Why personalized sales materials are a must-have

Estimated reading time
4 minutes
12th November 2020
Author: Nick Mason
Posted in: Sales

From legal restrictions on face-to-face interactions to the shift in mentality around remote working, the opportunities for in-person sales conversations have been substantially 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. However, 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. Before the pandemic, digital channels were crowded. Now, many businesses have lost other means of communication, causing the digital world to be 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. There are natural opportunities to engage with someone, whether that’s while walking from one place to another, 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. However, if you overhear someone say your name, 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). This is a filter which ignores irrelevant information and cognitively processes important information. 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. 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. In turn, your chances of building a relationship increase.

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 the new year

Personalization capabilities are growing at a rapid rate among some sales teams. However, 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. 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.