Sales enablement is the key to empowering your salespeople to perform better and more confidently in their roles. Critical to that outcome is sales enablement content, the ammunition your salespeople need to effectively engage prospects, convert them, and close deals.
Rather than attracting top-of-funnel prospects – which is the job of content marketing – sales enablement content is the foundation to engaging, authentic, value-added conversations that your salespeople should have with prospects throughout the buyer journey.
It's not just about providing consistent content — the content itself can set the narrative but it can't do the hard work for you — but also about finding the right positioning, and having the right conversations.
Top 7 Types of Sales Enablement Content: Whitepapers & Other Deliverables
Sales enablement content is customer-centric and value-driven. Its primary focus should be driving sales enablement deliverables and empowering your salespeople to have productive and personalized conversations with prospects all the way through closing. However, in order to be effective, your sales enablement content must answer prospects’ questions to help them make buying decisions — and do so in formats that resonate with them.
The types of effective sales enablement content necessary to help in that decision-making process are as varied as your client base. These types of content can include:
Case Studies – Stories about how others have used your product or service to solve a particular business challenge are welcomed by prospects. Case studies also serve to build trust with your prospects and clients and show them the type of experience they can expect from your brand.
Sales Scripts – When salespeople have an easy-to-access list of high-impact messages and bullet points to use to guide sales call conversations, they can better concentrate on listening to their prospects and effectively closing the conversation. Sales scripts are important reference points that can help trigger interest.
One-sheets / Product sheets – These at-a-glance references help your brand make a great first impression. With increasingly complex products, bite-sized featured breakdowns, one-sheets or product sheets also help your salespeople build their own product knowledge and understand prospects’ business challenges.
E-books and Whitepapers — Prospects and customers do more research than ever before to compare and understand their options before making a buying decision. Whitepapers and e-books provide that information in a clear and substantive way. Their content delivers statistically sound data, well-researched findings, and an informed point of view on an issue that is timely and relevant. E-books and whitepapers also provide evidence of the effectiveness of your product or service and position your salespeople as trusted experts.
Competitive Analysis – This easy-to-reference content can help a prospect understand your brand’s distinctive competencies. It also helps your salespeople better understand potential objections and effectively overcome them.
Blog Posts — Business blog posts that illustrate how your product or service solves problems are easy for your salespeople to share and can be used to continue an initial conversation or support a buying decision.
Video Demos – Video is a highly engaging format that can drive new life (and interest) in content you already produced for whitepapers and case studies. Video content can also easily support all steps in the customer journey, from initial explainer productions for top-of-funnel leads to product tutorials for new customers. With easy video editing tools available today, transforming your written content into engaging videos is more accessible than ever.
Your sales enablement team is also creating content like competitive battle cards, objection handlings, messaging & positioning statements and other internal sales knowledge that your sales team is leveraging, as well.
How Do You Develop a Sales Enablement Content Strategy?
An integral part of effective sales enablement is a strong content strategy. Organizations that are most successful in developing and maximizing their sales enablement content strategy achieve this when their sales and marketing teams work together on the following steps:
1: Audit existing content
Start by systematically reviewing all the content your sales teams use. Ask what content works for them and in what part of the buyer journey. In addition, learn what content doesn’t work and why. In this way, you’ll identify sales enablement content gaps.
2: Use internal documentation and knowledge to create new content
Once your content gaps are identified, it’s time to fill them with the information you already have available from your product experts and internal knowledge base. Using internal documentation and knowledge can help get your team the sales enablement content they need.
3: Create content that benefits sales reps and marketers
Remember that sales and marketing will need the same information necessary to fill those gaps, but will use that information in different ways. Marketing material should be designed to get the attention of potential customers. Sales enablement content should be designed to help salespeople convert prospects and close deals.
4: Align content to the customer’s journey
Make sure your sales enablement content is well aligned with the customer’s journey. The content you produce will need to help your salespeople build their relationship with prospects and clients throughout the journey from initial query to deal closing.
5: Discuss top-of-funnel, mid-funnel and bottom-funnel content
Your salespeople know what their prospects need along the buying journey. Because that content needs to connect well, it needs to be fresh and served up in various formats. Discuss what content most resonates along the buyer journey and brainstorm how to package that content in different ways to appeal to a wider audience. For example, a product user guide Q&A piece could take the form of a short video, a PowerPoint presentation, and an infographic.
6: Measure the success of your strategy
Finally, make sure you measure the effectiveness of your sales enablement content. Understand what content is being used and in what stage of the buyer journey and how it resonates. With better insights into what specific content and knowledge is resonating with your prospects, you can better inform your marketing and sales teams and hone in on creating relevant material.
Find out how you can create a comprehensive strategy for your organization with our Sales Enablement Guide.
Leverage Guru To Organize Your Sales Enablement Content
Sales enablement content only works if your salespeople know it’s available, can easily access it, and have the confidence that the content is current. Guru’s knowledge management solution for sales enablement does just that. It makes sure your sales enablement content is accessible in every workflow your salespeople use. Your experts will find it easy to document and democratize information. Plus, our platform offers predictive content suggestions and measurement so you can track the impact of your content.
Sales enablement is the key to empowering your salespeople to perform better and more confidently in their roles. Critical to that outcome is sales enablement content, the ammunition your salespeople need to effectively engage prospects, convert them, and close deals.
Rather than attracting top-of-funnel prospects – which is the job of content marketing – sales enablement content is the foundation to engaging, authentic, value-added conversations that your salespeople should have with prospects throughout the buyer journey.
It's not just about providing consistent content — the content itself can set the narrative but it can't do the hard work for you — but also about finding the right positioning, and having the right conversations.
Top 7 Types of Sales Enablement Content: Whitepapers & Other Deliverables
Sales enablement content is customer-centric and value-driven. Its primary focus should be driving sales enablement deliverables and empowering your salespeople to have productive and personalized conversations with prospects all the way through closing. However, in order to be effective, your sales enablement content must answer prospects’ questions to help them make buying decisions — and do so in formats that resonate with them.
The types of effective sales enablement content necessary to help in that decision-making process are as varied as your client base. These types of content can include:
Case Studies – Stories about how others have used your product or service to solve a particular business challenge are welcomed by prospects. Case studies also serve to build trust with your prospects and clients and show them the type of experience they can expect from your brand.
Sales Scripts – When salespeople have an easy-to-access list of high-impact messages and bullet points to use to guide sales call conversations, they can better concentrate on listening to their prospects and effectively closing the conversation. Sales scripts are important reference points that can help trigger interest.
One-sheets / Product sheets – These at-a-glance references help your brand make a great first impression. With increasingly complex products, bite-sized featured breakdowns, one-sheets or product sheets also help your salespeople build their own product knowledge and understand prospects’ business challenges.
E-books and Whitepapers — Prospects and customers do more research than ever before to compare and understand their options before making a buying decision. Whitepapers and e-books provide that information in a clear and substantive way. Their content delivers statistically sound data, well-researched findings, and an informed point of view on an issue that is timely and relevant. E-books and whitepapers also provide evidence of the effectiveness of your product or service and position your salespeople as trusted experts.
Competitive Analysis – This easy-to-reference content can help a prospect understand your brand’s distinctive competencies. It also helps your salespeople better understand potential objections and effectively overcome them.
Blog Posts — Business blog posts that illustrate how your product or service solves problems are easy for your salespeople to share and can be used to continue an initial conversation or support a buying decision.
Video Demos – Video is a highly engaging format that can drive new life (and interest) in content you already produced for whitepapers and case studies. Video content can also easily support all steps in the customer journey, from initial explainer productions for top-of-funnel leads to product tutorials for new customers. With easy video editing tools available today, transforming your written content into engaging videos is more accessible than ever.
Your sales enablement team is also creating content like competitive battle cards, objection handlings, messaging & positioning statements and other internal sales knowledge that your sales team is leveraging, as well.
How Do You Develop a Sales Enablement Content Strategy?
An integral part of effective sales enablement is a strong content strategy. Organizations that are most successful in developing and maximizing their sales enablement content strategy achieve this when their sales and marketing teams work together on the following steps:
1: Audit existing content
Start by systematically reviewing all the content your sales teams use. Ask what content works for them and in what part of the buyer journey. In addition, learn what content doesn’t work and why. In this way, you’ll identify sales enablement content gaps.
2: Use internal documentation and knowledge to create new content
Once your content gaps are identified, it’s time to fill them with the information you already have available from your product experts and internal knowledge base. Using internal documentation and knowledge can help get your team the sales enablement content they need.
3: Create content that benefits sales reps and marketers
Remember that sales and marketing will need the same information necessary to fill those gaps, but will use that information in different ways. Marketing material should be designed to get the attention of potential customers. Sales enablement content should be designed to help salespeople convert prospects and close deals.
4: Align content to the customer’s journey
Make sure your sales enablement content is well aligned with the customer’s journey. The content you produce will need to help your salespeople build their relationship with prospects and clients throughout the journey from initial query to deal closing.
5: Discuss top-of-funnel, mid-funnel and bottom-funnel content
Your salespeople know what their prospects need along the buying journey. Because that content needs to connect well, it needs to be fresh and served up in various formats. Discuss what content most resonates along the buyer journey and brainstorm how to package that content in different ways to appeal to a wider audience. For example, a product user guide Q&A piece could take the form of a short video, a PowerPoint presentation, and an infographic.
6: Measure the success of your strategy
Finally, make sure you measure the effectiveness of your sales enablement content. Understand what content is being used and in what stage of the buyer journey and how it resonates. With better insights into what specific content and knowledge is resonating with your prospects, you can better inform your marketing and sales teams and hone in on creating relevant material.
Find out how you can create a comprehensive strategy for your organization with our Sales Enablement Guide.
Leverage Guru To Organize Your Sales Enablement Content
Sales enablement content only works if your salespeople know it’s available, can easily access it, and have the confidence that the content is current. Guru’s knowledge management solution for sales enablement does just that. It makes sure your sales enablement content is accessible in every workflow your salespeople use. Your experts will find it easy to document and democratize information. Plus, our platform offers predictive content suggestions and measurement so you can track the impact of your content.
