Sales enablement teams have the dual responsibility of making sure that salespeople have:

1. The resources the buyers they’re talking to want in order to make their decision
2. A clear understanding of how to position and embody the brand they’re selling so buyers are most likely to buy and stay

Your content strategy needs to cover both of these needs.

Let’s assume you’ve already got your hands on plenty of insights about who your buyers are and the kinds of problems you solve for them. These will be unique to your business. But the process that buyers go through when they make a decision about your offering will follow a similar series of questions no matter what you’re selling.

This article first appeared as a chapter in our guide Content strategy for enterprise sales enablement where you can learn more about sales enablement

The following eight questions make up what’s called the “customer decision journey”, and your content strategy needs to answer them. We love whipping up a template here at Turtl. Here’s one to help you log your answers and list related content: Open template

1. Why should we change the way we’re currently doing things?

This is where content marketing supports sales enablement content. The buyer wants to understand why their status quo doesn’t cut it anymore. Research reports, blog posts, webinars, and talks by you and others making arguments for the same kind of change all contribute to answering this question. If you sell more than one solution or your solution solves different problems for different people, then you’ll want to equip your salespeople with a range of these resources.

2. Why should we go with your particular solution?

To answer this you need content that explains and shows why you are different, better, and more suitable for buyers than your competitors. On the internal content front, this is where battle cards and the likes come in. More on those later.

3. What can we expect from the investment?

Buyers want to know that they’ll see benefits from your solution that are of greater value than the cost and hassle of purchasing and implementing it. In other words: what’s the ROI? Case studies and calculators are the kinds of resources and tools that can help here.

4. Why is now the time to invest in this change?

Even when a buyer knows that there’s real value in making a change and that you’d be an excellent solution for the problem, they’ll have a bucket load of other changes they’re under pressure to make in different areas. They want to understand the urgency of focusing on this particular one. This is where your company needs all of the powers of persuasion, but also some solid evidence of the size of the opportunity you’re presenting, or the scale of the cost attached to continuing with the status quo.

5. Why should we pay what you’re asking?

Your buyer wants to know exactly what they’re going to get for their money at this stage. This isn’t just about access to your product or services, but the entirety of the customer experience. They want to know how their purchase will be protected. Customer reviews are important content assets here, and transparency is key. As are negotiation skills.

6. Why should we agree to your terms & conditions?

The final hurdle before a customer is acquired. This is where the lawyers step in and hash out the minute details of the agreement. There are opportunities here to use content to remind the buyers of the value and urgency of adopting your solution, to keep procurement and legal under a bit of pressure to prioritize your deal.

With these questions answered to your buyer’s satisfaction, you should now be welcoming them on board as a new customer. Your sales enablement journey continues into the sphere of customer retention and expansion. This begs a few further questions:

7. Why should we stick with you?

Help your customers recognize the value they’re getting from your solution through the likes of progress reports.  Nudge your customers to be more actively engaged with your services and products so they get the most value out of it. That can be done through things like regular comms, guides, knowledge portals, workshops, etc.

8. Why should we work with you in more ways?

Welcome back to the beginning of the decision journey, only this time you have the opportunity to create resources about how the company’s existing investment in your solutions has paid off. You might need to convince new parts of the business that they, too, need to change–in which case you really are going back to question one. In other instances, you won’t want to be highlighting change, but consistency. Skip to question 2 and sing the praises of the new status quo.

Learn more about content strategy for sales enablement in our guide:

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