Sales collateral isn’t the only part of the equation in B2B sales; you’ve got the quality of your product, competitive advantage, referrals, reviews and, crucially, your salespeople. The truth is, good sales collateral on its own probably won’t close a deal, but don’t let this deter your focus on creating impactful collateral. Your buyers will interact with your sales collateral throughout their entire buying journey, and while it might not close a deal, inaccurate or inaccessible content can be destructive to your sales process. Here are our tips for auditing your sales-ready content and how to optimize your sales collateral.
1. Don’t limit your content to one type
We’ve talked about PowerPoint’s inflexibility before, and while we haven’t changed our minds, be wary of pivoting too much in another direction. Be careful you are not using just one type of media. Putting all of your content in video form could be just as much of a misstep as having everything in PowerPoints, PDFs or images. A good rule of thumb is to transform your information into the medium that best and most clearly communicates what you’re trying to convey to your audiences.
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- If you’re trying to calculate the projected ROI from purchasing your solution, that might be an interactive calculator.
- If you’re trying to showcase customer success stories, put together some professional video testimonials.
- If you want to summarize how your company managed client engagements, that could be a PowerPoint.
Review your current sales collateral, and make sure that you’re not losing context and impact with the wrong medium.
2. Quality over quantity
Too much sales collateral doesn’t just overwhelm customers, but it overwhelms salespeople too. Don’t add to their plate by distributing extraneous content.
Now that the days of carrying around stacks of brochures are mostly behind us, it can be easy to just keep adding content to your CMS and forget just how much content you have. The goal is not to give sales reps as much collateral as possible; the goal is to give them the collateral they need. Sometimes improving sales collateral means cutting it down.
3. One size doesn’t fit all
Before you start dropping files into the recycle bin, make sure that you’re not pigeonholing sales reps with content that tries to be jack of all trades, but ends up being the master of none. If you’re a medical supply company, for example, you’re not going to give the same presentation to a private clinic as you would to a large university hospital.
If you don’t provide sales reps content to fit different customers and situations, what will they do? They’ll create their own collateral, which means they’re spending less time in the field, and less time selling.
4. Let your sales rep be the storyteller
Think of the salesperson’s interactions with a prospect less as presentations and more as interactive, storytelling experiences. When a sales rep uses a piece of content, it shouldn’t be a barrier between them and the customer. Instead, sales reps should be empowered to forge stronger relationships with customers through content.
There are a couple of ways to achieve this. The first is to avoid the paradox of pushing out generic PPT decks while having sales reps attempting to re-engineer the content to build customized presentations for every single customer. Modularize your content, leverage the right type of media and allow for reps to use approved content that fits their personal selling style. This establishes trust and goodwill between sales and marketing, as well as between the customer and your sales reps.
Another way is by employing interactive content, which takes a non-linear and dynamic approach to in-person interactions. This type of approach enables your sales rep to be consultative and provide content that establishes a vision-to-value journey.
5. Keep content up to date
This one comes down to two things:
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- Verify that your content is all up to date with regard to your company’s information, and that you remove outdated collateral and provide only the latest and greatest. Are there multiple versions of one presentation? Are you using your old logo? Are you using last quarter’s prices in brochures? No? Good!
- Compare your content to your competitor’s and monitor related macro trends. It’s also imperative that you regularly check in with your field sales teams to make sure your content is helping to elevate each customer interaction and focusing on the business benefits, feature sets and offerings that set you apart.
6. Focus on your prospects
When we talk about sales and marketing alignment, we sometimes lose focus of the most important part of the equation: the customer! To communicate the full value of your product, you have to work backwards from the needs of your prospects. A feature-loaded product whose value isn’t communicated to prospects may as well not exist.
Speak to them in terms that they understand, that mean something in their industry, not ones that only make sense to you. Imagine how each of your prospects views the world, and then frame content and conversations from that perspective. That way, you can preemptively answer their questions, even those they didn’t even know they had.
7. Speed and simplicity
Finding content should be easy, quick and intuitive. That means organizing content in the way that makes the most sense for your field reps, aided with a robust search function, not nestled away in a maze of folders that only content creators can navigate. That’s it. Easy.
8. Listen to your salespeople (and the data)
The best magic-8 ball in the world is no replacement for the information you get from your field reps about what works and what doesn’t. They are your number one asset for improving collateral.
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- Ask for their feedback about collateral. Is it improving their sales interactions? Are they able to respond to client questions effectively? Do they have the content they need for every stage of the buying cycle and every type of buyer?
- Do quarterly ride-alongs so that you can see how content is being used and identify gaps.
Understanding what content is not being used is an underutilized datapoint. Many sales reps may not offer up, “hey, I’m not using this presentation.” They just won’t use it and you won’t know. Make sure you’re using a content distribution solution that allows you to track what content is being used, by whom and how often.
When you start the process of improving your collateral and having conversations with your sales reps, it’ll become clear just how important that content is in empowering the sales force. Improving collateral, however, is just one piece in the process of sales transformation.
With that in mind, Mediafly CEO Carson Conant put together a SlideShare outlining how companies can make sales transformation smooth and successful. Check out 5 Steps to a Successful Sales Transformation below!
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