The true mark of a working sales enablement strategy is a sales force that constantly maintains meaningful conversations with prospects and customers. It doesn’t matter how many documents the sales enablement team puts out or marketing materials they utilize; the important thing is to provide the sales team with collateral that is relevant and helpful at each stage of the sales process.
What collateral you should create depends on the particular needs of your reps. Given that B2B sales processes are often pretty sophisticated, various forms and types of content will be required.
Regardless of who owns the sales enablement function in an organization, it’s crucial to know that creating these content types and fostering a better relationship between sales and marketing are crucial in optimizing the ability of the sales force to generate revenue.
Sales enablement is vital to all effectiveness and acceleration efforts on the floor. Having a strategy in place is not optional anymore – it’s a necessity for all sales organizations that want to stay competitive.
We have moved way past the days where sales enablement needs to be defended and made the case for. The question now is, what do we need to do?
In this post, we put together the different collateral / content types that sales enablement teams should be able to source, create, and provide to give topnotch support to sales.
White Papers
White papers play an essential role in building brand image, spreading expertise, and prospecting as well as generating leads.
Case Studies
These help companies impress and win the trust of their potential buyers with the work they have already done.
Internal Success Stories
Unlike case studies, internal success stories are quick, punchy videos recorded by your top reps. They explain how they won specific deals so new hires can see what good selling looks like.
Data Sheets
These help a company deal with any questions that might arise from customers regarding the more technical specifications of their products.
Buyer’s Guides
Buyer’s guides are an important part of the sales cycle – they occupy a spot in the middle of the funnel, helping to usher prospective buyers closer to your product, while still providing useful information.
E-Newsletters
These are an essential part of an online marketing strategy. When properly developed, they perform well as a lead generation tool and can improve relationship development with potential customers.
Sales Scripts
Sales scripts are used by sales representatives to increase the efficiency of customer acquisition experiences. Having strategies in place for each step in the sales development cycle helps efficiently move prospective buyers through each stage.
Email Templates and Call Scripts
Emails templates are common tools that help sellers build trust with prospects and can be personalized based on the prospect’s pain points and industry.
Multimedia Files (Videos and Podcasts)
These files can either be external-facing assets for reps to share with prospects, or internal assets meant for sales training. These include webinars, conference session video recordings, and podcasts.
Sales Playbooks
These are generally comprehensive internal-facing guides that show the most effective way for reps to sell, often broken out into separate modules for each sales stage.
Sales Battlecards
These concise, internal-facing documents establish a company’s competitive differentiation. Reps use sales battlecards to handle objections and advance through the negotiation stage of opportunities.
Customer Success Stories
These are external facing documents, helpful for prospective customers looking to see proof of product performance. They allow businesses to present real-world use cases and results – this can solidify product benefits to prospective buyers.
Fact Sheets
A fact sheet provides a 2-3 page overview of one of an Asset Manager’s Investment Strategies. It’s a critical document to convey key overview information about the Strategy to potential investors.
Pitch Books
Pitch Books are used by Sales teams to present an overview of themselves and their firm and stimulate a discussion with a prospect about potential solutions they can offer.
Client Reviews
Client reviews are documents presented quarterly or annually to drive a discussion about the relationship between the firm and their client. These are useful to showcase the mutual successes they’ve experienced and present additional opportunities to partner.
Investment Proposals
In Wealth Management, Financial Advisors often create Investment Proposals in the early stage discussions with a prospect. These proposals serve to highlight the unique and differentiated solutions offered by that Financial Advisor.