Sales teams need the right resources to consistently close deals. While their skills and unique abilities will assist your sales professionals in achieving their goals, they also need the right content to help them address buyer concerns, and move consumers through the sales cycle.
Sales enablement content is therefore one of the most important resources sales professionals have when interacting with leads. The right content can help your teams tailor sales strategies to buyer personas and pain points, improve the performance of your marketing team, and increase sales.
Unfortunately, around 78% of buyers still say salespeople are unable to provide them with the content they need. So what type of content should you be investing in, and how do you create it?
What is Sales Enablement Content?
Sales enablement content is essentially the materials and resources your sales team uses to engage customers, explain the benefits of your products and services, and answer consumer questions. Any effective sales enablement strategy involves ensuring team members have access to the right “enablement materials” to assist them in closing deals.
After all, without the right strategic and informative content, sales teams are forced to try and come up with compelling pitches and respond to consumer objections on the spot. Sales enablement content doesn’t just include documents outlining product or service features or your go-to-market strategy.
It also includes content that shows the ROI of your solutions, proves your value over your competitors, and addresses common buyer concerns. The right combination of sales enablement materials can help a sales professional with every stage of the buying process.
The Most Important Types of Sales Enablement Content
Sometimes, your sales enablement content strategy can vary depending on your business, the kind of consumers you want to reach, and other factors. For instance, high-level enterprise buyers may be more likely to request case studies and statistics to see the benefits of your solution.
However, there are forms of sales enablement content that can be valuable to all teams, including:
1. Competitor Research
Many buyers will want to see examples of how your products or services can outperform competing solutions. As part of your sales enablement strategy, creating content that highlights how your offering can beat the competition can be extremely beneficial. In fact, 60% of salespeople say competitive pressure is one of their most significant sales challenges.
You could even create comparison charts, highlighting all of the biggest selling points and detractors of the products and services offered by your competition. This can help your sales professionals to handle objections quickly and effectively.
2. Pre-Call Checklists
The best sales rep knows how important research is before they engage with a consumer. While your sales enablement content might not be able to provide your professionals with everything they need to know about each individual prospect, it can guide them through the research process.
Your checklist might include things like, finding out the size of the prospect’s company, identifying their current pain points or challenges, or simply determining who the decision makers are in an organization. Sales professionals can combine these checklists with simple customer profiles and insights that you’ve already gathered into market demand.
3. Sales call Scripts
Sales scripts are one of the most common form of enablement content. Although it’s important to give sales professionals the freedom to adapt their conversations to each buyer’s values, call scripts can make it easier for sales teams to answer common questions and address pain points quickly.
You can create a sales script for each segment in your target audience, outlining ways to respond to common objections, and even build rapport with consumers. It’s also worth testing different sales scripts regularly, to see which ones drive the best results for your teams. You can gather data from every interactions about the best openers, objection responses and more.
4. Messaging and Email Templates
Reaching and following up with potential buyers is essential in any sales process. However, sales professionals can often waste a lot of time simply crafting simple outreach messages. Templates can save your team members a lot of effort.
You can create templates specially designed for cold outreach, when your employees are connecting with consumers for the first time over email or LinkedIn. You could also provide templates for follow-up messages. For instance, you might encourage teams to send prospects an email with links to your latest blog posts or case studies after an initial call. You can even track click through and conversion rates to improve your chances of more successful messages in future.
5. Demo and Explainer Videos
While some demonstrations require in-person guidance from an employee, you can still provide consumers with a lot of information through a pre-recorded videos. Around 73% of companies say they regularly use explainer videos in their sales collateral.
What’s more, 96% of consumers say they’ve watched an explainer video to learn more about a service or product. These videos can be extremely useful in answering customer questions, and showcasing the benefits of your solution in a more engaging format. Your marketing team can even use the content you create in their promotional strategies too.
6. Whitepapers and eBooks
Particularly useful in the B2B landscape, eBooks and whitepapers are excellent resources for educating your target audience. Unlike short videos and blogs, these pieces of sales content go into detail about the capabilities and features of your solution.
Around 60% of B2B buyers say they’ve looked at whitepapers during their research process, and 35% say they believe they’re the most valuable form of content marketing when they’re making decisions. If your customers often ask for more information on your solution, these assets could be ideal.
7. Case Studies and Testimonials
Probably one of the most valuable forms of sales enablement content, case studies and testimonials act as proof that your solution really can solve core customer problems. They tell the story of how your product or service assisted another company in achieving its goals.
Virtually every company will want to see evidence that your offering actually works, and case studies can help to accomplish this. Around 54% of B2B buyers say they regularly read case studies when making a purchase decision. They can also be a fantastic lead magnet, as 31% of buyers say they’re willing to share company details to access this form of content.
8. Articles and blogs
Blogs and articles aren’t just great for marketing teams looking to attract new leads to your business. They can also act as a valuable source of information for potential customers. For marketing purposes, blogs and articles generate organic traffic through SEO. They also help buyers to research your solution as they move through their purchasing journey.
For sales purposes, blogs serve as a valuable resource you can send to prospects if they have questions about your solution. They can help to position your sales representatives as valuable sources of information and guidance, earning the trust of decision makers.
9. Sales training materials
Simply providing your sales professionals with content they can use to connect with customers on a deeper level isn’t enough to optimize your sales strategy. The best sales enablement materials should also help professionals to hone their skills and improve their performance.
In-depth training and onboarding materials can teach team members how to use the other content in your resource kit correctly. Training materials can also assist professionals in following best-practice guidelines when closing deals, or connecting with new customers.
Tips for Better Sales Enablement Materials
Now you know what the most important types of sales enablement materials are, the next step is figuring out how to create content that’s beneficial to your employees. Here are some quick tips to help optimize your sales content management strategy.
- Identify your buyer personas: Make sure you have a detailed insight into your target audience before you start creating content. Your customers might be split into a number of different segments, and you’ll need to create customized content for each group. Think about everything from their common pain points to their purchasing behaviors, as well as what their customer journey might look like (i.e. which content and channels do they use?)
- Review your current sales process: Reviewing your existing sales process can give you an insight into where your employees are performing well, and where they need more help. For instance, if your team members are struggling to engage leads initially, they may need more help writing engaging outreach emails or messages. If they have a hard time closing deals, they may need assistance with crafting powerful pitches.
- Define sales enablement content goals: Determine what you want to accomplish with your sales enablement materials. Do you want to make your team members more confident in their role, help them to connect with a wider range of leads, or make them appear more trustworthy to prospects? Which metrics and KPIs will you measure to determine whether your content is driving the right results?
- Take a collaborative approach: When creating sales enablement materials, it’s always helpful to get insights from your sales reps. Ask them what kind of challenges they face most often, and what sort of content they find useful. Your reps know better than most what sort of resources they need to convert and engage consumers. Ask them to provide regular feedback on your content strategy.
- Keep updating and evolving: Never stop examining your sales enablement strategy and looking for ways to improve it. Monitoring crucial metrics and performance indicators will help you to determine where you need to continue tweaking and optimizing your content. Pay close attention to the results your teams achieve when using different types of content.
Improving your Sales Enablement Content
The right sales enablement content is crucial to the success of your sales teams. From blog posts and articles that educate employees, to helpful video demos, competitor comparisons, and even case studies, the right content can make a huge difference to your sales team’s performance.
Learn more about how you can train, engage, and empower your employees with the right skills today, by joining the HSE community.
