about how Synthesis and Mediafly joined forces to enable financial sales, here.

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Emilie Totten

Emilie is Chief Marketing Officer at Synthesis. She brings over 15 years of integrated sales and marketing experience working with financial services, SaaS, and health and wellness companies. Her passion is architecting holistic marketing strategies that align with each business function to achieve client experience, employee advocacy, and revenue goals. When she isn't marketing, you can find her rehabbing her home in the Chicago suburbs, practicing yoga, or spending time with her family.

June 28, 2018

Emilie Totten