Putting sales enablement content into faster play

Precisely no eyebrows were raised when Gartner suggested over three-quarters (77%) of B2B buyers felt their latest purchase was complex and difficult. But Brent Adamson’s summary is still squirmish:
 

Sales and marketing need to work together, fusing inbound and outbound techniques to get the best results. Buyers absolutely prefer help from reps. Self-serve is almost 50% more likely to end with purchase regret while a hybrid sales model just about doubles the chances of a happy customer.
 
Information overwhelm has been called out for paralyzing buyers as they gather content across channels. Quantity aside, the confusion caused by brands creating contradictory opinion pieces as they strive to differentiate themselves is also reported to stall purchasing.
 
Sales reps are a key and very human channel, who can help counter confusion by giving buyers the right information, at the right time by acting as “information connectors.”
 

The usual setup is something like this: sales ask for some material, marketing delivers, and that’s a wrap. It’s also not unusual for anyone from either department to tackle last-minute deck hacks to support suddenly urgent calls. And while reactive working misses cues for intelligence sharing, it inadvertently invites perilous inattention to brand guidelines and messaging. “Damn,” says Marketing.
 
Taking this a step further, are you hitting your biggest goal? Is your content bringing real value to your prospects and funnel? Today, this means serving content that clears things up for everyone in the buying group, not simply sending across your latest report because it’s there.
 
Think in terms of “buyer enablement,” thinks Garin Hess, author of Selling Is Hard, Buying Is Harder.
 

As arguably the most important content across your business, sales enablement can’t facilitate reps in any fit manner without a good look at what motivates your current customers. On top of that, if you’re not working across departments, you’ll fail to deliver the experience prospects need to trust and want you. More on that later.

Every buyer touchpoint should be a point of value. Customers are far more likely to stick around if they have a great experience (CX) with your brand.
 
Sales should have a clear idea about who buys from your brand. Marketing should be on top of your ICPs. But, and this is pretty much the norm, how often is information shared and updated across departments? By joining teams, knowledge, ideas, and content, projects can be better formed, shared and optimized for silver-service CX.

So, in truth, everyone owns sales enablement – but we’ve got a hunch the biggest owners are your current customers. Take note of who your best customers are, they’re your litmus for everything you’re doing right.
 
There’s data to mine about their behaviors and preferences – first-party data. You can see this from your top-performing content for any of your buyers. Look to your pipeline, create or refine ICPs from your highest-value customers, and analyze which content these people engaged with.

As information connectors, frontline reps must understand buying motivations to source the most relevant support and proof points. They need to understand the whole buying journey, for all key stakeholders to only serve the content truly needed.

So look at where you customers enter your pipeline and every interaction they have before becoming a customer. By this we mean, find out who your best-fit customers are and work from their journeys. How can teams – all of them together – ease the buying process?

You should pack everything into this resource hub: core messaging like your value proposition and messaging framework and target market and ICP templates. Explain your typical processes, things like lead qualification criteria and handover details so everyone in your team is equipped.
 
Link to all your supporting sales content, the good stuff reps send out like pitch content, proof points, and brand authority content.

• Pitching – decks, proposals
• Objection handling – battlecards, you vs competitor briefs
• Proof points – case studies, testimonials
• Brand authority – whitepapers, thought leadership

Our interactive sales proposals and digital decks and presentations allow teams to update and move quickly. Once sent, they know what each stakeholder is doing with the content via our Reader and Known Reader dashboards.

Sensitive timing is everything in sales, and reps often rely on nothing more than instinct to know when, and when not, to make moves. If you’re sending a report or a deck, how will you know when it’s been read? Do you know if your whitepaper is working? Did anyone actually view your case study?
 
Content analytics completely remove blind spots, cueing reps up for opportune follow-ups.

The advantages of sending interactive sales proposals and decks that include video case studies? Video testimonials aren’t just more engaging, they’re far more authentic, human and convincing.
 
Interactive sales brochures should be in every rep’s toolkit. The next best thing to IRL is showing products off in immersive videos, or using 3D tours to showcase the spaces and places you’re marketing.

Our customers can see how people are interacting with content. For sales teams, this means knowing who is reading sales enablement content, lingering on a pricing page, or viewing case study videos.

Not only can you follow what your stakeholders are up to, but you can also push engagement activities into your CRM for effective lead scoring, segmentation and qualification.
 
When you have this kind of intelligence, you raise every chance of speeding up your pipeline – with the bonus of being able to cherry-pick hot leads straight out of the database. Teams hoping to increase scores by pumping traditional thought leadership at leads are missing out on surfacing first-party interactions from previous content black holes – like your typical whitepaper PDF.
 
This is precisely how Russell Webb at Peoplesafe began sending his sales team 33% more engaged leads.
 
Russell’s inventive approach led to a record-breaking 85% win rate for bids and tenders. It’s an incredible result – here’s the full story.

Tailored content increases buyer engagement by 57%​​ says Seismic. These days, you don’t simply personalize digital content by name and company, but can switch out entire topic segments, or on-page details like text, videos and images. This means reps can send deeply personalized content. Sound interesting
 
Readers can choose what they’re served next, or how they behave with content can trigger what they’re shown. Hook Turtl into your CRM and automate content journeys, scoring, and nurture programs. Show CTAs at strategic points and automate that prospect into your calendar or toward an exclusive, just-for-them conversion offer.

Turtl for sales enablement content

Our platform has been developed to make sales enablement content easy, trackable and ideal for lead management. Turtl Analytics equips your sales team with insights to engage prospects, have better conversations, and close more deals. And our patented Personalization Engine creates 1000s of pieces of bespoke sales collateral in minutes.
A head-turning format, in-depth lead intel, scalable tailored outreach. What sales team would say no to the platform delivering that?