7 Types of Sales Enablement Content to Leverage for Success
Sales enablement content has become somewhat of a hot topic in recent years, with global interest reaching an all-time high in October 2020. And for good reason! A Highspot analysis found that in 2020, nearly 73% of high-growth organizations had a dedicated sales enablement function.
For those who are unfamiliar, Gartner says, “The foundation of sales enablement strategy is to provide salespeople with what they need to successfully engage the buyer throughout the buying process.”
In other words, sales enablement is giving your salespeople content resources to help them close more deals. Or put even more simply, sales enablement is sales empowerment.
So now that you know it’s a valuable function for high-performing sales teams, it’s important to know where to focus your sales enablement content efforts. Even more, once you’ve produced that content, you have to leverage those assets for optimal success. Below we’ll outline how to repurpose your existing marketing content for sales enablement.
The Best Sales Enablement Content to Produce
1. Blog Posts and Articles
Blog posts are always a fantastic asset. They’re informative and educate buyers, while playing a valuable role in calling prospects into action. From a sales enablement perspective, reps can send an informative blog post to prospects who are actively in the buying process to position your company as an industry expert.
Want to alleviate your Sales Development Representatives’ (SDRs) embarrassment of staging a make-believe sales call in front of their peers? Try having them call a sales coach, manager, or senior member of the sales team from their desk, using the sales enablement tools you created. SDRs will not only benefit from hearing the analysis and feedback from their calls, but this approach also provides the sales enablement team with good insights into how effective your tools are.
2. Case Studies
Case studies have long been hailed as a cornerstone of a balanced content marketing strategy. That’s because they attract high-intent audiences—people who want to know how you’ve solved problems like theirs. For this very same reason, case studies are valuable assets for sales enablement.
Case studies don’t have to be overly complicated. A handful of industry-relevant customer stories that follow a simple challenge-solution-result framework can easily persuade prospects with real-world examples.
Because case studies are so valuable, the last thing sales reps need to do is waste time searching for content when a deal is on the line. A central library or in-app tool that delivers just-in-time sales enablement content to all your sales reps is ideal.
3. White papers and eBooks
Much like case studies, white papers and eBooks are staples of a successful content marketing strategy—with white papers serving as excellent lead-generation tools for marketing teams to qualify and hand off to sales.
Tip: Short on white paper topics? Ask your sales team! They talk directly with potential customers every day and will be your best source of insight on what questions prospects may have. Once you’ve created these new white papers, be sure to share them with your team members to gather feedback and make sure they know how and where to access them for future reference.
4. Sales Scripts
Traditional sales enablement content often includes sales scripts. While there’s nothing wrong with having reps read a script, real-life conversations don’t follow the same format and the unnatural quality could lead to a missed opportunity for personalized interactions and revenue generation.
To create empowering sales scripts that benefit everyone, simply list the most important talking points for your sales reps. This way, they’ll feel the freedom to personalize their conversations while ensuring they still have all of the information needed to guide a prospect through the buying process.
Do you need to “take the temperature” of your team’s engagement during extended remote working stretches? Send out a survey or motivating messages to your team through your sales enablement platform.
5. Product Spec Sheets
A product spec sheet is usually a one- or two-page document that quickly describes what the product is, who it’s for, what problem it solves, how it solves that problem, and, sometimes, how much it costs.
For sales enablement, the spec sheet should concisely explain what you’re selling so the prospect can quickly decide whether it solves their problem or not. If they determine it’s the right product for their needs, the spec sheet becomes a valuable part of their internal process for championing it with others.
6. Competitor Comparison and Analysis
If you’re not the only company in your field, then there’s a high probability that your prospects are also talking with your competition. That being the case, your sales reps need to know what your key differentiating benefits are and how you compare to your competitors. To make this resource as valuable as possible, summarize the most important information into a handful of bullet points as a “battle card” and make sure they are always easily accessible to your sales team.
7. Email Templates
For most sales organizations, email is a primary channel for talking with potential customers. Email templates are a valuable investment for repeatable interactions that are sure to pay off big time. Templates include initial outreach, check-ins, follow-ups after multiple emails, lead-generating drip campaigns, and checklists, just to name a few.
Once again, ask your sales team for feedback. Why guess what works when you have direct access to learn what generates the best results and what isn’t helpful. Analytics tools can take things a step further by tracking email open rates, click-through rates and tell which emails led to a conversion. Following those methods, you can constantly improve your valuable pieces of sales enablement content—because when it comes to gathering insights, nothing beats qualitative feedback backed by quantitative data.
Two Important Tips for Success
The possible types of sales enablement content and tools are nearly endless, but if you want to focus your efforts on the areas of highest impact, the seven we mentioned above are an excellent starting point. After creating and organizing your content, here are two important steps to keep in mind for ongoing success.
The first is relevance. You could create a library of incredible content to generate tons of traffic and leads for your sales team, but if that content isn’t relevant to your target market’s pain points, your sales team won’t be able to use those resources to engage prospects and leads will likely be unqualified. The key to keeping this content relevant is to have consistent, back-and-forth conversations with your sales team to get their feedback and make sure your content properly addresses prospects’ needs, pain points, and questions.
The second—and possibly most important—key for sales enablement success is accessibility. Sales enablement content should always be available to your team when and where they need it, so they can minimize context switching and maximize their efficiency, sales process, and revenue. What use is world-class sales enablement content if your team can’t get to it when they need it? If it’s buried somewhere in the LMS (Learning Management System) they went through for onboarding, then it might as well not exist.
That’s why a centralized way of managing and distributing this content is vital to its success and usefulness. And this is where a sales enablement tool like Spekit comes in: to organize content, make it easy for sales teams to give feedback, and make sure everyone is empowered to be effective at their jobs.
About the Author
Melanie Fellay
Mel is the CEO and Co-founder of Spekit, a Forbes 30 under 30 recipient, Entrepreneur’s Top 100 Women of Influence, and featured across Crunchbase, Fast Company, Business Insider, and more. She is leading the revolution to shatter the glass ceiling and unleash the full potential of every employee. Learn more ->
