SharePoint vs. Sales Enablement Tools

I’m just going to put this out there – and it won’t be the last time in this blog that I do – SharePoint is not the same as sales enablement. SharePoint is great at what it does, but it has limitations that affect the productivity and effectiveness of the marketing and sales teams

To that point…

SharePoint is not Sales Enablement

Although SharePoint allows you to manage, share and collaborate on content within your organization, it definitely has its limitations. If you’ve ever used it, you understand the frustration of trying to access a piece of content that’s been checked out. One of the biggest problems with it for sellers is the inaccessibility of content when it’s needed.

Without the right permissions and settings enabled, updating collateral can be nie-on-impossible. But the opposite is almost as damaging. By giving admin rights that allow sales reps to edit or personalize content, you run the risk that they’ll accidentally edit the master copy. But if you don’t grant them access, they can just download it and make the necessary changes and never return to SharePoint to get an updated version again. I’m sure you can see the problem with this. As products change and the collateral doesn’t, sales reps are likely to distribute outdated content to their customers and prospects.

SharePoint Pros and Cons

To be fair, we’d like to take a moment to look at all factors of SharePoint, the good and the bad. Below is a quick breakdown of the pros and cons.

Let’s take a look at what SharePoint is really good at doing.

1. It’s accessible to most teams as part of their Microsoft 365 package and integrates seamlessly with other Microsoft applications.
2. It’s customizable in terms of both setup and storage structure.
3. It more than capably stores documents for small teams and individuals.
4. It allows you to track the changes other users have made.
5. It can replace company intranets and provides site layers.

As is the case for most things, for all the good, there is also some bad. Especially in terms of how it works (or rather doesn’t work!) for the sales and marketing teams.

Let’s take a look at some of the cons as they pertain to sales and marketing:

1. It’s not designed as a sales or marketing tool.
2. It doesn’t play nice with other MarTech and CRM systems.
3. It can’t collect or report any data about how your sales team is using it, or how customers are engaging with your content.
4. Its content isn’t accessible offline.
5. Its built-in folder system is cumbersome and difficult to search and navigate.
6. It can’t automatically group or recommend content based on customer attributes

But fear not sales and marketing teams! There is a solution to these long felt pain points. Let’s explore it.

How Sales Enablement Solves SharePoint’s Limitations

Because SharePoint wasn’t designed to be a sales and marketing tool, it lacks many of the components that are necessary for a sales team to effectively sell.

Let’s take a look at the benefits a sales enablement system can bring to your team:

1. It allows the users to directly share content with customers from within the platform. A good sales enablement solution will allow users to send content directly from a built-in mail client, or from their own personal email client, such as Outlook or Gmail.
2. Sales enablement platforms integrate directly with your CRM systems, and utilize that valuable customer data to recommend the best content for your customers. It also streamlines the content publishing process by connecting your sales enablement platform to your marketing automation tool, saving you both time and resources.
3. One of the most important benefits to sales enablement is that users are able to access content when and where they need it. That means that even if they’re in the field, they don’t require WiFi or data to display content.
4. It’s WAY easier to use. Where SharePoint can be cumbersome to navigate and challenging to search, with its filters and tags, content in your sales enablement solution is easily found and grouped with cross functional attributes.

Sales and Marketing Teams Need a Tool for… well, Sales and Marketing!

By migrating your sales and marketing content from SharePoint into a sales enablement tool, you not only gain a great content management platform, you also gain the ability to capture valuable buyer insights, assign marketing content ROI, and provide sales training on demand to reps in the field.

Sales enablement, when deployed properly, can be a very effective strategy for improving the effectiveness and productivity the sales team. Though SharePoint is a good repository for content, it fails the sales team is a few major ways. The benefits of sales enablement to the sales and marketing teams are numerous.

Firstly, it provides valuable and actionable insights to buyer interest and pain points. The more information you have about a buyer, the better you’re able to meet their needs at each touchpoint.

The data analytics provided by sales enablement drive the conversation and elicit more interesting opportunities. By arming your sales team with a sales enablement tool, you’re setting them up for successful customer conversations.

Secondly, if a sales rep acts as a trusted advisor instead of a salesperson, they are more likely to build lasting relationships with their customers. Acknowledging customer pain points and providing valuable solutions can help build trust in both the sales rep and your brand.

Lastly, and this probably goes without saying, having better sales conversations help to drive revenue! In the modern sales cycle, great content is the fuel to help empower those interactions.

Ensuring your sales team has the most relevant and up-to-date content at their fingertips will allow reps to engage prospects with a personalized approach and allow them to tailor presentations to customer needs.

Having a sales enablement strategy in place also provides your sales team with the relevant content they need provide value to their customers at every touch point.

Meaningful customer conversations are key. In fact, we’ve seen revenue increase 20% or more with clients that are using sales enablement solutions to help guide those interactions.

Final Thoughts

The takeaway is that although SharePoint has its benefits for some organizational teams, your sales team isn’t one of them. They will be more efficient and productive using a platform designed with them in mind.

If you’re interested in learning more about Klyck.io and benefits of our B2B sales enablement platform, click the book a demo button below to talk to one of our dedicated sales specialists.

For more information, check out www.klyck.io/resources