“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, …”
—Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

Looking at what is happening in sales these days, one can’t help but feel a mix of excitement and concern.

Excitement because three trends have reignited energy into sellers, said Yuchun Lee, Allego CEO and co-founder, during the company’s S3 event. Generative AI, digital selling, and team selling have created an electric buzz not felt since social media was invented.

But there’s also concern because sales, enablement, and marketing teams face serious challenges that impact their ability to attract and win over buyers. It’s harder to engage buyers, your competition is noisy, and buyers’ preferences have changed, Lee said.

This is where modern revenue enablement comes in, he said. This includes updating your buying process to meet buyers’ needs, ensuring your sales reps have the right training and skills, and having a robust, easy-to-use sales content management system.

If your company doesn’t do those things, customers will walk away. And in today’s economic climate, you can’t risk that.

Want proof that B2B sales teams are facing a wake-up call? Take a look at the following B2B sales stats that presenters shared during the S3 conference. Grouped into three key revenue enablement areas, they paint a picture of the challenges revenue enablement teams face.

All hope is not lost, though. Revenue enablement leaders and industry experts know how to address the challenges, and they shared their advice and success strategies.

8 Stats About Today’s B2B Buying Experience

• 67% of buyers are opting away from in-person interactions. (McKinsey & Co.)
• Buyers are up to 70% through their research before contacting a sales rep. (Forrester)
• Attention spans have dropped to just 8 seconds. (Microsoft)
• 10-20 individual stakeholders are on today’s buying teams. (Gartner)
• By 2026, 30% of B2B buying interactions will happen on Digital Sales Rooms (DSRs). (Gartner)
• 76% of customers expect consistent interactions across departments. (Salesforce)
• 87% of business buyers expect sales reps to act as trusted advisors. (Salesforce)
• 88% of customers feel the experience a company provides is as important as its products or services. (Salesforce)

Today’s B2B buyers want to be in control of the buying experience, Lee said during his S3 keynote address. They want a self-serve process in which they do their own research and determine their buying journey, contacting a sales rep only when they’re close to making a purchase decision.

With Digital Sales Rooms (DSRs), sellers can provide that experience, he said. DSRs enable sales reps to create a customized space filled with content for just that buyer or buying team. Sellers can provide a hyper-personalized experience that includes videos, reports, data sheets, product information, demos, and more. Buyers can pick and choose what they want to engage with, and sales teams can monitor that engagement, adjusting content as needed.

By 2026, 30% of B2B buying interactions will happen on Digital Sales Rooms (DSRs).
— Gartner

Not only do DSRs provide a modern buying experience, but they shorten the sales cycle. In the case of Alchemist, a learning and development company, their DSRs (which they call Digital Deal Rooms) cut the sales cycle from 60 days to 34.

DSRs allow “buyers to engage with personalized content and to engage sellers on their own terms,” Lee said. “You know this works because you are a consumer—a buyer—and you don’t want a salesperson calling you.”

5 Stats About Sales Skills Challenges

• Less than 50% of organizations believe a clear majority of sales teams have the skills to be successful. (McKinsey & Co.)
• 80% of sales leaders ranked analytical and quantitative skills among top capabilities to develop. (McKinsey & Co.)
• 54% of sales reps expect to miss quota. (Salesforce)
• 80% of sales leaders ranked analytical and quantitative skills among top capabilities to develop. (McKinsey & Co.)
• 54% of reps would not be willing to pay $1 for an hour of their manager’s time. (Salesforce)

Like your customers, your sales reps go on a journey: a learning and training journey. It starts with the first handshake when they accept the position. You must make sure their Day 1 experience is great and then continually provide moments that matter, panelists said during the Onboarding to Everboarding session at S3.

It’s time to reimagine the new hire experience, the panelists said. You want to provide the necessary information, provide step-by-step training, test what the reps know, provide a safe place to practice before going into the field, and give managers the resources they need to coach and guide their teams.

Less than 50% of organizations believe a clear majority of sales teams have the skills to be successful.
— McKinsey & Co.

Most importantly, sellers’ onboarding must be personalized. It’s all about the person you hired, so make the experience special to them.

“Know your audience and cater to their learning style,” said Jimmy McConville, Sr. Consultant, Training & Development at Lincoln Financial.

Using stories will further help sales reps and managers remember their training, added Allego President and co-founder Mark Magnacca.

“We can’t remember everything, but we can remember the stories,” he said.

Organizations must also provide monthly reinforcement, allow managers to easily coach reps from anywhere, give managers the ability to see skill abilities across their teams, do quarterly check-ins with reps, and measure the effect of learning on sales and demonstrate the value of learning.

“Sales must feel like breathing,” said Rebecca Martin, VP, Sales/RM Learning & Engagement at Fidelity Investments, during the session.

The right onboarding, learning, and training allows them to do that.

4 Stats About Sales Content Challenges

• There are on average 1,100 pieces of content available to each seller. (Forrester)
• Only 35% of decision makers say content from vendors shows understanding of their needs. (Forrester)
• 51% of sellers say they spend too much time on non-selling activities. (Forrester)
• On average, reps spend 11 hours per month looking for and modifying content for buyers. (Forrester)

The amount of content available to sellers is impressive. But there’s a problem: Sellers have a hard time finding it. Additionally, often the content sales reps can find doesn’t meet their needs. So, you end up with thousands of content pieces that sit dormant while sellers create their own content to give to buyers.

“Content tends toward chaos—anyone can create it. But chaotic content hurts sellers and buyers,” said Kathleen Pierce, principal analyst at Forrester, during her S3 presentation.

Sellers need access to four types of content, she said:

• How to work, how to use the tools, how to use the CRM (functional skills)
• How to sell (sales methodology)
• How to work here (at your company): formal content, processes, standards, how work within sales, department minutes/videos, peer-to-peer learning
• How to sell our solutions to our customers in our markets against our competition

And each type of content needs a different management strategy to ensure the content is current, relevant, and easy to find, she said.

It’s a daunting task, but Pierce said if you follow four simple steps, you can create “frictionless sales content.”

1. Staff up: Ask people to be on your content strategy team. Types of people you need include visionary leaders, trainers, change managers, information managers, people unhappy with the content management system, people who like to teach, and new users.
2. Listen up: Survey your stakeholders (sales reps, sales managers, and content contributors) to understand how they use content, their challenges, their roles, etc.
3. Assess the mess: Ask your stakeholders, “Where are you seeing issues with findability, relevance, and quality? Is content up to date, compliant, branded, and accurate?
4. Set the stage to engage:

• • Integrate the content into sales readiness
  • Make the content easy to find.
  • Allow sellers to customize content for each sale scenario.
  • Engage buyers with appealing, relevant content.
  • Engage sellers by listening to them and highlighting their successes.

“The best enablement programs are always centered on the people involved,” Pierce said. “After you staff up and understand your stakeholders, you can move to setting up content and tools.”

Transitioning to Modern Revenue Enablement

To address the above challenges, sales, marketing, and enablement teams must come together and transition to modern revenue enablement, Lee said. That involves:

• Curating the best stories and content and using AI to guide recommendations.
• Readying sales teams through video practice and drills and curating peer-created content.
• Engaging buyers by providing a personalized, self-service experience.

If you do those things, you will close the enablement gap, rise above noisy competitors, deliver experiences buyers want, and succeed.

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See Modern Enablement in Action

Take a digital tour of Allego Digital Sales Rooms and learn how DSRs can reduce deal cycles by up to 50% and increase buyer engagement by up to 20x.