Product enablement refers to the process of enabling customers to use all features of products. This can be done through customer support or marketing channels. However, it is often started with marketing as they are responsible for explaining how products work. We will be discussing why product enablement is so important for marketers to offer their customers an exceptional experience.

Product enablement is the intersection between product marketing and sales enablement. This isn’t about teaching your customers how to sell your product more effectively. It is about helping them understand how to do this. You need content they can use, not just content that looks pretty. What is product enablement exactly? Let’s take you through it!

What does Product Enablement mean?

This answer has two parts. There are two parts to this answer: the “what” and “why”.

Product Enablement is all about the “What”. It is about creating, delivering, and maintaining content that empowers employees to sell your products better.

Product enablement is a reason why your company might need it. These are the most common reasons for product enablement:

• Sales reps can close more sales deals by providing them with relevant content to help them prepare for customer inquiries or build better presentations.
  
• To help customers troubleshoot technical problems with your products by providing documentation, FAQs, webinars/demos/software downloads so they can learn how to use and get the most out of your products.
  
• Reps can provide additional content, such as whitepapers, guides, videos, and articles to help customers learn more about your product.
  
• You can combine any combination of the above!

You want customers to have products faster via self-service. However, your company also wants sales staff involved because it’s good business. In these cases, typically one part of an account team will focus on closing deals while another focuses on supporting/training/etc, from a more holistic perspective.

Knowing how much content is necessary is key. This will depend on many factors, including the size of your sales team, the number of customers, and the amount of customer data available. There are some important caveats to remember when using existing content is more efficient than creating new content for every occasion or need.

Who should participate in Product Enablement?

Anyone responsible to deliver or use Sales Enablement materials. They are likely to be included if you have a sales staff. There are also other players:

• Product Marketing is responsible for the messaging, so their input matters.
  
• Your CEO/CMO needs to know what it means.
  
• Sales management: If your sales reps don’t talk about something new, it could be a sign that they aren’t doing something right.
  
• Marketing leadership is essential because, without them, the word wouldn’t get out!
  
• The implementation is done by your internal support teams, such as Professional Services or Customer Success.
• Anyone who may wish to refer prospects to learn more.

What is the difference between product marketing and product enablement?

Product Marketing focuses on the strategic side of product marketing – determining what needs to be included in your products. It is about prioritizing technical specifications and features, not how you will sell them. These people are responsible for explaining to your customers how your product should be used. They will usually hand these Positioning Docs to salespeople once they have nailed down all details.

And then there is Product Enablement, or Sales Enablement is when someone else provides the deliverables that salespeople depend on every day. This doesn’t mean updating your website and writing another case study. Sales enablement materials can only be useful if they help drive sales. They should be easy to locate, and simple to use, and most importantly, they must drive decision-makers down to the bottom of the funnel.

The two teams mustn’t do the same thing. This will hinder your ability to market more qualified leads. Your product marketing should focus on benefits, while your product enablement must be focused on features.

What are the deliverables of Product Enablement?

Let’s look at an inbound marketing strategy for B2B companies. There are three main deliverables you can provide to prospects throughout their journey.

• Blog posts – often collecting some kind of email opt-in, such as a newsletter. They are usually found on company websites or sites such as Medium. However, they may also be collected into ebooks or guides.
  
• White papers – Here you will find everything someone has to say about GDPR. EBooks can be compared to white papers in that they are more concise and focused on a single topic.
  
• Guides/templates/visuals – These are how-to’s with templates, checklists, videos, case studies, and other helpful information.

It is often a combination of both the first and second. You will find blog posts trying to encourage people to sign up for your email list or download an ebook.

These are just a few examples of the types of documents that you could use. There are many ways to engage people depending on where they are in their journey. Perhaps someone is browsing your website but hasn’t downloaded anything. Information about your product, pricing, and FAQs is necessary. Perhaps someone is just starting to use your product. Do they require training documents like videos and tutorials? While there is some overlap, they mustn’t be all the same.

What are the four Ps of Product Enablement (Product Enablement)?

These are the foundation of Product Enablement.

• Positioning – This is similar to the positioning docs product marketing creates but this one is for salespeople (and hopefully support staff) to use when explaining why prospects should be excited about your product.
  
• Pitch Benefits, Not Features – Your content must show why prospects should care about the product you created. It can solve their problem, even if they don’t know what it is. This can be done by sharing stories from customers who have solved problems using your product. You can also show visuals of how people look when they use your software well. It is possible to talk about the things your customers use your product for.
  
• Play This is a similar positioning Docs but it shows how users use your product every day. This is a great way to get new employees up to speed on all the features your software has to offer. They will also be able to talk about the benefits of features, which can help them sell better. Here they might also need to provide examples or case studies.
  
• Program – Sales enablement documents are a guideline for who should purchase from you, and how to contact customer success or sales when they’re ready to make a purchasing decision. These documents can also explain which products/segments are most suitable for their company so that they don’t waste time selling products that are not right for them. This helps to create a plan for what and how to proceed.

Customer success is a key component of product enablement. It gives your brand an advantage over the rest. If you offer a free trial for a product, your customer will have to go through a 90-day journey before they contact customer service. They may have questions or difficulties setting up your software. Eventually, they will be ready to renew when it is time to pay.

Some people use your product immediately and don’t ask for any further information. These may not be as common. Sometimes customers can get stuck, especially when trying to figure out if their company would benefit from your product. It is a great idea to offer self-service support for customers who get stuck in the customer success process. This will allow them to figure out the next steps on their own.

Product Enablement

Where can I start?

Many tools can help you distribute this type of content. Here are some:

• Ambition
• Boomerang
• Close
• Datanyze
• Fusion
• Emissary
• Hubspot
• Salesforce
• Templafy

You can quickly find out who is viewing what content by using any of the tools above. You can even divide them by whether they have signed up for your product. Then you will know which pieces to prioritize.

People are more inclined to sign up for a trial and learn about the features. People sign up for the free plan and are less likely to be interested in feature comparisons or prices. However, these are still important things to include, even if they are just an aside. When people pay for your product, ideally after the first month, they can tell you about any other features or products that might be of interest to them.

This is only one example of the many ways people use this type of data. What you do with it depends on your business and your customers.

Are you ready to start? Reach out if you have any questions! There are many places you can discuss product enablement. Just remember that it is about the intersection between marketing and sales.

What problems does product enablement solve?

It is difficult to align sales and marketing, but communication between product management teams and marketing teams has become more problematic. These failures are minimized by-product enablement. These are just a few of the problems product enablement can reduce:

1. Marketing material is lacking

Product management must quickly roll out new features and enhancements. However, they aren’t always able to know which messages will resonate well with their customers. Although they could provide marketing mockups and source copy, they want something more flexible, can be updated easily, and does not require manual creation. This can be provided by marketing through style guides, stock photography libraries, and video & animated sources.

Tools will be needed to allow them to easily share content across different platforms and avoid duplicates. Similar materials are needed by sales reps. These materials include testimonials, feature comparisons, and decks.

2. Inadequate visibility for product updates

Marketing wants to roll out new material immediately, but they don’t know what the next steps will be. Product management must keep their team informed about any changes, enhancements, or bug fixes currently being developed. They require tools that allow them to share screenshots and videos with multiple users. This includes engineers who need to review the product. Sales reps need the same information, which can include feature comparisons, customer stories, and demo requests.

3. Inadequate campaign launch coordination

Last-minute changes in messaging and target audience segments are common for sales promotions. This can lead to problems when coordinating resources across marketing channels (e.g. webinars), sales outreach events (e.g. events), or product management (e.g. rules or restrictions on specific features). Product enablement makes this easier – by providing tools that allow product managers to quickly update FAQs and release notes, and marketing to create campaign landing pages. Sales to share a more attractive promo sheet.

4. Uncertain feature updates

Engineers communicate new features via their blogs, internal blogs, or email lists. However, it can be difficult for other teams to find the correct information at the right moment. Marketing must be able to subscribe to these posts to start pulling relevant content from the updates. Similar access is needed by sales reps to have additional materials available for demos.

5. Insufficient visibility to competitive products

Sales reps are constantly looking for ways to increase sales, but they can’t do this if they don’t have access to the latest feature updates and product comparisons. This can be addressed by product enablement, which gives reps access to company roadmaps and features comparison charts. They can see what’s coming next and how it may impact their deals. These resources are also necessary for marketing when creating collateral materials and campaigns. It is important to know where your product ranks relative to other products. Even if you are ahead in certain areas, it might still make you disadvantaged in others.

6. Frequent requests for changes

While product management is always updating features and fixing bugs, it can be easy for sales representatives to become stuck with frequent updates to their materials. The product enablement tool can make it easier for sales and marketing to create and update campaigns. You can also share assets more easily across teams. For example, product demo videos that have a script (or just an outline) so that your team knows which demos are being shown and how they will be presented.

7. Personalization is lacking

It can be difficult to customize the right assets for your customers because you might have different needs. Product enablement allows them to create multiple releases and lets them select which customers they want to target in their demos. Content management systems are also included to make it easier for users to be managed sales and marketing. This includes sharing user stories, testimonials, customer success stories, case studies, and so on.

In Conclusion

Product Enablement refers to a process that provides in-depth learning programs targeted to specific departments to improve employees’ knowledge and productivity. Assisting employees in large corporations with relevant product knowledge.