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January 14, 2019 Content Chat Recap: How to Enable Your Sales Team with Content

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Content is crucial in enabling sales success. If your sales reps don’t have the right resources to engage with their leads at various stages of the sales cycle, or if your potential customers can’t find the information they need from your site, you may risk losing that lead to your competitor.

In this #ContentChat, we were joined by Pam Didner (@PamDidner) – who recently released a book on sales enablement – to dive into what sales enablement is, why it’s important, and how your content and sales teams can align to decrease sales cycles and increase close rates.

Q1: So Pam, tell us… What Is Sales Enablement?

Sales enablement involves equipping sales teams with the resources they need to work more efficiently and increase success rates.

This increased sales efficiency should also lead to a better customer experience.

The exact phrasing is up for debate, but the meaning stays the same.

Q2: How does content marketing fit into sales enablement?

Access to the right content can remove barriers for salespeople. This can take place through onboardings, mapping existing content to sales processes, and the creation of new content to fill any gaps (among others).

The right content should accelerate the sales cycle and make the lives of your sales reps easier.

And ongoing content marketing strategies offer a range of benefits for your existing and prospective customers.

Pam has an e-book that dives further into the alignment.

Q3: What does sales enablement content look like?

Sales enablement content can take many forms, including white papers, pricing/product guides, case studies, sales emails, etc.

The best content will vary for each company, but look for content that is not only being used by your teams, but also driving results. This can include third party content.

Interactive content is a great option, but it can be resource intensive.

Q4: What are some proven tactics for marketing and sales alignment?

Mapping your marketing content to sales stages is a solid way to organize your content and identify any gaps that need to be filled.

The best alignment will come from regular communication, in-person if possible, with sales, marketing and your customers.

These meetings will be most productive if you are speaking the same lingo and agree on metrics to track.

Q5: How to know if your sales team needs content?

Asking is the most direct way to know when your sales team needs content.

But just because a salesperson asks for a certain piece/type of content does not mean it is the right content to prioritize.

Map your customer journey to prioritize content needs.

Or prioritize content that is frequently sought after.

And, above all, look at the data to guide your next move.

Q6: What is the role of internal communications and documentation in sales enablement?

Put simply, everything.

In more words, internal comms and documentation ensures alignment and efficient, sustained success of sales enablement initiatives.

There’s tools that can help you with this process.

Q7: What are some essential content types for sales enablement?

The list is fairly extensive, check out the below for some examples.

Q8: Have a question for @pamdidner? Ask now!

If you’re starting a sales enablement program from scratch, start by understanding the sales plan and goal for the year. Then, you can identify where content is most needed.

About Alek Irvin

Alek Irvin is a content marketing professional with a rich history in social media management, executive thought leadership development, and media relations. As a consultant at Erika Heald Marketing Consulting, he creates human-focused content and thought leadership platforms that help brand leaders connect and engage with their communities. Alek has worked with a range of startups and Fortune 500 companies across the B2B technology and consumer spaces, including IBM, Dell Technologies, Hitch Works, Emtrain, Integrate, and Frameable. Connect with him on Twitter @AlekIrvin.

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Comments

  1. Alex Eaton says

    Thanks for this round-up! Super helpful and detailed. I feel like there are more and more sales enablement tools out there nowadays as the discipline becomes more known, and marketers are working more directly with sales enablement as its own discipline, at least in larger companies. Beyond even tools, just the trust between marketing and sales that what you’re producing is helpful is key.

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