6 financial benefits of interactive digital sales enablement tools

“When organizations take the step to enable sellers with data and insights to tell the buyer’s story, the ROI is clear – up to 66% lift in revenue, and as much as 82% more repeat business.”

Forrester

Personalised, visually persuasive and relevant, interactive sales enablement tools create customer experiences that WOW and encourage your customer to want to find out more about your business and the value you can offer. Interactive sales tools make it easier for your sales team to have meaningful customer conversations and ultimately increase sales.

But, if you haven’t yet developed a digital sales tool you may be wondering what returns your investment will bring? What are the financial benefits or advantages of developing a digital sales enablement tool?   

Ultimately increased sales and market share is the goal, which our sales tools contribute significantly to, but there are other benefits of sales enablement platforms that you may not be aware of, which also increase revenue and cut costs for our clients.

Listed here are the 6 main financial benefits that our clients report back to us (there are more!), which reflect in their bottom line:

1. Letting your sales teams concentrate on what they’re best at – selling
2. A shorter sales cycle and increased market share
3. Demonstratable RoI
4. Training and onboarding support
5. The most effective and cost-efficient marketing assets
6. Reduced travel costs

This blog will explore the financial benefits of sales enablement tools in more detail, giving you insights into research and testimonials from our clients.

1. Letting your sales teams concentrate on what they’re best at – selling

“Only 33% of a sales rep’s time is spent actively selling.”

CSO Insights

Did you know that your sales team is wasting over 2/3 of their time every week on routine tasks, when they could be selling? And almost three quarters say they spend too much time on data entry.

How do our enhanced sales enablement tools help to focus your sales team on the tasks they should prioritise to maximise sales opportunities?

According to the Aberdeen Group, sales reps spend on average 440 hours per year searching for the right content.  By providing all the most up-to-date information in one place – the latest product specs, insights, data, images, 3D models, videos, and brochures etc – your sales team can use their time much more effectively.

A single source of truth that banishes the need to create a bespoke linear sales presentation for every prospect. Not only saving time before the meeting, but also allowing sales reps and buyers to have more meaningful sales conversations when they are together – whether that be face to face or virtually. Sales conversations that concentrate on their buyer’s requirements and explore your solutions with maximum impact.  

“The app allows me to access and browse all the sales materials I need in one place so that I can easily show, or send them to my customers and colleagues. The app is easy to navigate, looks really professional, and allows me to deliver sales material in an effective way.”

Katie Bell, Senior Territory Manager, Coloplast

2. Shorter sales cycle and increased market share

“Lost productivity and poorly managed leads cost companies at least $1 trillion every year.”

CMO Council

The speed a business can service their clients, above others, is often a key differentiator. Coupled with the ease at which they can demonstrate their range, alternative products and cross-sell to suit their customers’ needs can make a huge impact on winning business.

Digital sales tools help to increase market share and reduce the sales cycle in two ways, both in the field and back in the office, when following up with a contact.

Firstly, analytics built into the digital sales enablement tool allows monitoring an individual prospect’s position in the sales funnel, according to the types of content they’ve engaged with, more accurately. Sales reps can then help to shorten the sales cycle by reviewing and positioning the right content at the right time during subsequent conversations based on this data.

Secondly, when meeting with a customer it is easy to immediately access all the information and assets needed, whether that be 3D models, high-res images, videos and animations, to really make your product stand out.

By quickly demonstrating exactly how you can fulfil their specification and sharing this tailored information instantly with a prospect during a meeting, the value of your solutions is much more immediate. There is no longer a delay in the process while they need to wait for a sample or specifications to be sent through – valuable time is won where they could otherwise be looking at different providers to yourselves .

In the case of our client Wienerberger the difference in being able to immediately provide specification sheets was hugely significant and really helped their customers to make a decision:

To provide relevant information for the customer took “from up to a week to literally minutes. It’s been a massive step change which is demonstrated by our increased market share.”

Dan Cheung, Wienerberger

3. Demonstratable RoI

In contrast to more traditional sales and marketing assets used in sales meetings – brochures, catalogues, linear presentations – interactive digital tools generate valuable data insights that enable your business to derive real business value and make smarter decisions in marketing asset development, training needs and customer interaction.

It’s possible to get a better understanding of how your sales team and prospects interact with your sales and marketing materials. Did you know that “65% of marketing content never gets used.” (SiriusDecisions) by monitoring interaction with your content you can easily quantify which pieces of content are performing well and invest more in assets that impact revenue.

Our enhanced sales enablement tools are created using an Agile methodology so monitoring the use of the tool and further developing it to align with the needs of your customers and sales reps in the field is part of the process. This means that the development costs are kept low before launch with further costs being aligned to features and content that have a demonstrable value to the customer and sales team.

4. Training and onboarding support

“42.5% of sales reps take 10 months or longer to become productive enough to contribute to company goals.”

Accenture

Onboarding a sales rep, particularly when part, or all, of the process is virtual, can be lengthy. Sales enablement apps allow your sales team to put themselves into the position of the customer and discover the products and their features, benefits and true value just as a customer would.

In addition, existing sales teams can benefit from monitoring sales reps who are performing well and gaining insights into the content that they are using and their customer’s journey. This can provide actionable insights for coaching, development and training teams.

5. The most effective and cost-efficient marketing assets

“As a result of launching the digital sales app we anticipate that our print costs will be significantly reduced long-term. But in addition to the printing cost benefit, we also have more data to base future decisions for sales material development on.” 

Dan Cheung, Wienerberger

It is not only the design and print of traditional marketing materials that can be costly, but also the distribution to sales teams across many regions. Coupled with amendments to print runs when new products are launched, or changes are made to existing ones.

Digital sales tools can be instantly updated and can easily take account of regional variations to ensure that all marketing materials are always fully compliant. This is especially important when working in heavily regulated industries, such as Healthcare or Technology, where variations can occur across borders.

“It was a challenge for us to demo our technology to our customers and ensure that our salespeople were communicating the most relevant and up to date information. POPcomms created an intuitive and well-designed interactive sales tool that we can easily update centrally.”

Anne-Rieke Schweigatz, Global Product Marketing Lead, Syntegon

Plus, digital sales tools can be flexed to be used across many different devices – laptops, tablets or touchscreens – in meetings, at tradeshows and events and in customer salesrooms. A truly versatile omnichannel sales experience for your customers. Read our recent blog to find out more about omnichannel experiences or download our eBook about Touchscreen Experiences to find out how your sales tool can be used at events, tradeshows or in marketing suites.

6. Reduced travel costs

“70-80% of B2B decision makers prefer remote human interactions or digital self-serve. Why? Ease of scheduling, savings on travel expenses and (currently) safety”

McKinsey, Oct 2020

Sometimes meeting face-to-face just isn’t practical or possible. Digital sales tools allow sales teams to demonstrate their solutions to a new or existing customer virtually, saving not only on the cost of travelling, but also the time taken.  

Our client, Syntegon, uses our tools to demonstrate their enormous packaging machines to customers. Their sales teams highly technical conversations are supported virtually using video, images, 3D modelling and specification information, and unlike their machines, if they need to visit a customer, they can take the sales tool with them to continue their conversation.

“We have highly complex and sophisticated machinery so we have a very long selling process and our salesforce were used to travelling to see our customers. Since Covid we have all learnt that we can live without travelling, but obviously it makes it more complicated, therefore it is so important to have a digital tool that can be shared through screens and still follow the same storyline to build up the same trust with our customers.”

Anne-Rieke Schweigatz, Global Product Marketing Lead, Syntegon

In summary

“The sales tool that POP created helps our Customer Account Managers to have much more efficient meetings. The customer journey is polished, allowing them to navigate and tailor the vast amount of content – including heritage, innovation, product range and cocktail recipes – quickly and easily, so conversations continue to flow naturally and are more productive.”

Thomas Seymour, Head of UK & Ireland Commercial Capability, Bacardi

Ultimately the need to increase more meaningful customer engagement is often the key driver to digitally transforming sales and marketing functions and sales tools help to do just that. And as seen here, an engaged customer is more receptive to buying from a sales rep who can tailor their sales conversations to their customer’s needs:

“74% of buyers choose the sales rep that was first to add value and insight.”

Corporate Visions

The investment in these tools can have an incremental impact on revenue in many ways from, increasing your sales team’s bandwidth to reducing the time and costs associated with travel.

However, with Gartner predicting in their Future of Sales 2025 report that by 2025, 80% of B2B sales interactions between suppliers and buyers will occur in digital channels more businesses are asking themselves: what the cost is of not digitalising their sales and marketing in order to stay ahead of the competition?

At POP we work with our clients to develop interactive sales experiences that deliver on business objectives and create more opportunity for your sales teams to differentiate themselves from the competition and sell effectively. To find out more about the first steps in the process, read our recent blog about our Customer-First Blueprint®.

If you’re interested in finding out more about how we have helped our clients, including Syntegon, Wienerberger, Bacardi and Coloplast to do this, get in touch. We’d love to talk you through our approach, chat through any sales challenges you are facing or perhaps you have a project in mind or just want to find out more. Get in touch we’re always happy to have a chat to discuss the possibilities. Alternatively follow us on LinkedIn for our latest updates.