Sales enablement technologies like Seismic, Outreach, Salesloft and Salesforce’s Sales Engagement evolved to automate outbound selling. These tools help sales teams stay on track with their pipeline, timing outreach and using pre-built email templates or phone scripts to engage more prospects efficiently.
Many of these platforms include content libraries for marketing materials like flysheets or thought leadership pieces, but marketing’s involvement often stops there. While sales teams primarily use these tools, here’s how integrating marketing into their execution unlocks even greater impact.
Are sales enablement tools actually martech?
It’s a fair question, and the answer is both yes and no. While the sales team is the primary user of these tools, connecting marketing to how they’re used, tracked and optimized can lead to even better outcomes.
Marketers might view sales enablement technologies as hyper-personalized, one-to-one email marketing tools, where many of the same principles of a marketing automation platform apply.
- Should this tool connect to your CRM? Yes.
- Should you use personalization in the selling journey? Yes.
- Should recipients have some familiarity with your brand? Also yes.
When marketing takes ownership — or is at least heavily involved — these tools become even more powerful. Marketing can maximize opportunities, track engagement, nurture leads when needed and apply data to improve the sales process. As a bonus, marketing can help bridge the gap between sales and IT, ensuring data and integrations from other technologies enhance personalization within the sales enablement platform.
Dig deeper: How to optimize sales and marketing processes for efficient customer acquisition
Why marketing should be involved in sales enablement technology execution
Here’s how marketing can add value to sales enablement technology.
Aligning lead source to sales messaging
Since marketing sources leads for sales, it can ensure outbound cadences align with:
- Where buyers are in their journey.
- The content they’ve engaged with.
- Upcoming events or thought leadership that match their interests.
This tailors the selling experience to what the buyer is ready to hear.
More opportunities to nurture the sale
By incorporating marketing content — such as webinar invitations or thought leadership — into sales cadences, marketing can use tracking links to connect prospects back to other martech tools. This allows marketing to nurture interested buyers who aren’t ready to book a meeting yet and add them to targeted email or ad campaigns based on their engagement.
Ensuring emails reach the inbox
Struggling to determine if emails sent through your sales enablement technology are reaching inboxes — or being read at all? Marketing can provide expertise on best practices for email deliverability, authentication, and engagement tracking.
Having a reason to reach out
Martech offers valuable insights into buyer behavior, from website visits and email clicks to ad interactions, intent signals and event registrations. By integrating this data into your CRM, marketing can create a feedback loop that helps sales personalize outreach and prioritize the most engaged prospects — those most likely to convert.
Tracking success and improving performance
Marketers are eager to understand which leads are effective and which aren’t. By using data from sales enablement technologies, marketing can track engagement, identify prospects who need further nurturing and assess which lead sources drive high-value opportunities.
Most importantly, marketing can take on the heavy lifting of building sales cadences and outreach journeys that work across multiple teams — allowing sales to focus on what they do best: selling.
Dig deeper: How to align sales and marketing for revenue growth
When marketing should not be involved in sales enablement technology
Marketing can be a valuable partner in sales enablement execution, but some aspects of the strategy should remain with sales. In these cases, sales should take the lead:
Defining what’s being sold
While this is a business decision that should be shared with marketing, it’s ultimately marketing’s role to showcase which accounts align with the buyer profile— not to define the profile itself.
Coaching on sales enablement metrics
Marketers aren’t sales experts. While marketing can provide insights into sales trends — such as follow-up outcomes that highlight coaching opportunities — sales training and process improvements should stay with the sales team.
Building cadence timelines and content
Sales emails are entirely different from marketing automation emails. Writing for sales requires a different approach, where brevity is key. Sales also knows best which outreach actions to prioritize (i.e., call, email, LinkedIn request), how often to reach out and the ideal number of touchpoints in a cadence.
Personalization
Marketing can suggest relevant content for a prospect, but it shouldn’t replace the personal connection needed for a successful sale. Leaving space in email templates for personal touches — like a prospect’s location, favorite team or shared interests — helps sales build stronger relationships beyond the template.
Bringing marketing into sales enablement technology can drive better prospects into the funnel — perhaps it’s time to start viewing these tools as marketing assets, too.
Dig deeper: 7 ways to end the sales and marketing Catch-22
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# Why Marketing Should Be Responsible for Sales Enablement Technologies
In today’s competitive business environment, sales enablement technologies play a crucial role in driving revenue growth and improving sales performance. These technologies provide sales teams with the tools, content, and insights they need to engage prospects effectively and close deals faster. However, a common debate in many organizations is: Who should own sales enablement technologies—sales or marketing?
While sales teams are the direct users of these tools, marketing is best positioned to take ownership of sales enablement technologies. Here’s why marketing should be responsible for managing and optimizing these crucial systems.
## 1. **Marketing Creates and Manages Sales Content**
One of the primary functions of sales enablement technologies is to provide sales teams with relevant content, such as case studies, whitepapers, product brochures, and presentations. Since marketing is responsible for creating and curating this content, it makes sense for them to manage the platforms that distribute it.
By owning sales enablement technologies, marketing can ensure that sales teams always have access to the most up-to-date and relevant materials. This eliminates the common issue of sales reps using outdated or inconsistent messaging, which can negatively impact customer trust and brand perception.
## 2. **Alignment Between Sales and Marketing**
Sales and marketing alignment is critical for business success. When these two departments work in silos, inefficiencies arise, leading to lost opportunities and inconsistent messaging. By having marketing take ownership of sales enablement technologies, organizations can foster better collaboration between the two teams.
Marketing can use data from these platforms to understand which content and strategies are most effective in driving sales. This feedback loop allows marketing to refine messaging, create more targeted campaigns, and provide sales teams with the most impactful resources.
## 3. **Data-Driven Decision Making**
Sales enablement technologies provide valuable insights into customer behavior, content engagement, and sales performance. Since marketing teams are already skilled in analyzing data and optimizing campaigns based on insights, they are well-equipped to manage these technologies effectively.
By leveraging data from sales enablement platforms, marketing can:
– Identify which content resonates most with prospects
– Optimize lead nurturing strategies
– Improve customer segmentation and targeting
– Provide sales teams with actionable insights to close deals faster
This data-driven approach ensures that sales teams receive the right content at the right time, improving overall efficiency and effectiveness.
## 4. **Consistent Brand Messaging**
Brand consistency is essential for building trust and credibility with customers. If sales teams use outdated or off-brand materials, it can create confusion and weaken the company’s overall messaging.
By managing sales enablement technologies, marketing can ensure that all sales materials align with the company’s brand guidelines and messaging strategy. This consistency helps create a seamless customer experience from initial engagement to final purchase.
## 5. **Improved Lead Nurturing and Conversion**
Marketing plays a crucial role in generating and nurturing leads before they are handed off to sales. Sales enablement technologies can bridge the gap between marketing-generated leads and sales conversions by providing insights into prospect behavior and engagement levels.
When marketing owns these technologies, they can:
– Track how leads interact with content
– Score and prioritize leads based on engagement
– Provide sales teams with contextual information to personalize outreach
This seamless transition from marketing to sales ensures that leads are engaged at the right time with the right message, increasing the likelihood of conversion.
## 6. **Scalability and Long-Term Strategy**
Marketing teams are responsible for long-term brand positioning and go-to-market strategies. Sales enablement technologies should align with these broader business objectives to ensure sustainable growth.
By owning these technologies, marketing can:
– Ensure that sales enablement tools support long-term business goals
– Continuously update and optimize content based on market trends
– Integrate sales enablement with other marketing technologies (e.g., CRM, automation tools) for a unified approach
This strategic oversight helps organizations scale their sales efforts while maintaining a consistent and effective approach.
## **Conclusion**
While sales teams are the primary users of sales enablement technologies, marketing is best suited to manage and optimize these platforms. By taking ownership, marketing can ensure that sales teams have access to the right content, data, and tools to close deals effectively.
With marketing in charge of sales enablement technologies, organizations can achieve better sales and marketing alignment, improve lead conversion rates, and maintain brand consistency. Ultimately, this leads to a more efficient sales process, higher revenue, and a stronger competitive advantage.
For companies looking to maximize the impact of their sales enablement efforts, placing marketing at the helm of these technologies is a strategic move that drives long-term success.
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