Product marketing focuses on promoting and positioning a specific product or service in the market to generate demand, drive sales, and achieve business objectives. It is no surprise that, sales enablement which aims to equip sales teams with the right resources, tools, and training to effectively engage with prospects, build stronger relationships with customers and close deals, is a very important pillar of a product marketing strategy. In this article we review sales enablement tactics that should be included in every product marketing strategy.

Start with a sales enablement plan
Product marketing activities for sales enablement success
Don’t forget about partner enablement
Product marketing metrics to measure sales enablement success
Product marketing strategy beyond sales enablement
How LEAi supports product marketing and sales enablement

Start with a sales enablement plan

Sales enablement plays a crucial role in product marketing by providing sales teams with the resources and training they need to effectively sell products. Tools and resources include everything from product information and sales collateral to training on how to use sales tools and techniques.

The first step is to create a sales enablement plan which outlines the resources and training sales teams need at every stage of the sales cycle to be successfully and effectively sell. The plan should include steps to be taken, implementation timeline and a budget.

Product marketing activities for sales enablement success

Understand target audience: Begin by thoroughly understanding your target audience’s needs, pain points, and buying behavior. This includes both the buyers and influencers.

Develop buyer-centric content: Sales enablement content tailored to different stages of the buyer’s journey, including case studies, product guides, sales scripts, product brochures, demo videos, comparison sheets, and FAQs. Ensure that the content addresses buyer pain points, highlights product benefits, and provides solutions to potential objections.

Provide sales training: Conduct regular training sessions to empower your sales team with in-depth knowledge of your products or services. Educate them on key features, benefits, competitive advantages, and target market segments. Additionally, train them on effective sales techniques, objection handling, and how to leverage sales enablement resources.

Implement a centralized content repository: Store, organize and distribute sales enablement content from an easily accessible, searchable, and up-to-date repository so sales team can easily find, customize, and share relevant materials with prospects.

Track and measure performance: Monitor key metrics such as content engagement, sales conversion rates, deal velocity, and revenue generated to measure the effectiveness of sales enablement efforts. Use the data to identify areas for improvement and refine sales enablement strategies and tactics accordingly.

Gather feedback and iterate: Regularly collect feedback and insights from your sales team regarding the usefulness and effectiveness of sales enablement resources and use the information to refine your sales enablement strategy and content.

Foster continuous learning: Regularly share industry trends, competitor updates, and new product developments to keep sales informed.

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Don’t’ forget about partner enablement

In addition to your internal sales teams, product marketing should include partner enablement as part of their sales enablement activities. Partner enablement is the process of equipping partners with the tools, resources, and knowledge they need to successfully meet their sales goals and drive mutual success. Much of what is created for internal sales enablement can also be used for partners, but will typically have some variations.

Product marketing activities that enable partners include:

Partner training and education: Develop comprehensive onboarding and continuous training programs to educate partners about product features, benefits, use cases, competitive advantages, and positioning.

Market and competitive insights: Share market trends, industry insights, and competitive analysis so partners are informed about market dynamics, emerging customer needs, and competitive landscape.

Sales collateral and assets: Create partner-specific sales collateral and assets that align with the partners’ sales process and target audience. These materials should highlight key product messaging, value propositions, customer success stories, and competitive differentiation. Make these resources easily accessible through a partner portal or content management system.

Co-marketing initiatives: Develop joint marketing activities like webinars, events, or targeted marketing campaigns. Don’t forget about creating co-branded marketing materials, campaign templates, assets, and guidelines to facilitate participation and ensure cohesive branding.

Technical support and documentation: Ensure partners have access to comprehensive technical documentation, implementation guides, and support resources so partners can address customer inquiries, troubleshoot issues, and deliver a seamless customer experience.

Deal registration and incentives: Implement a deal registration program that rewards partners for identifying and registering potential sales opportunities. Consider incentives such as discounts, rebates, or additional commissions to motivate partners.

Performance measurement and reporting: Define and monitor key performance indicators (KPIs) such as partner-generated revenue, deal registration rates, partner satisfaction, and pipeline growth to measure effectiveness and identify areas of improvement.

Continuous enablement: Offer regular communication, events, joint business planning, training updates, product roadmap previews, and certifications to keep partners engaged and knowledgeable.

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Product marketing metrics to measure sales enablement success

When measuring the impact of sales enablement efforts within a product marketing strategy, it’s important to track key metrics that reflect the effectiveness and success of the enablement initiatives. Here are some product marketing metrics that can help measure sales enablement success:

Sales conversion rate: Measure the percentage of leads or opportunities that successfully convert into closed sales. Compare conversion rates before and after implementing sales enablement initiatives to assess their impact on the sales process.

Sales velocity: Track the time it takes for a lead or opportunity to move through the sales pipeline from initial contact to closing the deal. Sales enablement can potentially reduce the sales cycle duration, resulting in increased sales velocity.

Deal size or average order value: Monitor the average value of deals closed. Effective sales enablement may lead to higher-value deals as sales teams are equipped with the right resources and product knowledge to effectively communicate the value of the product.

Win rate: Measure the percentage of deals won out of the total number of opportunities pursued. A higher win rate indicates that sales enablement initiatives are helping sales teams effectively position and sell the product.

Content engagement: Track how sales enablement content is being utilized by the sales team. Measure metrics such as content downloads, views, and shares to gauge the effectiveness of the content in supporting the sales process.

Sales feedback and adoption: Gather feedback from the sales team on the effectiveness of sales enablement resources, tools, and training.

Customer feedback and satisfaction: Assess whether sales enablement initiatives have improved the customer buying journey and their overall satisfaction with the sales process.

Regularly analyze and review these metrics to assess the impact of sales enablement initiatives, identify areas for improvement, and optimize your product marketing and sales strategies accordingly.

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Product marketing strategy beyond sales enablement

Beyond your sales enablement activities, items to include a successful product marketing strategy include:

Research and analyze the market: Early-stage research will help validate the demand for your product and provide insights into customer needs. Perform qualitative research by conducting customer interviews, surveys, and conducting focus groups to gain a deeper understanding of customer preferences and opinions. Also perform quantitative research like analyzing large sets of customer and audience data from various sources such as CRM systems, audience intelligence tools, journals, and industry studies.

Define your target audience: Get an initial understanding of your ideal customer, including their expectations, preferences, and dislikes. Look at behavioral drivers which includes your customers’ goals, ambitions, what drives them to purchase and the journey they undertake to discover your business. Consider obstacles, hesitations, and concerns that your potential customers may have and how to overcome these.

Agree on product positioning: Use the four Ps to articulate your target customers and how you want them to perceive your product:

• Product. How does your product compare to others? What’s unique about it?
• Price. How does your price relate to your audience and value?
• Promotion. How do/will your customers discover you?
• Place. Where do your products live? Online, distribution channels, direct?

Messaging: Include the following in your messaging strategy:

• Company messaging: Your mission statement, tagline, value proposition, brand pillars, positioning statement, brand promise, and design and tone of voice guidelines.
• Brand story: A narrative of how your product came to be, why you make it, and your mission.
• Unique selling proposition (USP): Why you’re different from the competition?

Price your product: Analyze your competitors and survey potential customers on how much they would pay for a product, and which features and benefits they value the most. Use this data to create and test tiers and pricing packages.

Run Minimum Viable Product (MVP) testing: Depending on the nature of your product, releasing a version of your product with a few key features to new customers and gathering. This will shape your product development and guide your marketing efforts.

How LEAi supports product marketing and sales enablement

Product marketing and sales enablement greatly benefit from using a GenAI tool like LEAi to build new and update existing training content.

LEAi allows teams to take documents, presentations, webinars, and wikis already created by product managers, engineering and documentation and transforms them into content for knowledge-sharing, training and sales enablement. The content created by LEAi can be used for all sorts of applications and resources including internal training sessions, step-by-step guides for customers, eLearning, knowledge base articles, presentations, webinars, videos and more.

LEAi can be used in every step of the product marketing and sales enablement cycle. If you are about to launch a new product, LEAi can be used to help create product documentation and training. If you are updating or releasing new features, LEAi can help to update your existing training and documentation and ensure that the content is consistent, wherever it is used.

If you are looking to boost your sales enablement content creation so you can maximize sales revenues, increase market share, and enhance profit margins of your products, drop us a note!