10 types of sales enablement content crucial to sales success
43% of sales enablement teams claim that one of their top three priorities is to improve the competency of their sales department.
High-quality sales enablement content is the first step to doing this.
Without killer sales materials and training content, sales teams are forced to fend for themselves by trying to create pitches on the spot.
However, with great enablement content, your sales department has the tools at hand that it needs to provide excellent buyer justification and combat any objections.
Here’s a guide to the types of sales content you need in order to prepare your sales team to sell your products and services effectively.
What is sales enablement content, and why is it important?
The term ‘sales enablement content’ covers all sales materials that help your team sell your products and services.
Sometimes known as sales enablement collateral, these resources:
- Provide key arguments for the benefits of your products and services
- Help customers to understand how your products work
- Demonstrate the real-world success of your solutions
- Show the return on investment (ROI) of your services
- Prove why your services are better than the competition
With the aim to facilitate a better caliber of sales conversation, these materials help provide the justification buyers need to make a purchase.
It’s important to make sure you have a comprehensive sales enablement content strategy in place to fully equip each salesperson with the tools they need to convince a potential customer.
Customers are much savvier than they used to be. Half of sales leaders say that this is because buyers conduct more research before purchasing than they used to.
Plus, since customers have more insight into potential solutions, thanks to the internet, they take a lot more convincing than before. 53% of sales professionals believe that buyers need more justification for a purchase nowadays.
But it’s no longer enough to simply list the potential benefits of your solution.
46% of buyers have increased their expectations of value-added insight.
In this respect, the right content needs to help a sales rep provide crystal-clear justifications, using rock-solid evidence that shows the value of your product or service.
Here’s the issue — lots of companies don’t provide their teams with effective sales enablement content.
Not only do one in five sales professionals complain that ineffective sales content is their biggest challenge to closing deals, but 40% of sales teams also don’t have a sales enablement platform to organize the materials they do have.
It’s not just that the content’s poor, but the sales content management is also shoddy. This makes it tough to find and provide the evidence needed to convince the end customer.
Don’t get yourself in this situation. Make sure your sales enablement team is putting together a comprehensive content strategy that helps each sales rep seal the deal.
10 vital types of sales enablement content that help your sales team meet targets
A major part of the sales enablement process is ensuring that every sales representative has the right content to help them close deals.
Choose an intuitive sales enablement tool and pack it with interactive content that helps your sales department move their prospects down the sales funnel.
Here’s a list of the most important material to consider during your content creation process:
1. Competitor research and comparisons
A key part of the sales enablement strategy should be to teach every sales rep and marketer why your product is better than the competition.
60% of salespeople say that competitive pressure is one of their top sales challenges. With the right sales content, you can diffuse this competitive pressure by demonstrating why your product is elite.
Try creating a competitor comparison analysis chart.
This tool provides a clear visual guide that shows customers how you fare alongside the competition. It demonstrates your place in the market and shows the end customer which problems you can solve that your competitors cannot.
For the buyer, a tool like this saves them time in the research stage while helping them understand why your product is good value for money.
Plus, you can use a comparison chart as more than just sales enablement collateral. Your marketing department can also use this artifact in their content marketing campaigns, perhaps as a social media post.
2. Pre-call sales checklist
While a sales script is pretty standard for telephone sales staff, have you thought about a pre-call sales checklist?
Currently, 37% of organizations are incorporating pre-call checklists into their sales enablement program to help reps prepare for calls in advance.
A pre-call checklist is a list of all the actions a salesperson should undertake before making the phone call so that they’re fully prepared to address the customer’s specific needs and objections.
High-performing sales reps are 150% more likely than low-performers to keep tabs on customer communication history and 240% more likely to look at a customer’s transaction data.
In this sense, it’s wise to give sales reps a tool to help them get to know the customer beforehand.
A pre-call planning checklist includes steps such as:
- Lead qualification
- Customer history
- Research
- Call goals
- Questions
- Opener
- Potential objections
You may also consider creating a worksheet to help sales reps take notes while working through this list.
During the call, sales reps can keep the worksheet on hand to refer back to the key information.
3. Sales call scripts
39% of teams create call scripts as enablement content.
By creating a call script for each buyer persona, you help your sales team answer common questions and respond to typical objections.
When a sales professional gets caught short without the answer at hand, they look inexperienced and incompetent. If a potential customer thinks that the sales rep is inept, they may also think poorly of your products and services.
Not only that, but a call script can help to open up a conversation and move a prospect through the sales cycle.
By testing different call scripts based on high-performing conversations, you can work out which openers are most effective at drawing in customers and which transitional phrases can move prospects into a sale.
4. Email and messaging templates
Email is an efficient way for a sales professional to contact lots of prospects at once during the early stages of the sales funnel. Later on in the sales cycle, email is a pragmatic way of keeping in contact with a lead.
Live chat messaging is also a good method for turning prospects into leads by helping to deal with their queries.
Luckily, it’s pretty easy to track the effectiveness of emails and messaging by looking at open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates.
By analyzing the performance of sales from marketing emails and other types of messaging, you can work out which content works best. From here, you can create templates for your other sales reps based on your best-performing messaging.
Right now, 53% of organizations build email templates for their sales teams, and 34% create messaging templates.
It saves the team time in creating their own messaging, and it also helps boost success rates by using proven content that works.
5. Product demos and explainer videos
36% of companies create product demo videos, and 73% of companies produce explainer videos as sales collateral.
This is because videos are an extremely popular way for consumers to find out about solutions, with 96% of people saying they’ve watched an explainer video to learn more about a product or service.
Product and explainer videos are ideal for showing to buyers in the research stage. And they aren’t just great sales resources — they’re also the perfect marketing content.
If you keep them short, your marketing team can use your sales videos in their social media and email marketing campaigns.
6. Whitepapers and ebooks
Almost 1 in 10 companies produce whitepapers, while ebooks are the third most popular content strategy.
Unlike short sales videos, which give a quick product overview, whitepapers and ebooks go into intense detail about the inner workings and technical capabilities of your solution.
Whitepapers and ebooks are a particularly powerful sales enablement solution for business-to-business (B2B) companies. 60% of B2B buyers have explored whitepapers during their research process, while 48% have read ebooks.
In fact, 35% of B2B buyers say that whitepapers are the most valuable content when researching purchases, while 30% claim it’s ebooks.
One of the best things about whitepapers and ebooks is that you can use them as lead magnets to net and qualify leads. This helps pull new prospects into the sales funnel.
7. Case studies
Case studies tell the detailed story of how your solution helped to solve a particular customer’s problem.
Going into detail about the business situation, solution, benefits, and impact, a case study will often demonstrate quantifiable numerical data that builds a business case for your product.
32% of sales teams already leverage case studies.
Why?
They understand that case studies work as social proof, which can boost conversions by 34%, since social proof builds trust.
Just like whitepapers, case studies are particularly useful for B2B sales.
54% of B2B buyers read case studies when making their last purchase, and 29% agree that case studies are the most important resource when making purchases.
Not only that, but case studies are another great lead magnet. 31% of B2B buyers say that they’re willing to share personal and company details to access case studies.
In reference to adding video case studies to his company’s sales collateral, Todd Harris, director of marketing at Celect, said, “It’s offered the sales team the ability to always have something to send to any type of existing prospect that’s in the pipeline at any stage.”
8. Customer testimonials
Customer testimonials are another form of social proof that builds trust in your solution. A sales rep can send prospects testimonials from similar clients to demonstrate your company’s competence in meeting their needs.
No wonder 36% of organizations are already using customer testimonials in their sales cycle.
While most companies use written reviews and customer feedback, testimonial videos are a highly authentic way of showing off your happy customers.
This is why 43% of companies produce social proof videos.
As Jake Matulewicz, director of marketing at Symmons, put it, “Authentic video is something that really resonates with our customers — and as a result — we end up getting more conversions, whether that be a phone call, an email, or a form completion.”
9. Blogs and articles
Blogs are the second most popular content strategy for content marketers, while one in five sales enablement teams are producing informative blog posts.
Blogs work on a few levels.
For marketing purposes, they generate organic traffic through search engine optimization (SEO) techniques, while they also provide a self-service research resource for buyers.
In fact, 56% of B2B buyers say they use blogs during their research process.
For your sales department, blogs serve as a resource they can send to prospects in order to help them better understand your solutions or help build a business case.
10. Sales training materials
Content enablement isn’t enough to make sure your sales organization reaches its peak. Every sales manager knows that the most valuable sales enablement practice is extensive training.
Despite this, 39% of organizations don’t have a sales training tool that they use effectively.
Your enablement team should create in-depth onboarding and training materials that teach each sales professional how to use the content you produce to close deals.
Regular ongoing training helps keep your sales department up-to-date with any changes to the sales cycle while sharpening their knowledge of each buyer persona.
To keep your sales training content current, monitor the techniques used by your highest-performing sales staff. Train your team to use these methods to close more sales.
Conclusion
Sales enablement content is the best tool you can give your sales team to prepare them for any upcoming sale. Not only will sales collateral help them justify a purchase, but it also gives them the tools to combat objections.
Remember to test your content first. Find out what works best for your top sales performers and test sales pitches and messaging to see what buyers respond to best.
It’s no secret that customer evidence videos are one of the top sales enablement resources you can give your team. If you need help creating customer evidence videos, talk to the experts at Testimonial Hero today.
