The Sales Enablement Materials Checklist
Sales enablement material has never been more important.
Especially for field sales teams. Unlike inbound or outbound teams, where calls and meetings are almost exclusively done either over the phone or via video calling platforms (such as CrankWheel), field teams had the advantage of meeting face-to-face.
Material designed to support sales conversations is crucial. You need every advantage to support sales conversation.
Sales leads need to see why they should buy into what you are selling. This is where Sales enablement material plays a key supporting role. In this article, we provide a basic checklist of what you need, which is either something a marketing person or team can provide, or an external partner can deliver.
What Sales enablement material should you have?
Each company is different, of course. You may already have some of what’s listed below, or what you’ve got might be in need of a refresh. And remember, your website is a key part of every sales funnel. Buyers come more prepared, and with more knowledge about what they want and need than ever before.
So you need to be prepared for buyers who could be somewhere toward the middle or bottom of the funnel, rather than the top. Potential customers have often done a lot of research. A video call, and supporting sales material, are the tools you need to use to convince them to work with you instead of competitors.
Sales Presentation
When doing video sales calls, you need powerful eye-catching presentations. Whether you are screen-sharing or doing an instant demo, presentations make a huge difference.
It needs to be professional and make an impact. It can’t be knocked together in five minutes; or if you’ve got one full of outdated information, now is probably a great time to refresh it.
A presentation needs to be in keeping with up-to-date branding, visually appealing and packed full of useful information and good reasons for a potential customer to sign-up for your product or service.
Presentations should include a section where you ask a prospect questions and another where you showcase positive client experiences. Always finish with an Ask, to secure the business.
Either take time crafting a presentation (it could take a full day, but is worth the investment of time), or ask marketing to put together suitable branded sales enablement material. External agencies and freelancers can deliver conversion-accelerating presentations too.
Sales Proposal Template
Alongside presentations, most sales teams in B2B environments need proposal documents. Ways to present the exact, often tailored offering, you’ve talked to a prospect about. Plus, this could e sent alongside any other supporting documents or examples, such as case studies.
This needs to be customizable, as you can’t send the same PDF to every prospect. It should be similar to a presentation, except with more specifics. Allow for fixed sections of text, images and graphics, alongside tailored content, unique to the potential client in question.
Case Studies
Case studies are equally essential. Some companies put all of these online. Whereas others are only sent out to prospects where there’s a serious conversation underway.
If possible, pull together at least one or two for every sector/vertical you operate in. You want potential clients to see that you work with companies similar to them. It makes it easier for them to get on-board.
One-Pagers
A one-pager is a useful summary document. When a potential client gets in contact, you can send this over so they’ve got more detailed information than on your website, and all in one handy document.
Inbound Content Marketing
Sales leads that aren’t as far along the funnel as others need to know more about what you do. Content marketing, also known as articles, blogs, alongside videos, podcasts and social media content is one of the main ways potential clients find out about new suppliers.
Generally speaking, this is something marketing is responsible for, or an external provider. But as a salesperson, or sales leader, you need to ensure something is being done to attract new leads, and this is one of the most useful steps a company can take.
Lead Generation Content
As part of that, lead generation content, such as eBooks and other downloadable documents are crucial. This way, you are offering potential prospects something of value, and they’re giving you an email address in exchange.
Sales teams can then use these to reach out, arrange sales calls, and pull leads into the funnel.
Newsletter and/or a Sales Drip Email Campaign
What happens if you’ve done a presentation and sent them more material (such as a proposal and case studies, etc.), but they’re not ready to go ahead?
A prospect isn’t saying no, they’re just saying, not yet.
One thing you can do is add them to a newsletter or sales drip email campaign (with their consent, of course). In this case, upload their email to the relevant system (some interconnect with a CRM). Ensure they’re getting relevant and timely emails that keeps them reminded of your conversation and potentially working together.
At the same time, send them a personalised email every few weeks, to start with, to move things forward and get the go-ahead.
Key Takeaway, remember this checklist:
- Sales Presentation
- Sales Proposal Template
- Case Studies
- One Pager
- Inbound Content Marketing
- Lead Generation Content
- Newsletter, and/or a Sales Drip Email Campaign