As hard as it is to admit, simply talking isn’t going to push a sale over the finish line. In today’s sales environment, you need content. Proposals, quotes, price sheets, white papers and other sales collateral need to be leveraged so your message can get passed around the company and finally decided upon.
However, the problem is that a sales team can spend up to 9 hours searching for relevant content to send to clients. Further studies show that salespeople are pulling the most convenient sales materials first as opposed to those materials that are best aligned with the client’s needs.
Instead, sales managers need to provide their teams with the sales enablement solutions they need – when they need it. The best way to achieve this is to make sales content part of the workflow.
Why Content Drives Sales Enablement
Most clients aren’t going to take a sales person’s word for why the product or solution is the best fit for their needs. Would you? No, a client is going to want to see tangible materials that spell out what he or she will get out of this must-have deal.
Not only do sales materials boost a client’s confidence in the deal at hand, but the proper materials give your sales force the confidence to actually sell. The materials back up their claims – which is usually enough to win the deal.
Types of Content to Include in Your Sales Content Library
Sales Enablement solutions should include, at the very least, pre-prepared and easily-accessible:
- Sales proposals
- Contracts
- Quotes
However, don’t forget the importance of other materials, such as:
- Infographics
- Customer testimonials
- Third-party white papers
These types of collateral can further grease the skids to sway customers and win deals and should be considered the cornerstones of a high performing sales team.
However, simply having a lot of sales content available isn’t going to increase its use or effectiveness. Most organizations have plenty of content that their reps just aren’t using. The first problem? It isn’t the right content.
So how can you determine what’s right? Ask your sales reps! Find out what information is most requested of them, what questions they are asked most often and what collateral they need to sell more effectively.
Once you have content the sales team will actually want to use, the next problem is timing. Whipping these materials out at just the right moment can mean the difference between a customer who says, “Let me think about it,” to one who flat out says, “Yes.”
Make the Content Available in their Workflow
While possessing the above-mentioned sales enablement materials is important, it must be easily accessible. Yet even reps at the best-in-class companies spend 20% of their time searching for relevant content.
That’s time that could be better spent selling.
What if you don’t consider your business best-in-class? Your team could be spending even more time searching for content to present to prospects and clients.
Instead of having your sales content library in the cloud, on memory devices and in every other location other than at your sales team’s fingertips, it would be far easier for sales managers to provide salespeople with real-time sales intelligence that can be accessed at the drop of a hat.
With relevant, regularly-updated and proven sales enablement materials included in a platform like CPQ solutions, sales content can be added and updated in real-time. This enables your team to act when necessary, securing them the deals they need to reach the quota in record time.
And that, my friend, is how efficient and profitable selling is done.
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