Sales enablement has become a priority for many companies across the globe. And that is not without reason. It has helped companies to manage the sales function more effectively compared with the traditional process. You can regard sales enablement as a process of marketing and sales teams working together to achieve effective sales.
Marketing's Role in Sales Enablement Content Creation
The most remarkable support of sales enablement is developing buyer-centric content for the salespeople. When the marketing team focuses on developing impactful content for the sales team, it can alleviate the most prominent hindrance—salespeople spending more time on non-sales activities, such as finding relevant content. A study shows that salespeople spend around 65% of their time in non-selling activities. And that is also the area where sales enablement comes into play.
The marketing team creates content for the sales team involving every aspect of the buyers’ journey. Such content falls into three principal categories:
Content for Lead Generation
Content such as–blog articles, downloadable guides, and social media posts—are intended for increasing brand awareness and lead generation.
Content for Sales Conversions
The collaborative content created by both the marketing and sales teams—like product videos, case studies, and white papers–is attractive, informative, and persuasive to appeal to the prospective customers.
Content for Internal Sales Support
Such content is primarily intended for the sales and support teams. And the content mostly involves—resources on the latest strategies and tactics, video tutorials on how to use the sales tools, data, and FAQ sheets on the products and services.
9 Essential Content Types For Sales Enablement To Get More Deals
Here are 9 sales enablement content types that are effective for closing more deals:
Informative Blog Posts
Blogs are meant for buyers as well as salespeople and can be used at any stage of the buyers’ journey. Blogs educate prospects about their problems and potential solutions, and also help salespeople to figure out the type of content that attracts leads. So the salespeople can understand the needs and preferences of prospects.
Case Studies
Like blogs, case studies also help both buyers and salespeople. Through case-studies, sales reps can understand the needs and preferences of prospects, and that helps them to understand their target market better. A successful customer story in a case study can help a sales rep to understand the customers, and also it can persuade a prospect to turn into a customer.
Social Media Content and Messages
A study shows that social media posts influence 81% of consumers’ purchasing decisions. Social Media Content and Messages influences buyers’ purchase decisions significantly, despite not being a part of the conventional sales toolkit.
Email campaigns
Prospects do not open all emails they receive. Studies show that only 24% of emails are opened. To deal with the challenge, the marketing team should provide the sales team with a variety of email templates for every stage of buyers’ journey so that sales reps can use the right ones for the different prospects.
eBooks and Whitepapers
E-books and white papers are among the most effective content for marketers to generate leads. These are research-intensive and long-format content pieces. Studies show that 44% of marketers consider whitepapers as the most useful resource for lead nurturing.
Sales Scripts
Unavailability of the necessary information often hampers salespeople in their selling process. A study that showed that 42% of sales reps find they do not have enough information before making a call. Sales scripts help salespeople by providing the necessary information during their interaction with prospects. Sales scripts are a set of prescribed talking points that sales reps can use at any stage of the sales funnel.
Product Videos
Videos on product information enable prospects and customers to understand the products better. Videos also create stronger bonds between customers and sellers. According to a study, click rates of emails with video content are 300% higher than the regular emails.
ROI Reports
ROI Reports are great ways of making salespeople understand how their performances are impacting the company. So the reports should not be kept confined to the marketing and finance departments but also be shared with them.
Training Documents
Salespeople often forget the training knowledge. A survey shows that 84% of all sales training is lost after 90 days, meaning wastage of the involved costs. So, the marketing department should create easy to understand training documents so that sales reps find it easy to retain the information.
Conclusion
Sales enablement is an excellent way of increasing your lead conversion and hence boosting your revenues. By providing the salespeople with the right content for the right time during the buyer’s journey, an effective sale enablement platform helps salespeople to utilize their maximum time in actual selling. So, it is all about when you start implementing it.
