Does your sales process feels buried in marketing content?
We understand the confusion, you have more digital sales aids, more technology, more sales process, more sales content, etc. and everyone is telling you that it’s going to make everything easier and more streamlined when it comes to selling to your client.
But in reality, you’re spending less time actually doing your job -selling to clients- and more time sifting through what seems like endless reams of files for something valuable to use in your next sales call.
Who or what is to blame?
Marketing is (not) the problem,
The call comes in, Marketing is launching another campaign, and a whole suite of content for you to use is going to be uploaded for “your benefit”. It certainly seems like Marketing is to blame from your point of view.
Unfortunately, Marketing is only adapting to what the buyer wants: more readily available information to use in making a purchase decision. Though this issue could be improved with more sales and marketing alignment, we can’t go blaming marketing for satisfying the needs of the buyer.
How to refocus from content management back to sales?
The solution is, thankfully, only a click away. Sales Enablement programs are the content management solutions of today and tomorrow. What is sales enablement? It’s a system that provides the right content, at the right time for the right sales situation. It helps with content in three ways:
1) Content Accessibility
Sales enablement solutions ensure that the vast library of content that has been developed by your marketing team can be accessed, used, rated, commented on, and stored again. Most importantly, it allows your marketing team to sort and organize the content for ease of access.
2) Sales Playbook
These programs double as your sales presentation software. You can sort and organize your files into a “playbook” which can be optimized for any potential sales situation. You use this ‘quick-play’ function to prepare for any foreseeable questions and appear prepared to add value with your interactions.
3) Multichannel Digital Presentations
Perhaps the biggest roadblock: file format. You have 3D images, videos, keynotes, and several image formats, and any one of them could prove to be the information that seals the deal. Sales enablement tools ensure that you can not only show, but share (send) content to your clients for later use, regardless of format or their preferred operating system.
If content management is your current sales speed-bump, then a sales enablement solution is more like a sales acceleration solution.
How do you manage the endless buckets of marketing content? Or do you even bother?
