Sales content, when coupled with sales enablement technology, is one of the most effective tools to accelerate lead conversion in the digital selling/marketing arsenal. Marketers need to pay attention to the move toward Sales Engagement Platforms and realize that the need for sales to have compelling content is an imperative.
The Relationship Between Marketers and Sales Enablement
Sales professionals and marketers are on the same team: Both are trying to convert leads to customers. One of the ways marketers support the sales team is by creating content. These include deliverables that educate leads on what sets you apart from your competitors, how your product or service is a best fit for them, or how you are helping your current customers. Often referred to as resources or sales content, these types of deliverables, coupled with sales enablement applications, are what sales professionals use every day to show value to potential clients.
However, the sales enablement market is currently undergoing a transformation. This blog is about how marketers should be aware of the changes impacting the sales enablement space because it will impact their content creation process—for the better.
Sales Technology Consolidation: The Rise of the Sales Engagement Platform (SEP)
Sales professionals use a multitude of applications to reach prospects. They might have a video pitch app, an email blast app, and a social selling app, in addition to their CRM. Until recently, they did not have a go-to platform, like the marketer’s Marketing Automation Platform, that consolidated these apps into one place. Now, sales enablement apps are giving way to the Sales Engagement Platform (SEP), which is a good thing, because it will streamline a lot of the sales workflow. For marketers, this means that you will get better, faster feedback about the content you are providing your sales teams with.
One Repository for Content
One of the problems marketers find themselves faced with is they are creating content and the sales teams are not using it. Conversely, sales teams often complain that they can’t find the content they need when they need it, or that the content they have is not a good fit for the prospect they are trying to engage with. With the SEP, sales professionals will have all of their outreach channels in one place, which means all of their content can live in one place, too.
This will make it easier for marketers to hand off resources and easier for sales teams to find those resources and start using them immediately. It will also allow sales professionals to receive immediate feedback about the content that they can then relay to marketers:
Streamlined Analytics Will Provide Better Insight to Marketers on Their Content
Analytics will be cross-channel and can be accessed in one place with the SEP. This will lead to quicker feedback about which resources are working and which aren’t—whether those resources are video resources, white papers, decks, or client testimonials. This feedback will be instantaneous, and marketers will receive immediate insight from the sales team into which resources have been effective and which have gone cold or generated little engagement.
While a deliverable may look great aesthetically, or seem to pack a powerful punch with a client testimonial, if prospects are not engaging with it, then it is not helpful to the sales team. With the robust insight that the SEP provides, time should not be wasted on useless content; it should be discarded ASAP. Content that is performing well, on the other hand, should be paid attention to, and marketers should use this content as a model for future resource creation and adjust their campaigns accordingly.
Next Steps
Sales technology is changing, and marketers need to be prepared to get instantaneous feedback on all forms of content. Marketers also need to be prepared to let go of content that is not performing well, embrace the content that is, and create more content than they might have had to in the past, due to the sped-up process of the content feedback cycle.