Would you like more sales?
Who wouldn’t?
To increase sales, many businesses invest more in marketing or hire more salespeople. But there’s a more affordable – and fundamental way: Create more effective sales-enablement content.
What is sales-enablement content?
Sales-enablement content is any content asset used in the sales process – by the sales team or the prospect. (Sixty-two percent of B2B customers say they can make their buying decision based solely on digital content.)
62% of B2B customers say they can make buying decisions solely on digital content, according to @Forrester #research via @Forbes. @CMIContent @SEOSmarty
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The content comes in different forms, including case studies, use cases, statistics, infographics, video tutorials, and video walk-throughs. How can you create that content that helps your company close more sales? Here are a few suggestions.
Visualize any time you can
Any good salesperson (or public speaker) knows this already: Minimize written words in your demo or presentation. Instead, use graphs, charts, and even memes. Images capture and hold attention like words cannot.
Visualize in meaningful ways, such as:
- Creating easy-to-understand data comparisons using pie charts
- Visualizing steps and processes with timelines and flow charts
- Emphasizing an important point using a well-fitting meme
Innovate product demos
Demonstrating your product is a crucial sales-enablement asset, yet at least many salespeople consider it the most challenging because too many things can go wrong, from unexpected software bugs to an unexpected, off-topic shift in the conversation.
This is where Walnut, a new sales solution, can help. It enables salespeople to reuse and customize your product demos to create a more predictable experience. The platform is codeless, so there is no chance of the demos not loading properly.
Since each demo is saved in the system, you or others can duplicate and personalize any of them and even use it on your site to create effective top-of-the-funnel content. These features also allow you to turn the demos into lead magnets.
.@Walnutinc software lets you save product demos so others on the team can duplicate and personalize, says @SEOSmarty via @CMIContent.
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The platform also is equipped with analytics so you can identify your best-performing demos and discover the features most appealing to your prospects. Each saved demo can be annotated for your prospects to follow the steps independently when they independently share the demo with other decision-makers.
Keep different decision-makers in mind
In the B2B world, you can expect to deal with the decision-making unit (DMU), which often consists of at least several people. You should take that into consideration when creating your sales-enablement content.
Take into consideration all members of the decision-making unit when you create sales-enablement content, says @SEOSmarty via @CMIContent.
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Ask yourself what roles the decision-makers might have and how you can appeal to all of them. For example, the DMU for SEO software probably would include the head of an SEO team. So, you don’t create the sales-enablement content to sound like your software is so great they won’t need an in-house SEO team. Instead, you emphasize how it only simplifies tedious tasks and offers more data to work with allowing an in-house team to focus on other important tasks.
To learn your target DMU:
- Use your brand’s sales experience. After each demo, note who was involved on the prospect side.
- Talk to your company’s customer team and the more experienced salespeople.
- Use your site’s analytics to understand prospects’ behavior, from age, gender, and interests to device use and more.
Answer questions
Question research is a helpful tool for salespeople to better understand the flow of any sales call or a demo. Here are a few niche question research tools I use a lot.
Text Optimizer
Text Optimizer provides a good overview of popular questions on any topic. It is a good way to get a quick overview of what interests your target audience:
An SEO tool, Text Optimizer can help a sales team better understand the searches that indicate the prospects’ struggles.
An #SEO tool, @textoptimizer can help a sales team better understand the searches that indicate the prospects’ struggles, says @SEOSmarty via @CMIContent.
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Answer The Public
Answer the Public relies on your target customers’ searching behavior: It pulls questions from Google’s suggestions, which often are based on the most common related searches previously typed in the search box:
Answer the Public results appear as a mind map (organized by a question word) and a downloadable spreadsheet. I recommend looking at both.
Use @answerthepublic to pull questions from @Google suggestions, which often are based on the most common related searches previously typed in the search box, says @SEOSmarty via @CMIContent.
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Google’s People Also Ask
Google’s People Also Ask boxes indicate possible follow-up questions relevant to the query. They can be helpful to understand the flow of a discussion. Encourage your sales team to make a few relevant searches and note (and record) interesting questions they see showing up:
Include your influencer-drive social proof
In TopRank Marketing’s 2020 B2B Influencer Marketing report, 78% say their prospects rely on advice from industry influencers, while 74% say influencer marketing improves the prospect and customer experience with the brand.
In @toprank’s 2020 #B2B Influencer Marketing report, 78% say their prospects rely on advice from industry influencers, says @SEOSmarty via @CMIContent.
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Have you thought about using influencer-driven social proof in your content? Seeing recognizable and well-respected industry faces in your demo or other sales-enablement content may work wonders for your sales team’s performance.
Reach out to those influencers you and your team already know well and invite them to beta test your newest product or tool and provide feedback. Much of that feedback may turn useful for your sales-enablement content.
Get your sales-enablement content found
With your sales-enablement content created, the next task is to come up with a way to make it easier for your company’s sales team members to find it. There’s no single solution here. Consider setting up an internal wiki or a knowledge base, which would be searchable and easy to organize.
All tools are noted by the author. If you have a favorite tool to suggest, please add it in the comments.
Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute
