Sales enablement involves providing your startup’s sales team with the resources required to close more deals and improve your return on investment. Equip them with the right content, technology, tools, and resources to help them engage with customers. Align your sales team with the marketing team by walking them through the buyer’s journey. Plan out your content to help your sales and marketing teams be more effective.
Let’s dive into mapping your sales enablement plan to the buyer’s journey.
Quick takeaways:
- Map the content in your sales enablement plan to the buyer’s journey
- Get the sales team involved in creating content to support their needs
- Plan the sales enablement content as part of your overall content strategy
Mapping Your Sales Enablement Content to the Buyer’s Journey
The content you create as part of your sales enablement plan should map to the steps that make up the buyer’s journey. When prospects discover your products or services, they will compare your offerings to competitors before making a purchasing decision. Your sales enablement content can help make these decisions easier.
- Top of the funnel: The goal is attracting and qualifying leads for the sales team. Create educational content (e.g., blog posts, product sheets) and targeted email templates.
- Middle of the funnel: The goal is nurturing leads who have shown interest and are considering their options. Create white papers, e-books, newsletters, and email templates. Slideshows and video tours are useful for B2B prospects.
- Bottom of the funnel: The goal is closing the deal with prospects. Create fact sheets and email templates. Include customer testimonials and reviews for additional support.
How to Use the Buyer’s Journey to Create Sales Enablement Content
Sales enablement content is often the first content your target audience sees from you. The data you gather based on leads’ interaction with the content becomes part of the sales process. Aligning with the sales team should be part of the marketing strategy. Therefore, make your sales enablement content part of your startup’s content strategy.
Get the Sales Team Involved
Involve the sales team in developing your content strategy. Ask them for input and feedback on what they are hearing from customers. Get their direction on creating sales materials, which they will need to make their work more effective. The goal is reducing friction in the sales process.
Sales reps will provide ideas based on what they’ve heard from customers. Turn that feedback into real content plans. If sales reps have to regularly prepare slide decks and PowerPoint presentations, work with them to create a branded template. Publish white papers, research reports, and blog posts on your website based on customers’ questions about your products or services.
If you’re an early-stage startup, your sales content and materials will evolve as you learn more about what matters to customers. Much of the content will be based on what early adopters ask for. As sales reps learn from customers, use that knowledge to understand and improve upon your asset base.
Plan Out Your Content
Start planning out your content once you determine your sales team’s needs. Follow the same strategies you would for creating any other piece of content:
- Focus on popular topics and keywords
- Research your competitors’ content
- Develop briefs for your writing team
- Create specs for templates based on the sales team’s key needs
- Schedule the content on your content calendar
Track and Measure Results
Measure the impact of your sales enablement content so you can adjust as necessary. Use the following metrics:
- Meeting quotas: The effectiveness of your sales enablement content will be evident when sales reps meet (or don’t meet) their monthly or quarterly quotas. Sales reps will be able to tell you how customers react to the sales enablement content.
- Content use: If you created effective sales content, it will be used regularly as part of the sales process. Anything that gets used once should be reworked or discarded.
- Sales time: Sales reps should spend more time on meeting their quotas and less time on actually selling. Templates, educational information, and other content should make the sales process more efficient.
Creating the Right Sales Enablement Content
Having sales and marketing teams work together to create the content for your sales enablement plan will support the sales process, increase conversions, and improve ROI. Planning out the content based on the buyer’s journey will help create more effective assets, making everyone’s jobs easier and more productive.