An Unusually Effective Sales Enablement Method

Gary Vaynerchuk, whether he knows it or not, is offering marketing professionals a great sales enablement method play by play.  The lesson couldn’t come at a better time as mistrust of content marketing, especially in the B2B and enterprise SaaS sales space, is on the rise.  The beauty of the sales enablement lesson being laid out by GaryVee?  Simplicity.

This post about Gary Vaynerchuk will introduce him to you if you are unfamiliar with the successful self-made entrepreneur.  But to understand the genius of GaryVee you have to appreciate that he works tirelessly to figure out all aspects of new media options.  He takes what he learns and puts them to use for his own business efforts.  His media firm, Vaynermedia, helps clients leverage the value of what Gary himself has refined.  And all along the way Gary is educating his millions of fans and followers on what is important and what they should be paying attention to. 

The beauty of what Gary does with his content development and distribution is that it offers up an example of successful use without being overtly prescriptive.  While Gary certainly offers his opinions and insights, he is not serving up a cookie cutter approach nor a recipe to be followed verbatim, but rather a theme that fans and followers can use to create their own variations and applications.

How does this extrapolate to sale enablement methods?  Let’s first take a look at a couple of recent examples from Gary. 

Real-time and Real World “Work With Us.”

As part of his video and podcast series #askgaryvee, Gary offers up answers to questions that his team curated from social media.  The topics include marketing, social media, entrepreneurship, launching a small business, hiring superstars, creating a personal brand, launching products, and even staying healthy.  In this brief clip from a recent episode of the show, we catch a very real glimpse into what it is like to work with his media firm.  Notice that right away Gary does a quick on the spot analysis of questioner’s reach, and offers tactics that they should be focused on.  We immediately get a sense of the personality and the drive of the firm that Gary leads.  

Purposeful Repurposing

Gary has released a book based upon his Q&A #askgaryvee show, aptly titled #AskGaryVee: One Entrepreneur’s Take on Leadership, Social Media, and Self-Awareness.  The book launched in March and for about a month leading up to the book launch, Gary was on an all-out promotional blitz to drive early sales of the book.  Most interesting is how Gary leveraged his social followers to help get the word out about the book, review it, buy it, and just help ratchet up the excitement over the launch.  Content created once, #askgaryvee, gains life and Gary gains revenue. 

Saturation and Creative Execution

As part of his promotional blitz, Gary conducted a Reddit AMA (ask me anything) and broadcast the AMA over Facebook Live, the live streaming feature for Facebook Influencers.

He ran an 8-hour book sell-a-thon over live streaming apps Meerkat and Periscope.

Most interestingly he crossed over social platforms by creating contests on the fly for his fans and followers.  His Snapchat followers had to take a screen grab of a Snap and post it to their Instagram feed with a specific hashtag. Thousands of entrants leading to most likely hundreds of thousand impressions if not millions.

Thinking of a New Sales Enablement Method

To adequately consider these examples in the light of sales enablement it is important to understand that today b2b and enterprise sales reps no longer have the luxury of relying on an army of talented individuals that lend them sales support.  In addition to that, a majority of content marketing is not at all aligned with the stages in the sales process.  But most importantly our buyers have significantly more control over the sales process than our sales reps.  Enablement is needed desperately in this climate, and the seemingly unrelated example of Gary Vaynerchuk’s tactics offer a solution.

A Matter of Increased Team Collaboration

The days of poking through some vast and useless intranet or document management system are well behind us.  There is a need for control and administration over detailed information of course, but our sales reps have to be engaged and informed as quickly as possible.  While there are internal communications tools like Slack, Hipchat or Yammer, the odds are that your salesforce is more active on at least two or three social networks.  Using the cadence that a Gary Vaynerchuk uses, coupled with the level of intimacy and transparency that he conveys can be leveraged across social platforms to keep our sales force abreast of the story we are telling to our would-be customers.  This also helps the sales team better understand how specific areas of our product functionality or service delivery create a viable solution for our customers. 

And here is the best part.  These are public media channels.  We can and should be killing two birds with this same stone by creating the content that is outwardly focused.  By speaking directly to our customers, the sales team inherently improves their mastery over what matters to the customer. 

It Is All Engagement and Story

Sales enablement methods are treated too often like checklist items.  Something a marketing team has to do to free them up to get back to the business of generating leads.  This is another reason Vaynerchuk’s approach is a master’s course in sales enablement.  The story matters, and on every single broadcast or post, Gary communicates the drama of his story.  We need to indoctrinate our sales colleagues in the story of our products and services.  What better way than to tell our story anew every single month, week, day or hour?

Syndicate Against Sales Stage

The sales process flows, it doesn’t stand still.  Nor should our sales enablement methods.  This approach also allows marketing to syndicate content against stages of the sales process, and to select a new series or platform that is targeted towards that stage. Consider #askgaryvee.   #askgaryvee is a show oriented to the frequently asked questions of those trying to develop or improve their businesses.  Another show from Gary, The #dailyvee, is a close examination of Gary’s hands on and day to day activities.  This isn’t a Q&A channel; it is a lead by example channel.  Two different audiences that may overlap, but are clearly exclusive.  

If you are a fan of Gary Vaynerchuk, then the next time you tune into one of his broadcast take a look from this new perspective.  If you are not a fan, then your task is simpler.  Tune in.