As the market environment shifts, so do clients when making decisions. Your potential clients are constantly learning and growing in sophistication.
Studies show that clients are 57% of the way down the sales funnel before they ever think of contacting a sales representative directly. The content and interactions you provide during the B2B sales process can either hasten or delay the buyer’s journey or cause friction and disrupt it.
Up-to-date sales enablement materials will help you anticipate their demands and needs. Collateral incorporating the latest data is more likely to resonate with prospects and elicit purchases. Confusing, obsolete sales materials give the impression that you are not as innovative as your competitors.
In this article, we will discuss some of the signs indicating that your sales collateral needs an update.
Components of a Reliable Sales Enablement Collateral System
Content created specifically for sales teams can help them better communicate the value your B2B company brings to your target market. It helps them be more confident when talking to a client. Here are some of the elements that should be included in your collateral.
- Playbooks: Comprehensive information (online or offline) that has everything a salesperson may possibly need.
- Battle cards: Written materials that aid in fruitful client conversations about your offerings vs. your competitors'.
- User manuals or how-to guides: A specific type of sales enablement material demonstrating how your products function, which will provide valuable information to potential users.
- Call and email scripts: Salespeople’s interactions with clients require phone and email scripts. Don't let them wing it!
- Product demo videos: Product demonstration videos are quite effective in the business-to-business (B2B) market. Clients are more likely to purchase after seeing the product in action.
- FAQs: According to a poll conducted by the Corporate Executive Board, 7,000 clients' inclination to purchase increases if they can easily find relevant information. An FAQ can help break down complex topics for your clients.
- Objection handling techniques: A client’s objection is a golden opportunity to make a sale. Recognizing competitors, re-framing clients’ complaints as conversation starters, and providing multiple solutions make a difference.
When Is It Time To Refresh Your Sales Enablement Materials?
Systematically maintaining, measuring, and optimizing sales enablement collateral is crucial to any growth strategy. So, what are the telltale signs that an update is in order?
1. The Time Between Updates Is Too Long
Staying aware of when and what was changed in each piece of collateral is one of the most crucial things you can do. After waiting at least six months, it’s time to give your sales enablement materials another look. There’s probably been a change that hasn’t been reflected yet. Get a bird’s-eye view of your sales collateral by keeping track of everything in a spreadsheet as it ages.
2. Changes in Buyer Personas
Every so often, the marketing department should revise its buyer personas in light of new data and input from the sales department. It’s crucial to revisit sales enablement materials on such occasions to make sure they still resonate with your target clients. If you made changes to your buyer personas, including adding pain points, you should consider those adjustments. You then can create more content to help your personas overcome those problems.
3. New Objections Reported by Sales Representatives
Salespeople constantly interact with prospective clients. When there is a shift in the way leads think, especially when there is a new kind of objection, they usually notice it first. As soon as they provide this information to the marketing department, changes should be made to materials. Sales teams risk losing potential deals if you delay making updates.
4. Analytics Data Has Changed
Even though large-scale patterns in visitor behavior on your website tend to change more slowly, they can be just as enlightening. You need to keep an eye on analytics to see whether there is a shift in users’ preferences away from any particular piece of content or toward any other.
Seeing this allows you to better equip sales professionals with collateral. It can serve as a basis for developing new sales and marketing materials. You need to maintain the same level of quality while introducing fresh content.
5. You Received Feedback After a Sale
New clients still have something to offer you even after the deal is done. Hearing their reasoning for choosing you over the competition is incredibly informative. To learn from the experiences of your new customers and improve your closing process, you should always ask for their comments. You can use this to your advantage by highlighting these qualities in your sales enablement materials.
6. There Are Trends in Your CRM Data
By merging data from your customer relationship management and web analytics tools, you can gain a complete picture of your leads’ behavior throughout the buying process. Give more weight to materials that are frequently consulted right before people decide to contact you and those that come before any lengthy disruptions in the process.
7. Related Sales Enablement Materials Have Been Updated
It’s not uncommon to begin updating one piece of sales material only to find that your actions have ripple effects across the board. Because of this, you may end up having to change a large body of work all at once. The temptation to put off updating everything will be strong, but you should resist it. If you can get it all done at once, do it now. If you don’t, you’ll have to deal with an even greater challenge in the future.
Final Thoughts
While much of your marketing content will remain relevant over time, the same cannot be said for your sales enablement materials. The goal must always be to help your sales team build relationships, reach out to potential clients, and close deals that result in increased revenue. If you want your sales materials to help bring about that crucial “final agreement” moment, you need to keep a close eye on them. You can stay on track with the help of the seven signs we’ve discussed in this article.
With the help of a reliable partner like The WDG Agency, you’ll be able to create compelling sales enablement materials and guarantee they’re made on time. We’ll help you monitor usage, gather valuable data, generate reports, and make adjustments in response to changing products and services.
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