With nearly 80% of B2B sales requiring multiple interactions, it’s easy to see how the right talking points and supplemental materials can influence a customer’s decision. This is where a sales enablement content strategy can help.
Sales enablement is the process of giving your sales reps the knowledge, content, and tools needed to engage target customers successfully. There are various types of content that can be used for sales enablement, each designed to support the sales process in different ways.
In this article, we dive into sales enablement content types that can be used to support sales teams and land more leads and why developing a sales enablement content strategy is important.
Sales enablement is a continuous cycle
Formal, event-based sales training is a thing of the past. Today, sales reps need access to training at a moment’s notice.
- Onboarding. Onboarding is no doubt an essential part of equipping new hires with information about your company, product, and processes, but don’t stop there.
- Coaching. Once a rep is onboarded, which can take up to a year, managers should take on the role of a coach, identifying knowledge gaps and providing continuous, constructive feedback.
- Ongoing learning. To ensure sales readiness at all times, reps should constantly be learning through refresher training, quizzes, and industry updates.
- Results. By using a customizable sales training LMS, you can track learner performance, making adjustments to the curriculum as needed to improve results.
Companies that encourage continuous training practices see 50% higher net sales per sales rep (The Brevet Group), so think of training in terms of a marathon, not a sprint.
What are sales enablement resources?
For sales teams to land deals, it’s essential that they have sales enablement resources they can use throughout the sales process. Sales enablement content typically includes materials that are used in different stages of the customer journey, from initial contact to closing deals.
Your marketing team plays a key role in creating sales enablement content types that will resonate with and nurture leads, helping salespeople drive more business.
The types of content can vary greatly, but all should inform buyers about the value of your company’s products and services and convince them to make a purchase. Ultimately, it's about creating an emotional connection between the buyer and the brand.
Now, let’s take a look at some specific sales enablement content types that can be used to support a sales team.
1. Product demonstrations
Product demonstrations are an excellent way for sales teams to show prospective customers the benefits of their products and services. These materials can come in many forms, such as videos, brochures, or interactive presentations. The goal is to provide potential customers with a better understanding of how the company's offerings can solve their business problems.
2. Webinars
Webinars are another great content type for sales teams. These events provide an opportunity to engage with potential customers more personally and showcase the company's expertise. Plus, they provide a platform for gathering customer feedback and addressing any questions or concerns about the company's products and services.
3. Case studies/testimonials
Case studies can be a powerful way to share the success stories of customers and how they have benefited from your company’s products and services. This type of sales content enablement demonstrates how the company's offerings can lead to tangible results. They also serve as social proof for prospective customers as they often include testimonials.
4. White papers
Sales teams can also use content such as white papers to persuade prospects. White papers are in-depth, informational reports that present a problem and provide a solution that your company offers. As Investopedia puts it, “A white paper provides persuasive and factual evidence that a particular offering is a superior product or method of solving a problem.”
5. Blog posts
Blogs are one of the most popular forms of content marketing. This type of content establishes your company as an authority. Blogs serve as a sales enablement resource that reps can send to prospects, which can help them better understand your solutions or build a business case.
6. Email templates
Email templates are pre-written messages that a sales representative can easily customize before sending to a lead. Rather than writing an email from scratch each time a rep needs to reach out to a prospect, email templates provide a base to work with, saving time and brainpower.
7. Sales scripts
For sales scripts to be effective, they should be used as a guide rather than read word-for-word to a prospect. The best sales scripts aren’t dense paragraphs, but key talking points and responses to common sales objections.
Why you need a sales enablement content strategy
Sales enablement content equips your sales team with the information they need to understand the products and services they’re selling and communicate the value proposition clearly to prospects. Given the endless choices buyers have today, sales enablement resources help reps successfully convince and convert prospects.
Here are several benefits you can expect from creating a sales enablement content strategy:
- Aligns marketing and sales teams. Marketing and sales should collaborate to create content that’s not only informative and promotional, but persuasive.
- Empowers sales reps. With a sales enablement strategy in place, sales reps are empowered with the resources they need to excel at their jobs.
- Creates consistency in communication. A content strategy ensures sales communication is consistent no matter what is being shared or who is sharing it.
- Clarifies key details about target customers. When sales reps know who they’re talking to at a psychographic level, they can more effectively sell.
- Efforts can be tracked. You can measure the effectiveness of your sales enablement strategy by establishing goals and tracking key performance indicators (KPIs).
Simply implementing a sales enablement program isn’t enough. If there’s no strategy behind it, you’re aimlessly creating content with no end goal in mind.
How to identify if your sales enablement strategy is performing as expected
To identify whether a specific initiative is performing as expected, sales teams need to measure and analyze the performance of their content over time. KPIs provide essential insights into your sales enablement content’s performance.
KPIs may include metrics such as open rates, page views, sign-ups, downloads, and customer feedback surveys. For example, page views indicate how many people have seen a specific piece of content, while sign-ups and downloads indicate how many people are actively engaging with the content. These metrics help salespeople know where prospects are in the sales pipeline.
KPIs can also identify areas where content is lacking, so it can be improved. By tracking and analyzing KPIs, companies can gain valuable insight into how their content is helping them achieve their goals and use this data to inform their sales enablement content strategy.
Empower your sales team with a sales enablement content strategy
By leveraging sales enablement content strategically, companies can better engage with prospects and convert them into customers. And with the right tools, such as sales enablement software like Spoke®, you can measure and analyze your efforts to ensure you reach your goals.
Between information overload and airtight schedules that leave no wiggle room, salespeople are in dire need of a better training solution. At Unboxed Training & Technology, our sales enablement and training programs deliver short bursts of engaging content, available on demand, so learning fits into your team’s sales workflow. And because it works with your LMS or Spoke®, getting up and running is easy.
Supercharge your sales enablement content strategy and reach your goals faster than ever before with our custom and turn-key sales training solutions.
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