Marketers With Attitudes

In this interview you’ll learn the following:

How to use sales enablement to accelerate your revenue.

What sales enablement is and why you should care.

The secret sales enablement techniques Elay used to drive hyper-growth while at Salesforce.

And much more (really).

In this interview with Ring Central’s global head of sales enablement, Sheevaun Thatcher, you will learn the 4 pillars of sales enablement –– so you can develop a kick-butt sales enablement strategy for your own business.

Sales enablement is essential to the success of your business in 2021.

To better understand why sales enablement is so vital, let’s walk you through an unlikely scenario.

Imagine this: you’ve just been drafted by the Utah Jazz in the 2021 NBA draft. 

But when you show up for training camp in Utah, the facility has no workout equipment, no basketballs, no hoops, and no coaches; you are on your own.

This scenario would never happen to you in the National Basketball Association.

But if you happen to be a salesperson, this nightmarish scenario of being deprived of the resources and training you need to be successful is quite common. 

In this article, we’re going to show you how to use the art of sales enablement to provide your salespeople with the resources they need to perform like an NBA All-Star –– to boost your earnings in 2021.   

Let’s get started.

What Is Sales Enablement?

Let’s start with the basics.

Sales Enablement is the practice of providing your salespeople with the content, coaching, and strategy they need to effectively engage buyers. 

Okay, now that you understand the basic definition of sales enablement, let’s take a closer look at what we mean by content, coaching, and strategy.

Customer-Facing Sales Enablement Tools:

   

And there are Salesperson-Facing Sales Enablement Tools (for internal use):

• Sales Training Videos (playlists; modules)

• Sales Funnel Visualization

• How To Measure Success (KPIs)

• Sales Strategy (cadences & Playbooks)

This bullet-point list by no means covers everything in the sphere of sales enablement, but it should give you a good foundational understanding to build on.

Why You Absolutely Need A Sales Enablement Strategy In 2021

According to Sirius Decisions, executive B2B buyers consume 17 pieces of content over the course of the sales cycle. 

So, if you want to educate buyers, shorten sales cycles, and win more customers, you need sales enablement content –– and lots of it. 

Now, more than ever, potential buyers want to consume content before they can warm-up to your offer and trust what you’re selling. 

Don’t misunderstand us, salespeople are the superheroes who fuel your go-to-market strategy. But they need sales enablement content to help them better engage with potential buyers.

   

There’s another big reason why you need a sales enablement strategy in 2021.

Virtual Selling

Because of the pandemic, there is much less face-to-face interaction taking place.

As a result, salespeople are now being forced to do sales from a distance, across different regions and timezones. 

This means salespeople, for the most part, are no longer taking prospects out for steak dinners and martini-fueled lunches.

Instead, salespeople are engaging potential buyers with videos, articles, webinars, and zoom meetings. 

You might be thinking, “Traditional in-person sales techniques will return after the world goes back to ‘normal.’”

But the truth is, virtual selling is here to stay. It’s cheaper, more efficient, and, when done right, it can actually speed-up sales cycles in ways that in-person meetings simply cannot.

According to a Mckinsey & Company survey, 65% of B2B decision-makers think this new, virtual sales process is more effective than the previous sales models used before the pandemic.

   

Train Your Sales Team If You Want Explosive Growth

Sales enablement is more than just a way to engage buyers; it’s a way to get the most out of your salespeople, too.

According to Verne Harnish, author of the bestselling book Scaling Up, “Investments in training and coaching provide you with the best returns available to your business.”

Simply put, if you want your sales team to smash their quota and be a growth engine for your business, you need to provide them with training, coaching, content, and a great strategy.

How Can You Implement A Sales Enablement Strategy For Your Own Business?

You know the basics. Now it’s time to show you how to use sales enablement to boost your revenue in 2021.

Keep in mind that your business is unique. And there’s no possible way to provide you with a sales enablement strategy that solves all of your unique business challenges –– not in a single blog post, anyway.

With that being said, we will show you a step-by-step framework that will help you get started implementing your own sales enablement strat

Joe Hall is one of the most respected technical SEO professionals in the marketing game. He is the founder of Hall Analysis, a high-level SEO consulting agency with big-name clients such as Buffer and NBC Universal. In this interview, Joe will teach you how to get your website in shape for Google’s 2021 core web vitals update.

In this interview, you will learn the following: how to do content marketing in a pandemic; how to manage your time for maximum productivity and happiness; how to build a marketing strategy from scratch; and how to find the winning mindset.

In this interview with Brendan Hufford, you'll learn the following: How you can use SEO to generate more leads and sales; the most common SEO mistakes small businesses make and how to avoid them; what the future of SEO might look like; and the marketing opportunities every business should be thinking about right now.

Are you looking to build a sales strategy from scratch? If so, you're in the right place. In this interview with sales strategist Charlie Light, he's going to teach you the must-know fundamentals of building a crazy-effective sales strategy. Charlie Light is the owner of prospect aim, a Denver-based sales agency specializing in cold outreach, and today he’s going to turn you into a lean, mean, sales enablement machine.

This episode features John Trigonis, who is a successful author, Ted Talk speaker, and crowdfunding advisor for movies like Super Troopers 2, Code 8, and Con Man.

In this interview with working journalist Lindsay Boyle, you’ll get answers to the following questions:

What does it take to be a working journalist in 2020?

What does the typical day of a professional journalist look like?

How do journalists structure their stories for readers?

   

Nipsey Hussle was one of the greatest marketing minds in rap music history.

In his short life, he built several successful businesses in his community, invested in emerging crypto startups, and advocated for black entrepreneurship.

As an artist, he was nominated for a Grammy.

From art to business and marketing, Nip could do it all.

If you’re a marketer, prepare to improve your game:

Here are 5 timeless marketing lessons you can learn from Nipsey Hussle’s legacy.

Let’s get started.

1). You don’t need a formal education to be a great marketer

In late 2013, three years after opting out of an unsuccessful label deal with Epic Records, Nipsey Hussle orchestrated perhaps the greatest marketing feat in hip-hop history.

He independently sold 1000 physical copies of his mixtape, Crenshaw, for $100 each, earning himself $100,000 in under 24 hours.

Nips's inspiration for the Crenshaw mixtape strategy, known officially as the Proud2Pay campaign, came from Jonah Berger’s book Contagious.

   

In an interview with VladTV, Nipsey mentions how he came across the book in the first place, saying, "It was referred to by my mentor, Big Bob Francis."

Even though Nipsey Hussle dropped out of Hamilton High School and would go on to join the Rolling 60s Neighborhood Crips shortly thereafter,  he didn't stop pursuing knowledge outside of the classroom.

By seeking the guidance of mentors and prioritizing self-improvement, Nipsey Hussle was able to cultivate his imagination and develop the blueprint for his success (without a college degree). 

Don't get down on yourself if you don't have a formal education. Find mentors, utilize free online classes, and read books.

2). Invest back into your business

For most people, especially those who come from Nip's low-income neighborhood in south-central Los Angeles, $100,000 in mixtape money would've been good enough––it would have been the end goal.

But Nipsey had bigger plans: "The dream and the vision, was to start a label and start a music movement."

Instead of blowing his money on a nice car, jewelry, or strip club appearances, Nip took his $100,000 in mixtape money and paid expenses toward his record label, All Money In No Money Out.

   

So the next time you hear about Nipsey Hussle's mythologized $100,000 mixtape story, always remember the most important detail: Nipsey invested that money back into his business.

At the time of his tragic passing, Nipsey Hussle's net worth was an estimated $8 million. That large sum of money makes $100,000 seem like a drop in the bucket. 

Learn from Nip's legacy. Don't be shortsighted: Invest your earnings back into your business.

3). Build a movement, not a brand

 

Photo by Jimmy Fontaine

 

Jay Z bought 100 copies of Nipsey Hussle's mixtape, Crenshaw. But Nip's loyal fans bought the rest.

Here's the thing, though, the Crenshaw mixtape was available for free. But people were willing to pay $100 for it because they believed in Nipsey Hussle's movement.

Nip explained his movement to RapRadar:

 

“It ISN’T the price of the plastic case and polyurethane disc...it’s the price of Revolution! The price of Rebellion against an industry that has tricked us all into making products that have no soul for fear of not being heard if we don’t.”

— Nipsey Hussle  

We're facing a litany of problems in our society right now. We don't need more brands; we need more movements.