(upbeat music)
- Hi, I'm Eric Keiles, Chief Marketing Officer for Square 2.
We help companies like yours,
develop powerful sales and marketing programs
to drive revenue.
In a recent meeting one of our clients said,
"Gosh! I wish I had a recipe
for a good sales enablement strategy."
So this is Episode Three of a seven part series
about making the perfect recipe
to build a sales enablement program.
In today's session, we're gonna talk
about what is a sales enablement content strategy.
There's a company called Accent Technologies
and they did a survey that says that 95% of buyers
choose a solution provider who provides ample content
to help navigate through each step
of the sales process, 95%.
While no one will deny that sales and marketing
has lots of fields that overlap each other,
they really use a lot of jargon like sales enablement.
So I wanna cut through and really make you understand
what content is necessary to provide your sales team
to help close more deals.
If you're not developing a sales enablement strategy
you're leaving some money on the table.
If we've learned anything in this age of content marketing
it's simply that creating content doesn't cut it.
Without a roadmap and a fluid content strategy
content marketing initiatives are doomed
before they even launch.
Companies spend untold hours really going
and creating blog posts and landing pages,
white papers and eBooks content aimed at customers
while continuing on the buyer's journey.
But few spend a lot of time really standing
in the shoes of their prospects and creating materials
that the sales department could use to help close the deal.
And that's a huge missed opportunity.
There are several benefits by really taking the time
to create a sales enablement content strategy.
Number one, your brand is consistent,
from your website to what the marketing team is pushing out
to the sales teams activities and conversations,
it's all the same, and that makes prospects feel comfortable
in the sales process.
Also, number two is
that you have a cohesive sales and marketing team.
So they're working together on common goals.
They're not fighting each other and having an argument
in the parking lot about who's doing what.
Also as a third point, that gives a clear understanding
of the ideal customer.
Marketing puts it out there,
sales reports back on how it's doing
and they can really dial in
on attracting the perfect client to your firm.
Also, by having this back and forth conversation
it's easier to identify the high value leads,
"Which people do we wanna spend time on
and which people do we wanna qualify out?"
Also, it really helps the sales and marketing team
have a better adoption
of all of the customer focus sales activity.
We don't wanna show up and throw up.
We wanna really listen to what the sales team is hearing
from the prospects and then design the program around that.
And then finally, if you have the sales and marketing team
working together to create the right content
then we could really map towards our KPIs,
"How many people are moving through funnel?
How many deals are closing?"
And all the metrics we're gonna look at in Episode Seven.
These are just a couple of the ways
that sales enablement strategy
can help your team really improve performance.
But as we drill down a little deeper
the benefits only increase.
What do I mean by that?
Well, by simply implementing a sales enablement strategy,
it's just not enough, you gotta have a content plan
as part of that strategy that really drives results.
So let's talk about what content enables sales.
Well, when it comes to sales enablement,
people think of regular sales materials
like informative blog posts, case studies,
customer testimonials, one-pagers they can email people
and those are important, don't get me wrong,
but that's just the tip of the iceberg
on what kind of content you really have to put in the hands
of your sales team.
Here are seven different kinds of content
that you might wanna consider creating
to really help your sales folks.
One is competitor research and analysis materials.
If we don't know what's going on in the competition
we can't sell against that and we can't position ourselves
as the obvious choice to do business with.
So provide the sales team with lots of interesting messaging
and offers that the competitors have
so they know what's out there in the competitive field.
Also, people put a lot of time into creating content
about themselves
but you should make customer centric content.
"What does it mean to work with us
and how we help other customers like you?"
A good example is like a case study.
Case studies are great because they explain the challenge
of what the client had that required a solution,
how they executed and that way that prospects
can really empathize with their problem
and how your company solved it.
Blog posts might seem obvious but certain blog posts
are aimed at the bottom of the funnel
or the end of the buyer's journey.
And those could be repurposed in the sales process as well,
collect some really good ones,
put them in your archiving software system
and then give access to the sales team
so they can use them in the right situation.
eBooks and white papers also typically thought of
as marketing tools, but really they're the perfect things
to support a sales conversation.
Sales reps can use those to support a meeting
or a question that a prospective client has.
Sales scripts.
Now I'm not talking about read this script.
I'm talking about a series of prescribed talking points
that the salespeople can use to really go through
and tell the story exactly the way that the company
wants to told.
It's important to remember that for sales scripts
they have to be effective sales enablement solutions.
They're not like the script you read but a guide
that can take them through a great conversation
that you've prefilled out strategically.
Social media, send them a post on LinkedIn
that got 300 likes or lots of comments on it.
And prospects will start to feel really safe that,
"Wow, these people have a big following.
They know what they're doing.
They're subject matter experts and social can support that."
And then finally don't forget to create
some really great onboarding content for your sales team.
I'm not talking about just having a manual
but things that they can continue to use
throughout the sales process that will make
that voice and tone of the company are consistent
and all those things they did in the onboarding process
carried through their career.
So listen, stand in the shoes of your prospect.
Ask yourself what questions or challenges they'll have
in the sales process
perform a gap analysis to see where the opportunities are
that you can plug those gaps with content
and then let marketing create and organize
all of that content for your sales team
so that your sales team has every piece of content they need
in every situation.
Hey, I hope I got you thinking differently
about sales enablement and how content can help you.
If you wanna hit me up for a meeting
I'd be more than happy to chat with you
and we could talk about building a recipe
for your sales enablement strategy.
Thanks so much.
(bright music)