5 Sales Enablement Lessons from Netflix

Not all heroes wear capes. Exhibit A: Netflix.

Netflix has revolutionized the way that consumers find and watch movies and TV shows. The platform makes content easy to distribute and painless to find—all based on user data to customize and personalize the viewing experience.

Netflix has also made our favorite weekend activity of “binge-watching” socially acceptable, but that’s a separate conversation.

When we think of the root of the Netflix revolution, we can boil it down to a few words: simple and personalized. It’s not so different from the goal of most sales enablement initiatives. But what differs from Netflix is that the user adoption and churn rate of the platform (a measly 9% churn) runs circles around most sales enablement strategies and platforms. Why?

Could it be because most business platforms—sales enablement platforms included—are clunky, old-school and downright suck? That most are filled with features that users don’t actually care about? Or that the user’s experience isn’t personalized or easy to navigate?

We believe the answer to all of the above is a simple yes. So here are 5 lessons all sales enablement platforms should keep in mind, all from the most-used streaming service, Netflix.

Lesson #1: Make Content Distribution Easy

Netflix hosts a wide variety of movies and TV shows from dozens of studios, production houses, and TV channels. Netflix makes the process of getting these assets onto the Netflix platform easy and seamless for their partners.

If you want your sellers to use your sales enablement software, you must start at the back end with the people who upload that content into your tool. An effective sales enablement tool gives multiple people contributor rights. These contributors upload content, tag it, put it in groups, and assign them to collections so that the content is easy to find through navigation and search.

Your sales enablement platform must make content distribution easy for your:

• Marketing team
• Sales team
• Product managers
• Solution engineers
• Professional services leaders
• Channel managers

Lesson #2: Make Content Easy to Find

Netflix gives users a few ways to find movies and TV shows: navigation, recommendations, and search. The app interface makes it easy for users to browse by genre (documentaries, action, comedy, romance), by what’s popular (trending, top picks, critically acclaimed), by recency (new arrivals), and more.

The Netflix platform also lets users search for content by title. Their search bar auto-populates suggested titles based on the characters the user is typing, and based on titles that are in the Netflix catalog.

If you want your sellers to use your sales enablement content and resources, borrow a lesson from Netflix and make your content easy to find both by navigation and by search. This includes arranging your content into collections (product demo, case studies, product factsheets, sales scripts), and tagging content so that it’s easy to find by multiple search options (personal, funnel stage, asset type, etc.)

Lesson #3: Personalize the User Experience

Netflix delivers an awesome user experience because the platform quickly learns what you search for and what you watch. Netflix analyzes this data and feeds it to a recommendation engine that suggests movies and shows that are similar to what you have already searched for and watched.

Your sales enablement software should mimic this consumer experience by serving up content and resources that match how your sellers use the platform for buyer engagement. This includes:

• Most Popular: Content and resources that are most popular amongst sellers like you.
• Most Engaged: Content and resources that are most engaged with by buyers when sellers like you share it.

Lesson #4: Enable Content Favorites

One of the most popular features in Netflix is at the top of their page, called My List. This is where users store their favorite movies and shows for easy access. The My List feature means users don’t have to repeatedly search for the same shows. They simply find them once, and then add them to their list of favorites.

Your sales enablement platform should offer this same consumer functionality. It should enable your sellers to build collections based on their favorite pieces of content—or collections of content—they typically share with a particular buyer.

Lesson #5: Leverage Data to Glean Insights

Netflix is driven by data. They know what you watch and when you watch it. They know the shows you like, the devices you prefer to stream on, and how you find content on their platform.

Netflix uses this data to improve your user experience on their platform, but they also use it for strategic purposes, such as deciding which existing movies and TV shows Netflix should promote and which they should create to meet demand.

Your sales enablement platform should offer this same level of strategic insight into user behavior. Today’s best sales enablement platforms act like consumer-facing apps by measuring everything, including:

• Who in the organization is distributing what?
• What content is being viewed by sellers?
• What content are sellers sharing with buyers?
• What content and resources are buyers viewing?
• What content are buyers sharing with other people?
• What are the most-used tags, and the the least-used tags?

When you gather and analyze data like this around your sales enablement initiatives, your marketing team can gain insight into which content is effective or where there are gaps, while the operations team can see who is using the platform and who might need additional training.

Want a Sales Enablement Platform as Crazy Simple as Netflix?

Netflix transformed the way people find and consume movies and TV shows by making their platform easy to use from anywhere, on-demand and data-driven.

And Modus has transformed the sales enablement landscape by doing the same. We can’t guarantee that your sellers and buyers will start binge-watching your content, but we’re pretty sure you’ll be blown away by how simple and personalized our platform is.

We cut the B.S. of other sales enablement platforms. See how.