Your salespeople shouldn’t be gently tapping on candidates’ doors, politely hoping that they’ll pay attention.
Your salespeople should be kicking the door down, demonstrating that, in no uncertain terms, that your business has a product or service that’s worthy of their time.
Cold calling isn’t going to get you there. Your existing sales collateral isn’t going to get you there.
You need high-quality sales enablement content – sales aids that will help your salespeople at all stages of your sales process.
By 2026, 65% of B2B organisations will transition from intuition-based to data-driven decision making. To thrive in this new sales landscape, your salespeople should be armed with data-orientated sales content that tangibly exemplifies your selling points, making your business an irresistible choice for any prospect.
In this blog, we’ll run through the basics of sales enablement, discussing the importance of high-quality sales funnel content and ensuring that your salespeople have the tools they require to truly thrive (growing your business in the process).
What is sales enablement?
Sales enablement is the process of equipping sales teams with the tools, resources, content, and strategies they need to sell more effectively.
It involves providing your reps with sales content that aligns with the buyer journey, enabling them to engage with prospects in a personalised and impactful way. The goal is to improve sales productivity, shorten sales cycles and drive revenue growth by ensuring that sales teams have everything they need to succeed.
Your sales enablement content should be tailored specifically to help your sales reps in any scenario. It should answer common prospect questions, ensuring that your salespeople can quickly deliver a professional-looking document that adds weight to what they’re saying, effectively validating their claims.
Common frustrations we see (pretty much on a weekly basis) from our clients’ sales reps are:
- Our sales collateral is rubbish (they usually use stronger language!) and out of date.
- We have to create our own collateral, which takes a lot of time and never turns out great.
- We need content that helps at different stages of the sales funnel, not just a brochure.
- We have zero proof points or case studies.
- We don’t have a consistent way to answer difficult questions or specific objections.
- I spend more time making sales aids than I do selling at this point!
With this in mind, what kinds of sales enablement content do you actually need?
What types of sales enablement content do you need?
Your sales enablement content should be fully branded, professionally designed and packed with thought-provoking, convincing copy and stats. You should focus on producing:
- Product/service guides – Detailed infographics or videos explaining the features, benefits and use cases of your products/services. We recommend including data that demonstrates the impact of your solution.
- Case Studies – Real-world examples of how your product or service has helped customers, showcasing success stories and prominently featuring relevant stats and data (cost savings or increased ROI are really impactful!).
- Competitor comparison sheets – Breakdown of how your product or service stacks up against competitors, highlighting the advantages of choosing you.
- One pagers – Quality summaries that can be sent to prospects, making it easier to share with teams/C-suite.
- Sales presentation templates – There’s nothing worse than an outdated sales deck. Fully branded, slick and seamless presentation design makes a huge difference for any salesperson.
- Email templates – Pre-crafted email content for outreach, follow ups, or nurturing leads. This not only ensures that your messaging remains consistent across your team, but it also helps save your salespeople a significant amount of time.
- FAQs and objection handlers – Prepare answers to common questions or objections prospects may raise. It’s very impressive if your sales reps can deliver a quality document that succinctly answers a question; it makes it clear they’re prepared.
- Demo videos – Short video walkthroughs demonstrating the product’s features and benefits. Again, these demo videos can be tailored to answer common questions, or to show off the most popular features.
- Whitepapers and eBooks – In-depth content providing insights on industry trends or relevant challenges. The benefits of this are twofold: establish your brand as thought leaders, and boost your search engine rankings.
- ROI calculators – Tools that help prospects calculate the potential return on investment from your solution. ROI calculators are incredibly powerful and are a great feature to have on your website.
For your salespeople, you may also consider:
- Sales scripts – Prewritten talking points or scripts to guide conversations with prospects. Sales scripts are fantastic for getting new salespeople up to speed, helping them hit the ground running. As with any good sales enablement content, your scripts should have relevant data to back up your reps’ claims.
- Buyer personas – Profiles outlining key characteristics, pain points, and decision-making processes of ideal customers.
Your sales enablement content should be highly personalised to your unique business and unique buyers. It should address customer pain points and effectively demonstrate your value.
Many salespeople don’t have the time to produce high-quality sales aids, which is why we recommend talking to a sales enablement agency for content support. Want to talk to a sales content professional? Use the link below to book a no-obligation chat directly:
What are the 8 benefits of sales enablement content?
So, you understand what sales enablement content is, but your salespeople have been getting on just fine without all this – why should you spend time and money on creating content for them?
Well, studies show that 74% of buyers choose to buy from the company that first adds content value, and 89% of consumers buy based on overall sales experience regardless of price and functionality.
Without great collateral, you’re hamstringing your sales team. Here’s how sales content can transform the way your team sells:
Project a consistent brand
As your sales team grows, you’ll find that you have different voices projecting slightly different versions of your brand.
Consistency is key to great conversion rates – your sales content should match your website (both aesthetically and from a messaging perspective), and your salespeople should be saying (mostly) the same thing. This also helps with handover to your onboarding team, as messaging will remain consistent and won’t be too jarring.
Demonstrate that your salespeople are well informed
There’s nothing worse than a salesperson babbling, desperately seeking an answer to a question that they should have off the top of their head.
It’s happened to the best of us – sometimes, having a little sales collateral in your back pocket can make the difference, demonstrating that your salespeople are dialled in and ready for anything.
Arm your salespeople with the info they need to win
Prospects will almost always want to see case studies.
It makes sense, why wouldn’t you want to be reassured that this business you’re about to invest £1000s in can actually deliver what they’re saying?
A well-designed case study or piece of validation content can truly make the difference at that key decision-making moment. Your salespeople should be armed with the collateral they need, meaning that they can fire it over almost instantaneously. If they take a long time to send the requested info over, they’ve lost momentum (and potentially lost a sale).
Engage, inform, build trust and convert your prospects
Sales isn’t all about cold calling and conversions; there’s so much more that goes into the modern sale.
Prospects expect to be treated like they’re the most important business in the world. If you’re not pandering to their needs, another sales rep will be.
Your sales content should provide useful data, establish your business as a trusted source of information and make you the obvious choice when it comes to conversion.
Move prospects through the funnel quicker
Sales enablement content proactively addresses any concerns, questions or doubts a prospect might have. This streamlines your sales process and removes any potential sticking points, leading to faster sales on average.
Time in your sales funnel is an ongoing incurred cost. Moving prospects through the funnel quicker saves you money and makes you money, which is music to our ears!
Increase conversion rates
Sales enablement, when done right, can increase your conversion rates by 20%, on average.
Great content has become necessary. If you’re in direct competition with several other organisations, often you’ll find that it’s the sales reps that have the best content and can provide a high-quality buyer journey that will close the deal.
Competition is fierce. If you want to boost your conversion rates, you need to ensure that your sales aids are of the highest quality.
Save on admin time
Salespeople spend a lot of time not actually selling.
Between emails, content creation, internal meetings and other distractions, we often find that internal sales teams are highly inefficient (through no fault of their own).
By providing your people with amazing content and email templates, you’ll cut out shedloads of admin, allowing them to focus on doing what they do best – selling!
Make it as easy as possible for prospects to buy from you
Friction kills deals.
As prospects move through your funnel, they are highly sensitive to any irritants. Small frustrations in working with you now may well be ten times worse once they’ve converted.
You need to make it as easy as possible for your prospects to buy from you. There should be zero confusion at any stage (and it should always be nice and easy to hit the big green ‘go’ button!).
How to create great sales enablement content
You have two options when it comes to creating sales enablement content:
1. Do it yourself
If you have the time and resources available, writing and designing your own sales collateral is a great way to get your sales enablement content off the ground.
Ensure that you:
- Consider your brand at every stage (keep it consistent).
- Carefully craft your copy to ensure it uses balanced language.
- Use design best practices to make your collateral easier to understand.
- Talk to every member of your sales team to discover what messaging works best in the sales process.
- Ensure you understand the market and your unique buyer personas.
2. Speak to the sales collateral experts
Don’t have the time and resources available to do it yourself? Don’t worry – you’re not alone.
We recommend talking to a sales enablement agency; a team of designers, copywriters and strategists that specialise in creating high-quality sales aids and other collateral.
At Catalyst, we work closely with our clients’ sales teams. By analysing existing content, assessing messaging from across your industry and liaising with your salespeople, we create seriously good sales collateral – content that your salespeople are proud to send to prospects.
The sooner we get started, the sooner your salespeople can improve their conversion rates, and the sooner you can accelerate your business’ growth.
Get in touch with our specialists today for a no-obligation chat about improving your sales collateral.