As a previous founding partner at a digital agency, I know most small- to mid-size advertising and marketing agencies run on tight margins. Hours must be spent on billable client activities, leaving little time to prospect for clients.
Implementing a sales enablement program and system will change all that. It will help you find more time to market your agency, close a higher percentage of deals and generate more billable client hours.
Sales enablement does this by:
- Organizing, streamlining and optimizing your marketing and sales processes
- Developing more effective sales content and messages
- Transforming your agency personnel into expert sellers
- Simplifying processes and procedures so you can find more time to sell and serve clients
- Providing a new service you can offer to clients.
Let’s take a look at each of these benefits in more detail.
Improve your sales and marketing
- Do you scramble to develop proposals?
- Is it difficult to find slides, samples and other support materials for client presentations?
- Does it take too much agency staff time to prepare pitches?
If you answered YES to these questions, your situation is similar to many advertising agencies and marketing firms.
Developing RFPs, pitches, decks and sales presentations is time-consuming. In most cases, it’s a last-minute rush that pulls agency staff away from doing billable work.
A sales enablement system makes it easy to organize your sales-related content so you can find the most current pieces any place, any time, even without a wifi connection. This helps you develop presentations and pitches more efficiently. It also provides easy access to materials if unexpected questions or requests come up during sales meetings.
In addition, sales enablement will get you to finally lay out and document your end-to-end sales process. Once you do that, you can link content and materials to every step of it. This will give you a better perspective on how your agency sells. You can categorize which messages and pieces support RFPs, new business pitches or finalist presentations. You won’t have to reinvent how you sell every time a new opportunity comes up.
It takes time to set up a sales enablement program and system. However, it’s a smart investment that will pay off in greater efficiency and more wins for your agency.
More effective content and messaging
- Are your agency’s marketing and sales messages differentiating it from the competition?
- Is your sales process efficient and effective?
- Do your marketing pieces resonate with prospective clients?
If you answered NO to any of these questions — or aren’t sure — your agency needs sales enablement. It supplies the data and metrics required to optimize all aspects of your sales process, including messages, materials and training. You’ll have a clear picture of what’s working and what’s not, so you’ll know what improvements you need to make.
Taking a disciplined approach to sales enablement is a proven way for advertising and marketing firms to close more deals. Can you think of any better investment to make in the success of your agency?
Expert sellers
- Is your sales team smaller than you’d like it to be?
- Do your reps feel overwhelmed?
- Are your pitches falling flat because art directors, writers, and other non-sales personnel don’t present well?
If you answered YES to any of these questions, a sales enablement system can help transform your sales and account reps into world-class pros. You’ll be able to supply them with sales training aligned with their roles. In addition, you can offer presentation skills training to everyone at your agency.
Learning doesn’t have to take up valuable billable work time. Employees can do it during their own hours and you’ll be able to monitor progress and completion.
The training offered as part of your sales enablement program will improve the selling skills of your reps and make everyone working for your agency solid presenters. Improving these skills will help bring in more new accounts.
Streamline processes and procedures
- Do your clients demand multiple rounds of changes and edits?
- Is version control an issue?
- Are your traffic people and project managers overwhelmed and overworked?
If you answered YES to any of these questions, a sales enablement system can help organize your agency and make it more efficient. That’s because the benefits of a system aren’t limited to sales and marketing functions. It can also support your project and traffic management teams.
The same functionality that helps you manage all your sales collateral can be simply and easily customized to handle your client creative assets, as well. You’ll always be able to find the latest drafts and versions. You’ll save time by not having to sort through countless documents. You’ll also avoid making errors by editing or working off outdated files.
For most smaller and mid-sized agencies, getting multiple uses out of a single system is a cost-effective way to gain added value. It increases the return on the investment in your sales enablement system.
New service offering
- Are you looking for additional ways to generate revenue?
- Do you want to offer new services to your clients?
- Are you trying to keep up with your competitors?
If you answered YES to any of these questions, you should be offering sales enablement as a service to your clients.
Most marketers and salespeople understand the value of sales enablement, however, they don’t have the knowledge needed to implement a program or select and install a system. That’s why they will welcome having your agency experts take over this role for them.
This could be a big revenue generator for you. At the same time, it will deepen your relationship with clients because you’re connected to them through their sales enablement function and the system that manages it.
If you don’t offer sales enablement to your clients, your competitors will.
Mobile Locker offers a sales enablement system designed to meet the needs of marketing and advertising agencies and their clients. It can be customized to work for virtually any type of agency, no matter what it specializes in or the industries it serves. You owe it to yourself to check it out.
Contact us to find out more about how you can use Mobile Locker to deliver amazing clients work and generate more revenue for your agency.
