How to Craft the Perfect Content for Sales Enablement

In other words, you need to create sales enablement content.

What is sales enablement content?

Any content that does the talking for your business by providing information to the users through listicles, videos, blog posts, or infographics is perfect for sales enablement. Any content that can help the sales team is called sales enablement content.

However, don't mistake sales enablement content with content marketing.

A content marketing strategy aims to increase the reach of the product while connecting and generating leads. It’s used to attract users. On the other hand, sales enablement content should be able to convert those leads into sales. It needs to convince customers about your product or service and must be able to speak to the customer with clarity.

At the end of the day, a successful sales enablement content strategy must focus on the sales process. Here's a detailed guide to get you going:

1. Audit your content performance

Keeping track of how your content is performing helps you create better content that’s in sync with the requirements of your prospects. Drafting content without knowing what’s working and what’s not is futile; you’ll have no idea whether the content will be able to drive sales.

• Retrieve the stats and monitor the performance of your content. Keep an eye on customer needs and their reaction at various stages of the process.
• It's crucial to communicate with your sales team to see what worked and what didn't. With evolving trends and changing markets, your content needs to be refreshed over time.
• No two people are the same, thus, it's crucial to change and customize your content according to the target audience.
• Sales are all about numbers. So, get the numbers, collect the data, and plan the delivery of the content accordingly.

Pro Tip: In sales, timing is critical. So, make sure to drop the right content at the right time.

2. Leverage internal documentation to give useful insights

Internal documentation has valuable company information which you can include in your sales enablement content.

• Extract information like your firm's processes, services, products, etc. from your documentation and make them a part of your sales enablement content. These insights can help sales reps when convincing prospects about the credibility of your firm.
• Don’t share data about product or service comparisons with customers, but use this information to create relevant articles. Your sales staff can utilize such content to demonstrate how your products are better than your competitors.

Pro Tip: Internal documentation has valuable information. For example, if your company meets a high ISO quality standard that is its USP, you can highlight that in the sales enablement content to help reps sell better.

3. Let your sales team take the lead

It's essential to understand that not every piece of content will sell and not every strategy is right for the business. And who will know this better than the sales team? It's the sales team who are having direct conversations with customers and playing the real battle. They know the challenges in and out. They have seen conversions and witnessed a prospect not showing interest in them.

The vast experience of your sales reps has given them excellent ideas for creating content that will be a helping hand while they do their jobs. You need to make sure that the marketing team works in coordination with your sales team. Ensure that sales reps have a say when marketing is on its way to create content.

Consider asking them about:

• Customer pain points
• Frequently asked questions by customers
• Information about the products they are using at present
• How did the prospects come to know about the product

Pro Tip: If you think listening to recorded conversations can help, think again. It won’t give your marketing team the insights they require to write content. Talking to your sales staff in person will better help you understand the issues and challenges they face.

4. Be ready for continuous improvements

Creating sales enablement content isn't a one-time thing. It’s a continuous process because with every new experience gained and every new challenge faced by your sales staff, content creators will have to make the necessary changes to the content.

As the business grows, changes, explores uncharted territories and expands its target audience, sales reps will have to confront different challenges. This will bring a change in the kind of content they need. Keep updating and improving it to help your sales team conquer these new challenges.

Pro Tip: Tweak your content according to the industry and verticals your sales reps work in and the clients they handle. This will help them pitch in the right way.

5. Different content for specific stages

Once you have all the insights, create a prospect's journey map, and connect it to content pieces that should be used at different stages. For instance, during the evaluation stage, when a buyer is getting to know your firm, the content piece can include basic information and an overview of your product line.

Work with your sales team to understand the suitability of content pieces at various stages, questions asked by the buyer at different stages, the most frequent questions asked by prospects, etc. That way, you can arm your sales team with a comprehensive library of relevant content and help them pitch better.

Pro Tip: Have a balanced approach when it comes to creating content for different stages. Build relevant content right from the point the sales funnel starts and trickle it down to meaningful content in the form of specific product information.

6. Cater to the individual working style of sales reps

The sales enablement content you create might be of immense help to some of your sales reps, but not to others. This is due to a difference in their working styles.

Even if you provide your sales staff with high-quality content, they’ll have individual approaches to dealing with a prospect. Some might use your content effectively, while others will rely more on other tactics.

Without interacting with them and understanding their working styles, creating content for your sales reps will be challenging.

Pro Tip: Many firms segregate their sales team based on the industry they deal in, accounts they handle and the audience they cater to. Learn more about these aspects and build different sales enablement content for your sales team.

7. Allow your sales team to generate content requests

Empower your sales staff to make requests for new content that can help them close more deals. The sales enablement process brings your marketing and sales teams together, with each raising requests and providing input for the creation of better content.

You can even allow your sales reps to prepare the first draft of the content they need, giving your marketing team a basic idea of what they want. The content can then be tweaked and fine-tuned by content creators and subject matter experts.

Pro Tip: To help your sales reps create first drafts, you can train them on content creation. It will equip your sales team with the right skills, helping them generate basic content on their own.

Harness the power of content for sales success

The right approach to creating the perfect content for sales enablement should focus on the customers. Leveraging various sales enablement tools will help you craft impactful content that will be instrumental in closing high-value deals.

Brainstorming sessions between marketing and sales will bring out new ideas that can be tremendously helpful while creating content. 

Your content shouldn't be designed just to sell products; it should speak for your brand. While devising your sales enablement content strategy, make sure you keep this in mind. Be focused on creating customer-centric and brand-building content.

Further reading:

• 5 Essential Content Types for Sales Enablement
• 6 Ways to Get Your Content Seen
• The Definitive Guide to Marketing Metrics and Analytics