Close the Sale With Quality Content

Sales leaders know that it’s vital to start with an honest conversation and be ready to improvise, rather than relying on rigid sales scripts and outdated resources during an important sales dialogue. But no matter how natural the conversation, sales teams will always need reference materials and other sales enablement resources to close the deal.

Your salespeople can spend months learning the ins and outs of your products and services, and still be stumped by a well-placed question. Don’t let the sales dialogue end prematurely–arm your sales team with high-quality reference materials, complemented by customized content designed specifically for the lead.

Why quality sales content matters.

The right content should be an all-purpose resource for your sales team, allowing them to prepare before the dialogue begins, as well as use the resource to answer questions that come up during the conversation. A Qvidian study showed that 88 percent of failed sales conversations were the result of difficult-to-utilize internal reference materials. Poor-quality content leaves your team ill-prepared for vital conversations, and makes it difficult to instantly source answers to the prospect’s big questions.

So what does high-quality sales content look like?

• On-brand. Keep branding consistent across all of your internal reference materials. Building and reinforcing a consistent brand is integral to your company’s success, so it’s important to expose your sales team to consistent branding messages, starting with your reference and training materials.
  

• Accurate and relevant. Keep your content up-to-date and always relevant by updating it frequently. Your product and your brand evolves with time, and it’s important to always offer your sales team the best possible representation of both.  

• Dynamic. Integrate dynamic elements into your sales reference materials to keep your team on their toes. Give your salespeople the opportunity to find information the way that they want to, whether that means viewing video, reading text, listening to narration, or accessing a quiz.

• Streamlined. Include all of the information that your salespeople need, and none of the extraneous bulk that they don’t need. Every element of your content should be on-target and relevant to the sales conversations that your team has each day. This makes it easier for your team to track down specific answers when they need them the most.

Keep the delivery platform in mind.

The right content isn’t useful to your team unless the method of delivery is equally thoughtful and functional. Make sure that your delivery platform takes into account your sales team’s needs, and complements your content well.

• Mobile. Today’s workforce embraces mobile devices as a working tool, so why not let them access reference materials in a way that’s comfortable and effective to them? The right delivery platform gives you the ability to display your content in a format intended for mobile devices, including smartphones and tablets.
  

• Easy to use. Astonishingly, the aforementioned Qvidian study suggests that 90 percent of all sales reference materials go unused in the selling process. Keeping the delivery platform simple and user-friendly ensures that your sales team feels comfortable pulling out their reference materials whenever needed during the sales dialogue.

• Responsive. Reading your reference materials should be like flipping to the next “page” on a Kindle. It should be effortless, easy, and natural. Display your content on a platform that’s meant for responsive and beautiful display of text and dynamic elements.

• Ever-updating. A cloud-enabled platform lets you push updates immediately after adding or changing content, making sure that your employees have access to what they need immediately. There’s no waiting for print copies or scrambling to download the new PDF version–your team gets their updates immediately, and you get peace of mind knowing that they’re working from the latest copy.

Your prospects deserve the utmost attention during each sales conversation, and high quality resources to aid them in making their decision. Prepare your sales team for challenging dialogues now by providing them with compelling, always-relevant reference content that they can turn to in any situation, whether in the office or on the road.

BONUS: For a full run-down of how to achieve great content for your company, check out the Inkling eBook The Elements of Quality Content.