In order to ensure the success of your business, it is crucial to equip your sales team with the necessary resources to drive conversions and impact your bottom line.
This is where sales enablement comes into play, empowering your team with tools and resources to effectively convert prospects into paying customers. Content plays a vital role in sales enablement, benefiting both sellers and buyers in the decision-making process.
However, creating high-quality sales enablement content can pose a significant challenge for sales professionals, as evidenced by a survey conducted by Sales Enablement Society, which found that 68 percent of sales organizations struggle with content development. Nevertheless, with a strategic approach and effective utilization of available resources, such as an Instagram content calendar, businesses can overcome this hurdle. Before delving deeper into the subject, it is important to recognize the vital role of sales enablement content for empowering your sales team.
The Role of Sales Enablement Content
To comprehend the empowering nature of sales enablement content, it is important to understand its definition. Sales enablement content refers to any material created to inform, educate, and support customers on their purchasing journey. Such content can be shared by the sales team with prospects at various stages, helping them gain a better understanding of the product or service and moving them closer to a purchase.
Additionally, sales enablement content can be tailored exclusively for the sales team, providing them with market research, customer data, and relevant insights in a digestible format. This internal content aids salespeople in building stronger customer relationships and selling more efficiently.
Categories of Sales Enablement Content
Sales enablement content can be broadly categorized into two types: customer-facing content and internal seller-facing content.
Customer-facing content includes case studies, product comparisons, whitepapers, research reports, and product demos, among others, which influence buyers' purchase decisions. Customer-facing sales enablement content benefits the sales team by helping them overcome common objections, providing in-depth product information, assisting customers in their decision-making process, enhancing the customer experience, and fostering long-term relationships.
On the other hand, seller-facing content encompasses market trends reports, customer insights, calling scripts, email templates, and product descriptions, keeping the sales team updated and equipped with valuable information.
Creating Effective Sales Enablement Content
To achieve truly empowering sales enablement content, a strong content strategy and the right tools are crucial. Here are some approaches to enhance your sales enablement content creation process:
1) Develop a robust content strategy through collaboration between sales, marketing, and content teams. Assign responsibilities, establish deliverables and timelines, and schedule regular internal meetings to gather feedback and identify improvement opportunities.
Utilize tools for content creation and collaboration:
Narrato
Narrato, a content creation, collaboration, and workflow management tool, is an essential asset in the process of creating effective sales enablement content. It offers a wide range of features designed to enhance the content creation process and boost productivity.
At the core of Narrato lies its powerful editor, which provides content creators with valuable suggestions for content optimization and an AI writing assistant to improve the quality of the content being produced. This ensures that the sales enablement content is engaging and impactful.
Collaboration is made seamless on Narrato, thanks to its in-line comments feature and messaging system. Team members can easily share feedback and communicate with each other, even when working remotely. Additionally, finished content tasks can be shared with stakeholders using publicly shareable links, allowing for easy collaboration and feedback gathering. The platform also offers custom roles and access control for users, providing flexibility in managing team members' permissions.
With its content project management features like content calendars and workflow boards, Narrato helps sales teams stay organized and keep track of their projects. All content can be categorized and organized under specific projects and folders, making it easier to manage and locate relevant materials. Narrato continually adds new features to its platform, making it an invaluable asset in the sales team's toolkit.
Figma
A visual content collaboration tool enabling easy creation of graphics, videos, infographics, and live collaboration for remote teams.
Figma is a visual content collaboration tool that greatly enhances the creation of visual elements for sales enablement content. It is particularly useful for creating graphics, videos, infographics, and other visual components without requiring graphic design expertise or the use of complex image editing software.
Figma's user-friendly interface and drag-and-drop editors make it accessible to users of all skill levels. This empowers sales teams to create visually appealing and impactful content without relying on external resources. With live collaboration features, teams can work together in real-time, ensuring that everyone involved in a design project is on the same page, even when working remotely.
FigJam, Figma's collaboration tool, offers additional features such as online whiteboarding, which facilitates ideation and brainstorming sessions with the sales team. From sketching ideas on a virtual whiteboard to using virtual sticky notes, FigJam creates an environment that fosters collaboration and creativity, similar to an in-person meeting room.
Slack
A communication and collaboration tool for internal and external stakeholders, providing centralized communication channels and facilitating effective collaboration.
Slack is a communication and collaboration tool that plays a vital role in the sales content creation process. It serves as a centralized platform for internal communication within the sales team and facilitates effective communication with external stakeholders.
Slack allows for the creation of separate channels for different teams, topics, or projects, ensuring that conversations remain relevant and focused. This enhances collaboration and keeps the sales team aligned and informed. Additionally, Slack enables inviting members from outside the organization, making it easy to gather feedback from customers or collaborate with freelancers, marketing or content agencies.
With its intuitive interface and user-friendly features, Slack simplifies communication and ensures that all relevant discussions and updates are easily accessible. By using Slack as the centralized communication platform, sales teams can streamline their communication efforts and keep everyone involved on the same page.
2) Regularly update sales enablement content to ensure the information shared with the sales team remains current. Schedule meetings to brief the team on new content releases and how to access them.
3) Prioritize the buyer experience when creating sales enablement content. Conduct background research to identify prospect needs, address their questions and objections, and focus on adding value to their journey.
4) Track the success of your sales enablement content by defining relevant metrics. Share the results with your sales team to boost morale and provide insights for continuous improvement.
Conclusion
Sales enablement content is a powerful tool for businesses, comparable in importance to effective lead generation. By equipping your sales team with quality content, you can witness improved performance and outcomes. Regularly revisit your content strategy, optimize it, and invest the necessary time to ensure long-term success.
Remember, sales enablement content creation is an ongoing process that requires dedication and adaptation to yield tangible results for your business.