Why personalized sales materials are a must-have in 2021

Estimated reading time
4 minutes
12th November 2020
Author: Kit McKay
Posted in: Sales

As we move into a new year, it’s looking increasingly likely that many of the changes we’ve seen to our lives in 2020 aren’t going anywhere anytime soon. Whether it’s legal restrictions on face-to-face interactions, or the shift in mentality around remote working, the opportunities for in-person sales conversations are perhaps permanently reduced. 

Navigating these new waters is challenging. Salespeople, and those who enable them, must adapt to a largely digital environment. We can’t entirely replicate physical meetings and conversations online, but by taking a personalized approach towards digital interactions, we can help bridge the gap and build deeper relationships.

The problem with our new digital world

Every day, 4.4 million blog posts are published, over 300 billion emails are sent, and the average person sees up to 5,000 different marketing and sales messages. Even before the pandemic, digital channels were saturated. Now, when many businesses have lost their other means of communication, the digital world is overrun. 

For the salesperson, there’s a huge challenge here. Going to an event or a roundtable or an in-person meeting guarantees some sort of two-way conversation. Even if it’s not something pre-arranged, there are natural opportunities to engage with someone, whether that’s while walking from one place to another, picking up a coffee, or polite conversation with the person you’re sitting next to.

These organic conversations don’t really happen online. There are too many messages and not enough time to respond to them. If we want to incentivize someone to reply to us, we need to give them a reason to care.

Why personalization is the answer

There are two psychological reasons why personalization is more effective than generic messaging.

The first is called the cocktail party effect. This occurs when you’re in a crowded room with so many people talking that every sound just blurs together. But, if you overhear someone say your name or mention something relevant to you, suddenly you can’t help but fixate on that one particular conversation. 

This is the easiest way to apply personalization to your sales materials. You can add someone’s name, company name, company logo, or anything that signals this is for you. It helps you win the first goal when engaging your prospect, and that is to get them to notice you. It’s why emails with a personalized subject line are 26 percent more likely to be opened. But getting someone’s attention is step one. You then have to win their engagement.

The brain has a powerful tool called the reticular activating system (RAS). It’s basically a filter that ignores irrelevant information and sends the really important stuff to be processed cognitively. Your goal is to make your prospect’s RAS do as little work as possible. When people have to filter out too much information, like while skim-reading a really long product overview, they eventually reach cognitive overload, and they grow bored, tired, frustrated, etc. But if you can strip your content or communications down to only what they need or want to know, it will all be processed efficiently, helping your chances of building a relationship.

How personalized selling impacts the bottom line

These aren’t just psychological theories. They have a measurable impact on the bottom line.

When it comes to revenue, 80 percent of companies report seeing an uplift since implementing personalization. And companies that exceed their revenue goals have a dedicated budget for personalization 83 percent of the time.

As more companies invest in personalization, this is also driving a change in buyer expectations. Tailored messaging is increasingly becoming a basic requirement, with 72 percent of consumers saying that they only engage with personalized communications. 

How to prepare your sales team for 2021

While personalization capabilities are growing at a rapid rate among sales teams, many are struggling to keep pace with buyer expectations. In fact, 7 in 10 consumers say businesses are not able to meet their rising demands for personalized experiences. With most people spending more time online than ever before, the demand for these custom interactions is continuing to grow. How agile your sales enablement operations are will dictate how well you’re able to keep up.

With this in mind, Turtl and Highspot have partnered and delivered an integration to offer businesses the tools they need to make smarter moves at a time where they’ll have the greatest impact. Highspot allows you to:

• Find the best content for every conversation: Salespeople can quickly locate the right content and relevant guidance for how that asset should be used, complete with training and peer feedback. Through the integration with Turtl, sellers can now also access Turtl’s personalization software directly within Highspot, allowing them to build custom content in minutes on a large scale.
• Make the most of every buyer interaction: Sellers can easily create engaging experiences personalized for every prospect. From dynamic pitches to landing pages, reps can meet buyers with the right content, at the right time, on the right channel.
• Leverage 360-degree analytics: Teams can access end-to-end analytics that show what’s working and what’s not, enabling them to pivot strategies to meet changing buyer needs in relatively real-time. Sellers can see how prospects are engaging with pitches, marketers can measure internal and external content performance and optimize, and revenue leaders can determine how strategic initiatives are impacting the bottom line and customer experience – and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. 

For three practical ways to personalize your selling, head on over to Highspot’s blog.