SALES COLLATERAL: MEANING, TYPES & BEST PRACTICES

Sales collateral includes any kind of sales or marketing materials designed to help progress the sales process.

Sales collateral examples can either be internal (collateral that’s used to inform and empower sales reps) or external (materials given to prospective customers to educate, inform, and convert them into new customers).

The best sales collateral serves multiple functions: it educates, persuades, and supports the decision-maker. It’s an essential resource for any effective sales team. But because examples of sales collateral can take virtually any form — from informal leave-behind leaflets to deeply-detailed product guides — many sales and sales enablement leaders often struggle to pinpoint exactly what kind of collateral they should be creating.

Sales teams have a lot of diverse goals to hit. Different types of sales assets can support those goals in different ways. So, when it comes to determining what you need, that really depends on what you’d like to achieve. When building content for every part of the buyer’s journey, from the awareness stage to the decision stage, serving up the most relevant sales collateral can dramatically impact conversion.

Here are the customer stages and the most suitable sales collateral content types for each one:

1. Digital brochures

• Digital brochures are a form of digital sales collateral that can clearly lay out everything your target audience need to know about you and your products.

• Creating digital counterparts to physical corporate brochures is a modern, branded way to raise interest at the top of the sales cycle and give your customers greater choice in how they continue their buying journey, and creates opportunities for sales representatives to reconnect with potential customers.

2. Interactive eBooks

• These assets are a key part of your marketing collateral, delivering valuable insights while helping to raise awareness of your expertise.

• Original market research in the form of eBooks are great at attracting attention and new people to your content.

• By bringing that data to life using vibrant imagery and video, you can turn your findings into a widely shared sensation.

3. Digital magazines

• Want to cement your position as a thought leader? Try creating editorial publications like digital magazines.

• Reporting on industry trends gives you real credibility in the eyes of your clients, and you can also weave product promotion into your articles.

• Creating brand awareness and lifting industry authority – what’s not to love about that?

4. Guides

• Signing a new client is only half the battle; adoption rates are the next hurdle. The key to customer success is supporting customers with sales collateral long after onbaording.

• On top of an exceptional customer support team, user/product guides empower your clients to get comfortable with your product. And the more they can use it, the more likely they’ll integrate it into workflows.

• Once it’s an essential part of their tech stack, customer retention will come easy.

5. Newsletters

• Newsletters give you a regular touchpoint with clients.

• Promote new features, round up recent company events and news, feature client use cases – whatever you choose to talk about, get your readers more passionate about being a part of your community. Brand loyalty = customers in the retention and advocacy stage goes through the roof.

6. Prospect information documents

• These foundational sales materials help teams stay agile and informed, supporting a more responsive sales strategy.

• Sales scripts, battlecards, campaign briefs, and other internal documents help sales teams get up to speed with customer accounts and opportunities quickly.

• But to have the right impact, they need to grab and retain salespeople’s attention.

7. Digital onboarding materials

• The faster you can bring a new salesperson up to speed, the sooner they can start driving revenue.

• With the right personalized sales content and digital onboarding materials, you can help them start strong and enable long-term success.

8. Company one-pagers

• Every sales person knows that a strong elevator pitch is key to a good first impression. You have one prepared for meetings, why not have one to deliver digitally?

• Think of one-pagers as powerful marketing materials that support your team’s ability to communicate key features quickly and clearly.

• A company one-pager gives a snapshot of who you are, what you do, and why that’s of value in the consideration stage.

• In this era of content overload, a one-pager makes sure your message is seen and heard quick.

9. Research reports

• Research reports can also be used to validate your solution’s ability to solve real pain points faced by your buyer personas.

• In B2B markets, studies show that buyers value concise, research-based content above all else to inform their decision making process.

• Using research reports to validate your company’s offering is a proven way to increase leads – after all, data doesn’t lie!

10. Case studies

• It’s one thing explaining to target customers why your product is worth their investment – it’s another to show them real-life success stories.

• They’re a great example of sales collateral that shows your offering in action and how it serves specific customer needs.
  
  

• Presenting them with winning case studies showcasing your product in action brings your pitch to life and backs up your claims of the value you offer.

11. Sales proposals

• Creating proposals is a routine daily task for most sales teams. But that doesn’t mean they need to be generic.

• By bringing some visual flair to proposals, you can grab attention faster and increases your chances of conversion.

• Also, try to include interactive elements in your proposals to engage prospects.

12. Sales presentations

• When salespeople present information to prospects, they need their decks and information to be highly relevant to that prospect.

• Empowered with accessible tools, they can customize presentations with ease, and create bespoke collateral that doesn’t need to be rebuilt every time they want to present it to someone new, improving sales efficiency.

13. Website landing pages

• Your website tells prospects everything they need to know about your company. It hosts resources, content marketing assets, product and service information – the list goes on.

• As well as this, it’s also potentially the first salesperson your prospects meet.

• Using landing pages as a piece of sales collateral can turn passive browsers into high-intent leads; just make sure you’re writing pages that you know will resonate with the right audience.

14. Blogs

• Blogs are a great way to entertain and educate prospective customers.

• Not only can you use them to flex your industry knowledge, they’re the perfect host for product promotion (subtly, of course).

• When used wisely, they can keep readers sticking around on your website, and also lead them to sales enablement collateral that’s designed to convert.

15. Whitepapers

• As mentioned earlier, data is the secret weapon to driving leads – facts and figures are memorable, and research proves your authority.

• Whitepapers are persuasive reports that feature all of these and they can help to convince prospects that your company’s opinion is trustworthy and valuable. And who wouldn’t prefer to buy from someone they trust?

• Often paired with product demos and testimonials, whitepapers can be a cornerstone of the best sales collateral packages.

Whichever types of high quality sales collateral you choose to create, there are some best practices to follow to get the right results:

• Personalize your collateral:  Every customer and salesperson needs something slightly different from the collateral you put in front of them. The easier you can make it to personalize and adapt content, the greater results you’ll see from your sales collateral.

• Track engagement: Whatever you create, you need to track its efficacy, see who’s viewing it, and understand what they find most engaging. That will help you learn what customers and salespeople want more of, so you can continuously improve your collateral portfolio.

• Democratize collateral creation: Sales collateral helps sales processes move faster. When someone needs a new piece of collateral, they need the means to create it right away. By democratizing creation, you can enable salespeople to build and customize the collateral they need when they need it.

• Diversify the use of your collateral: Creating sales collateral takes both time and money so it’s important to maximize return on your efforts. Just one piece of collateral can be used in so many different ways; use quotes from reports in blogs, put case studies in newsletters, feature one-pagers in sales proposals – the opportunities are endless!

• Choose a tool that simplifies collateral creation: Creating sales collateral that’s in line with best practices can be time-consuming and costly if you don’t have the right tool. Want one that lets you easily create collateral that will 10x your reader engagement? Look no further than Turtl.

Turtl is built with best practice in mind, enabling sales or marketing teams to master creating high-performing collateral almost immediately. To find out more about how Turtl empowers sales and sales enablement teams, hit that 'Book your demo' button below.