3 Ways to Kickstart Your Product Launch with Quality Content

A new product launch is a very exciting time. Your thorough market analysis led to a comprehensive business strategy, followed by a rock-solid marketing plan. Countless members within your organization have slaved over months—maybe even years—gearing up for this pivotal moment.

Between the live presentation, the social campaigns, and the product demos, to name just a few—there is a lot to coordinate to ensure your launch event goes off without a hitch. But the success of the product ultimately hinges on the effectiveness of the sales team. Therefore, one of the most crucial components to any successful launch is ensuring your sales force is prepared to fire on all cylinders after the product is released.

Sales content is the quintessential element that propels sales organizations to drive revenue. Unfortunately, research has found that only half the information learned from sales training events are retained after only a month. In addition to effective sales training, it’s critical that you arm your reps with sales enablement tools that they can easily refer back to again and again.

Below are a few tips to keep in mind as you prepare your sales teams for your next product launch:

Create compelling content for sales reps

Research firm SiriusDecisions found that the greatest barrier to sales effectiveness was reps’ inability to communicate value to prospects. Even with the most innovative product, it won’t matter much unless your sales reps can effectively engage with prospects, and communicate the benefits and differentiators to earn their trust. But when it comes to training the modern sales rep, static documents in the form of PDFs and printed binders do little to engage your sales force.

Instead, create dynamic, digital content pieces that allow you to incorporate a variety of interactive features into your sales enablement materials such as videos, slideshows, timelines, and more. For example, maybe your key messaging is better suited as a short video. Or perhaps you want to show your competitive positioning or a full list of capabilities as an interactive slideshow. Elements such as these help to bring your content to life, making what may otherwise be flat material much easier to absorb.

Deliver up-to-date content to reps quickly and easily

More and more, mobile is proving to not only provide increased productivity across organizations, it’s becoming a necessity. It’s essential then to deliver sales enablement content and reference materials that are optimized for mobile.

With sales reps always on the go, it’s difficult to zoom and pinch their way through PDFs and other traditional file formats on a mobile device. What’s more, given the amount of content involved in today’s sales cycle—for both external assets as well as internal sales tools—anyone is hard pressed to keep up with documents sent through emails or saved on file shares. These delivery methods make it impossible to search for specific content unless reps can remember the precise document that contains the needed information.

HTML-based digital content offers a responsive design that can be read across various types of devices including smartphones, tablets, and desktops. Content that’s responsive provides legibility and dynamic formatting, ensuring a great user experience no matter the device. And with content that’s searchable across documents, you know your team is always equipped with just the right resource they can easily surface anytime.

Create a centralized location for all your content

Between call scripts, value propositions, customer case studies, and product videos, to name a few, there is an ever-increasing library of content in the sales arsenal. After pouring hours into developing these assets, don’t let them sit unused in email attachments or the company intranet. Dedicate a centralized location for all your sales resources and make sure they’re easily accessible by your sales force.

Better yet, consider putting into place a delivery platform that enable your sales reps to become experts with cloud-based content. And for icing on the cake, there are even tools where your SMEs and content experts can easily collaborate and create content, as well as distribute those resources to your sales teams with the simple click of a mouse.

Your entire organization has invested a lot of time and resources into developing an awesome product, but a great launch amounts to nothing unless your sales reps are selling. Make sure you have a bulletproof content strategy that maximizes the success of your sales force. All you need is an effective sales enablement solution that gives your reps quick and easy access to all the tools and techniques they need to be successful.