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How To Create Relevant Content Your Sales Team Can Use
As B2B marketers, we often spend our time meticulously planning, creating and promoting content to grow our audience and engage new prospects. But that well-crafted content often goes unused by sales teams. Equipping sales with content can help establish thought leadership which has the power to start new conversations, build relationships with prospects and shorten sales cycles. The right content can pay dividends in your sales team’s pipeline. PostBeyond’s Director of Marketing, Daniel Ku and Influence & Co.’s VP of Sales, Brittni Kinney will discuss how marketing can create content sales will love and how to make it easy for sales reps to find content and share assets with their prospects. About The Speakers Learn what content your sales team will share with their prospects and what they need to succeed. Daniel Ku Director of Marketing Brittni Kinney VP of Sales You'll learn how to: - Align sales and marketing on what content to prioritize - Determine what content your sales team needs to engage prospects - Get your sales team to share content across social media
How To Create Relevant Content Your Sales Team Can Use
- 1. WEBINAR How to CreateRelevant Content Your Sales Team Can Use
- 2. Speakers Brittni Kinney VP influenceandco.com Tweet: @bkblackandgold BrittniKinney is a VP at Influence & Co. who loves discussing how content marketing can help any marketing strategy achieve its full potential. She likes her coffee black and her whiskey straight, and she loves traveling. Daniel Ku is the Director of Marketing at PostBeyond and has spent the past several years in content marketing, social media, and demand generation. Outside of work, Daniel likes to practice his squat form, listen to podcasts, and tell bad puns. Daniel Ku Director of Marketing postbeyond.com Tweet: @danielku20
- 3. The Problem WithContent An estimated 80 percent of content created by marketing goes unused by sales. Source: https://smallbiztrends.com/2018/08/aligning-marketing-and-sales-content.html
- 4. Specifically, we’ll touchon: Aligning sales and marketing on what content to prioritize Determining what content your sales team needs to engage prospects Getting your sales team to share content
- 5. Reduces work Produces bettercontent Gives decision makers tangible resources Establishes thought leadership Has provable ROI Aligning Sales and Marketing — Why?
- 6. Aligning Sales andMarketing — How?
- 7. Aligning Sales andMarketing — How? Hold regular meetings and brainstorms. Use these questions as a jumping-off point to guide your conversations: What questions do you get that take a lot of time to answer? What’s the most common reason leads give for not moving forward? What’s a piece of content you wish you could send that you don’t already have? What’s the most popular piece of content you send? What are some ways you’ve described the company’s services or products on a call that have gone over really well?
- 8. Aligning Sales andMarketing — How? Create channels on Slack or other chat platforms.
- 9. Aligning Sales andMarketing — How? Conduct a survey.
- 10. Aligning Sales andMarketing — How? Share customer insights.
- 11. Aligning Sales andMarketing — How? Shadow sales calls.
- 12. Aligning Sales andMarketing — How? Gather knowledge.
- 13. How to GetYour Sales Team to Use Content Effectively 7 ways to help your sales team use and share content
- 14. Document your strategy. 75percent of highly aligned marketing and sales teams have a documented content marketing strategy. How to Get Your Sales Team to Use Content Effectively source: https://contentmarketinginstitute.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Final_CMI_LinkedIn_Research-March-2018.pdf
- 15. Involve sales inthe content creation process. How to Get Your Sales Team to Use Content Effectively
- 16. Align content tothe sales process. How to Get Your Sales Team to Use Content Effectively Awareness Consideration Decision My business has a problem! I need to do online research. It looks like this company might be able to help! I’ll learn more. This company can definitely help me solve my problem. I’m going to work with them.
- 17. How to GetYour Sales Team to Use Content Effectively Send email updates with newly published content.
- 18. Gamify content sharing. Howto Get Your Sales Team to Use Content Effectively
- 19. How to GetYour Sales Team to Use Content Effectively Create a resource library. 79 percent of highly aligned teams reported having a central location where sales reps can access content created by the content marketing team. Source: https://contentmarketinginstitute.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Final_CMI_LinkedIn_Research-March-2018.pdf
- 20. How to GetYour Sales Team to Use Content Effectively Content leads to revenue.
- 21. The Content Marketer’sGuide to Sales Enablement This guide outlines all the tips we discussed today and will help align your sales and marketing teams and ensure your sales reps are using your content effectively. Free consultation! Set up a completely hassle-free call and get your questions about content marketing answered. Link to resources above: https://offers.influenceandco.com/postbeyond-webinar- promopage Resources Influence & Co.
- 22. Resources Employee Advocacy ROICalculator Use our ROI calculator to determine the value from having your team social sell, leverage your employer brand on social or spread your company's thought leadership. Link to the resource above: https://postbeyondroi.postbeyond.com/ PostBeyond
- 23.
Editor's Notes
- #4 Talking points: Not enough sales reps are using it. According to Small Business Trends, 80 percent of sales reps aren’t using the content that their marketing teams are creating. There are various reasons why this is happening, and in this webinar, we’ll discuss steps you can implement so that your company isn’t part of this statistic.
- #6 Talking points: With the right content, your sales team can send relevant, high-quality resources that do much of the work of phone calls, email correspondence, and other touchpoints in much less time. Talking points: By working together, your marketing team can create better, more targeted content for sales conversations. Sales reps will have a better idea of what resources exist for them to use, as well as a deeper understanding of your content strategy — including when content can be utilized. Talking points: By providing content like blog posts, guest-contributed articles, and e-books, you give your prospective customers tangible resources they can share with others involved in the decision-making process to get the internal buy-in they need to move forward with your company. Talking points: By equipping your sales reps with relevant content that’s helpful to your buyers, they’ll be perceived as more credible, helpful, and even thought leaders within their industry. Talking points: When your marketing department can show exactly how the content you've created has contributed to your goals — not just to leads generated, but also sales won — you can paint a crystal-clear picture of content's value to your organization and increase your content marketing budget.
- #7 Talking points: When you arm the members of your sales team with content specifically created to educate their prospects, quickly and thoroughly answer questions, and break down trust barriers, you enable them to supplement their conversations, improve efficiency, and spend more time selling — and that's a win for your entire company.
- #8 Talking points: The more marketing and sales teams communicate and learn from one another, the more focused they’ll become on their shared goals. So make it a priority to get your teams into the same room and onto the same page. Schedule regular meetings between your content marketers and your sales reps. If both teams prepare ahead of time, everyone can show up with specific questions to make the most of their time together.
- #9 Talking points: If your company uses Slack or another similar chat platform, create specific channels for marketing and sales, and invite relevant team members to each department’s channel. That way, a member of your sales team can hop over to the marketing channel to ask you about content for a specific topic. This can help you quickly understand what need a sales rep is trying to meet. If you have a resource that helps, send it; if you don't, add that idea to your topic list for future content. And over on the sales channel, encourage your sales team members to talk through tricky questions from prospects or interesting conversations they're having. Regularly checking in on this back-and-forth between sales reps gives you the chance to chime in with helpful content resources or file ideas away for future topics.
- #10 Talking points: To give everyone a chance to document their ideas and keep those ideas organized, use Typeform (or a similar tool) to power a simple form that allows team members to submit content ideas whenever they feel inspired. Use your form to ask questions like “Would you like to be the author of this piece?” and “Why is this a valuable topic for us to cover?” This can help you prioritize content ideas and collect all the information you need to create a great piece of content that’s effective for both marketing and sales.
- #11 Talking points: Whatever system or technology you use, ensure that both the marketing and sales stacks talk to each other. You can leverage technology to provide your sales reps with insights on how prospects are engaging with different pieces of content or the website. When your sales reps reach out, their message will be much more personalized to the individual.
- #12 Talking points: Sitting in on calls is a great way to immerse yourself in the sales process and learn firsthand what your audience members and sales reps need — and it requires very little extra time or effort from your sales team. Encourage your fellow content marketers to listen in on sales calls whenever possible. You can even go as far as requiring monthly shadow sessions or making sales shadowing a regular part of your training process as you grow your team.
- #13 Talking points: Knowledge gathering makes it easy to create content by helping you draw out the most important, relevant information from your sales team as quickly as possible. Ask your sales reps a series of questions about a topic and use their individual answers and nuggets of expertise to create content that specifically addresses their needs.
- #14 Talking points: All the content in the world means next to nothing if your sales team doesn’t know where to access it or how to use it effectively. So now that you have a better understanding of how to create high-quality content that enables the sales process, it’s time to actually arm your sales reps with that content. Here are seven ways to help your sales team use content.
- #15 Talking points: Develop your strategy with insights from sales to inform your audience personas, the details of your buyer journey, your content goals and tactics, and more. This way, your plan can be its most effective, and both your marketing and sales teams will understand how content is being created and used to reach your shared goals.
- #16 Talking points: When you involve sales reps in the creation process, they’ll have a much better idea of what resources are available and when they can use them. The more involved they are from start to finish, the better they’ll know the ins and outs of all the content that’s available to them.
- #17 Talking point: Most sales teams understand their sales process inside out, but they might not understand how content helps. By discussing what the sales process is like and your buyer’s typical journey, you can map content to each stage and touchpoint.
- #18 Talking points: Consider sending weekly or monthly emails to your sales team members with links to all your newly published content. Include a quick descriptor that tells what the content is about, as well as what your sales reps can use it for.
- #19 Talking point: Consider providing incentives or gamify the experience. Your sales reps are a competitive bunch, so leverage their intrinsic motivation to outperform their peers by offering small incentives for sharing content.
- #20 Talking points: To make it as easy as possible for your sales team to access and use your best sales enablement content, create a sales resource library. Consider organizing your sales content based on common sales situations, including stage in the buyer journey, product or service, persona, or any other elements that matter for segmenting your message.
- #21 Talking points: Encourage your sales team to share their success stories and challenges as they use your content. This enables your sales reps to give feedback to one another and find new ways to use your content. Plus, it helps your team learn what works well in these sales-specific conversations and what needs to be changed to improve sales calls and better nurture your prospects to a sale. PostBeyond sales rep success story