You can't close the deal without great sales content

What makes great sales content?

Great sales content goes beyond basic contracts and proposals. It’s part of a larger ecosystem of content that nurtures leads through the sales funnel, allowing them to experience your brand and establish trust that you have the solution they need.

In an increasingly digital sales environment, high-quality sales content will set companies apart from their competitors.

Modern buyers’ journeys are complex and constantly evolving. Buyers often encounter several aspects of your brand and business before even speaking to a sales rep.

You want to make sure your bottom-funnel sales content is just as beautiful and helpful as any marketing collateral you create for the top of the sales funnel.

Great sales content maintains the trust built during the early stages of the sales funnel through consistent branding and presenting the most important and relevant information to the potential buyer.

The best sales content includes:

• Consistent and beautiful branding
• Visual hierarchy and structured design to guide buyers to important information
• Accurate and relevant information for buyers about the product
• Easy-to-follow structure and foreshadowing of the next step in the sales process

Great sales content could be the custom-branded proposal a sales rep sends out with comments and highlights to showcase the most important information. It could also be a custom value proposition, such as a deck, chart, or diagram, with detailed information about how the product addresses the potential buyer’s specific pain points.

Remember, the point of great sales content is to lead buyers through the sales process, equipping them with the knowledge and information they need to make their own decisions.

There are also some types of great sales content that buyers never see. Internal sales content helps sales teams align on:

• Customer personas
• Pricing and discounts 
• Competitors 
• Product features 
• Relevant industry trends.

Sales enablement tools and processes ensure your internal sales content is distributed team-wide.

What makes sales content bad?

Just like great sales content helps sales reps close a deal, bad sales content is often enough to send buyers running the other way.

Poor external sales content disrupts the trust a buyer has built through painstaking research and interaction with different pieces of marketing content.

Bad internal sales content can also disrupt your team’s effectiveness. If a sales rep is working from an outdated pricing document, it could frustrate and confuse the buyer and ultimately cost them the deal.

Common mistakes that ruin sales content include:

• Old or outdated branding
• Incorrect version of a document (e.g. sending a proposal to one company that was meant for a different company)
• Inaccurate information about pricing, competitors, or the product
• Vague or generic content that offers no new information to the buyer

Invest time and effort into creating a sales content library that will help your team close more deals.

Why do sales teams need content?

It’s easy to think of content as something only marketers need to create and manage. Sales teams, though, can benefit from a catalog of relevant content that they can reference internally or share with customers.

Here are some of the reasons sales teams need good content:

1. Sales content keeps brand and message consistent
   A catalog of sales content provides a shared internal language and framework for customer interaction. Well-crafted sales content maintains brand integrity and aligns individual sales reps on messaging for the product.
   
   The company brand is the set of colors, logos, fonts, shapes, and tone of voice that comprises your company’s identity to outside stakeholders. A consistent brand establishes positive associations with your company for buyers. Consistent brands are also more memorable for buyers, and will set your visual identity apart from other businesses buyers are considering.
   
   Internal sales content builds message and brand consistency that ensures leads aren’t receiving drastically different messages from individual sales reps.
   
   It’s natural for sales representatives to add personal touches to sales content or sales interactions based on personal style or specific buyer needs. What’s important is that those personal touches still fall under the umbrella of the company brand.
   
   
2. Content proves value to customers
   High-quality, well-timed sales content helps guide buyers through the final stages of the sales funnel to a final purchasing decision.
   
   In fully digital sales environments, it can be challenging for sales teams to demonstrate the product when so much depends on technology working well at the right time.
   
   Sales content can make or break your ability to demonstrate value to customers when you can’t rely on in-person sales interactions, such as onsite meetings, relationship building, and nonverbal cues.
   
   Use sales content pieces such as case studies and competitor comparisons to show buyers how clients like them benefitted from your product.
   
   Highlighting competitor features also shows buyers you’re willing to be transparent about how your offer compares to a competitor’s offer, further establishing trust.
   
   
3. Sales content empowers individual sales reps
   Comprehensive internal sales content means sales reps never have to be afraid of talking price or product with buyers on a high-stakes call.
   
   A robust catalog of up-to-date internal sales content helps sales teams position and sell the product accurately and can outline which levers the company can adjust during price negotiations.
   
   Having pricing matrices and competitor insights on hand also saves sales reps time and makes them appear even more knowledgeable and professional to buyers.
   
   Great sales content is an important part of every sales rep’s arsenal, especially as more and more sales transactions take place online. Having this content available to sales reps gives teams the freedom to discuss strategy and share knowledge, rather than relying on upper management for guidance and direction.