The Sales Enablement Content Your Team Needs to Succeed

Historically, marketing’s content hasn’t met the sales department’s needs. Inbound marketing is helping to solve the challenge.

What content do sales teams need?

Sales teams need the right content to appeal to customers. This includes custom content designed to appeal to customers at any stage of the buying cycle, case studies, and so much more.

Giving the sales team the right content is an important part of your sales enablement efforts; it will enable them to have more meaningful conversations, build stronger relationships, and close more deals.

What Is Sales Enablement?

Sales enablement is a strategy used to enable your sales team. It involves various techniques, such as providing ongoing training, investing in new technologies and tools, and other methods of assisting your sales team to sell at a higher velocity.

With the right tools in hand, the sales team can be empowered to succeed. Content is an important part of sales enablement, although many people overlook it. Marketing is often responsible for creating content, especially in an inbound marketing environment.

To truly enable your sales team, however, you need to be sure marketing is supporting them with the kinds of content they need.

What Content Does the Sales Team Need?

Sales and marketing don’t always see eye to eye. Although both teams are focused on growing sales and interacting with customers and potential leads, they often have very different goals. This is often reflected in the content creation strategy marketing uses as part of their inbound efforts.

Marketing often creates content with only their goals and needs in mind. In turn, when they pass this content along to the sales team, your team members may wonder how they’re supposed to utilize it. The sales team may also be frustrated if they’ve spoken to marketing about the content they need.

Many sales professionals cite the need for more case studies. By the time most leads talk to a sales representative, they’re interested in very specific, in-depth information. Case studies, whitepapers, and testimonials often given them the facts and figures they’re looking for.

Content should also be mapped specifically to the buyer’s journey so that sales is prepared for customers who reach out early and those who come in late during the buying process. The content must be relevant, and it must also challenge the buyer’s thinking in some way.

How Do You Get the Right Content?

There are a few easy ways to ensure your sales team gets the content they need. The first thing you can do is ask them. Salespeople often have keen insight into the kinds of content leads are looking for.

Even if sales can’t say, “We need more how-to videos,” their insights can often give your content creation team some direction. What kinds of information are buyers looking for at the outset of their buying journey? What kinds of information do they need at the end of the process, right before they make a purchase?

Another thing you can do is teach sales how to use the content that marketing creates. Sales professionals often leave marketing content behind because they don’t see how it’s relevant or useful.

By aligning sales and marketing and having the two teams work together more closely on content creation, you’ll be more likely to address the needs of both teams.

Tracking Content Performance

The best way to ensure everyone is getting the content they need is to track the performance of content you already have. Which blogs and e-books are driving the most traffic? What kinds of qualified leads are you getting through your inbound marketing efforts?

Keeping an eye on the metrics will help you sort winning content from less stellar entries. In turn, you can strengthen your content strategy and ensure everyone gets what they need.