How to Create Sales Enablement Content

Natalie Slyman

April 29, 2020

Contents

Some people say that your business is only as effective as your sales team. While it’s true that your sales team needs to be performing well in order to increase your company’s revenue year over year, they aren’t the only ones responsible, however. In fact, your marketing team has a lot to contribute to a thriving and lucrative business.

Your sales team encounters a lot in their conversations with prospects. And when they’re armed with the content they need to address hurdles, they’re able to move prospects through the funnel faster and build your company up as a valued resource. But having all that sales enabling content doesn’t just happen overnight. You have to have a process for creating that content and make doing so a priority.

But where do you get started? What process works, and how can you ensure your sales team ends up using that content when reaching out to leads? In this article, we’ll address all of this and more.

How to Create Content For Your Sales Team (and Ensure They Use it)

Creating this helpful and informative content is half the battle. The other half is making sure your sales team is set up for success and using it properly. Let’s dive into exactly how you can get started, how collaboration with sales and marketing makes all the difference, and various ways sales can use this content for optimal results.

1. Establish a Content Creation Process

First and foremost, your marketing team needs to have a process in place for creating content. Making this step your priority will ensure you aren’t bottlenecking things later on.

Take into consideration the marketing team members and their strengths. Do you have a strong writer and editor? Can someone serve as the project manager? What about a strategist? These don’t necessarily have to be individual roles, but they are all crucial to the content creation process. Here is a breakdown of what an efficient process should look like:

Brainstorm/ideate topic ideas
Draft an outline that addresses the most crucial points
Assign to a writer
Edit the article for grammar, flow, and SEO
Get approval from all necessary parties
Publish article
Distribute

Depending on your capacity, you can hire a freelancer to write the piece, or use online tools to edit and ensure your content is as flawless as possible.

2. Have Marketing Shadow Sales Calls

No matter what day it is, there’s always a sales call on the schedule. Have your marketing team shadow at least one or two sales calls a week so they can gain insight into the types of conversations your sales team is having. It’s truly remarkable what you can glean from sales calls, as each prospect has his or her own concerns, issues, questions, and strategy. When marketing sits in on these calls, they witness first-hand what their prospects experience when interacting with your brand for the first time.

Have marketing pay close attention to the way the sales team addresses questions being raised, or concerns with how well your service offering or product will appease needs. It’s in these parts of the sales calls that the true golden nuggets are found that can help steer content in the right direction.

3. Hold Monthly Sales and Marketing Meetings

Bringing your sales and marketing teams together will ensure the content your marketing team creates is truly aligned with sales’ needs. These meetings can happen at any frequency that is needed, however monthly is a good protocol for keeping them consistent without bogging down schedules.

Plan an ongoing monthly call or brainstorming meeting so that your sales and marketing teams can be present with one another and bounce ideas off each other. Make sure that the following questions are being asked, and answered:

What are the most common issues sales are running into with prospects right now?
What are prospects most concerned about regarding our services?
What confuses our prospects the most?
What part of our product plan seems to be stopping prospects in their tracks?
What types of content do sales team wish we had that we don’t?
What is the most frequently used piece of content for the sales team?

Begin here and see where the conversations take you. It’s important that your marketing team understands that they shouldn’t feel the need to create every piece of content the sales team asks them to. Rather, they need to keep in mind their overall goals and see if the recommended content aligns with them appropriately.

4. Create a Knowledge Base

Your sales team is busy. They’re quickly sending emails and then immediately getting on the phone or running to a meeting. They don’t have time to dig around for that one piece of content that they know exists, but they aren’t sure where. That’s why having a knowledge base to store all of your sales enabling content can be a lifesaver.

Your knowledge base can be public-facing, or you can create one that is specifically for your sales team to use. If you choose the latter, make sure you index your content in a way that they can easily determine which piece will be the most beneficial to use. So, for example, you can create a header that says “Explains How to Use Our Product” and below it list the various pieces of content you have created that outlines your product packages.

5. Create a Slack Thread

Most companies utilize a communication app or tool that helps them quickly chat with one another as needed. Slack is a very popular communication tool that allows you to create various threads relating to specific areas or needs. If your company uses Slack, create a thread dedicated to sharing sales enablement content. So, every time your marketing team creates something that the sales team specifically asked for, it can be shared in that thread for the sales team to quickly grab and use as needed.

6. Incorporate Content into Drip Campaigns

Don’t neglect your ongoing nurture efforts! Look through all your drip campaigns and see where you could use some improvement. Your marketing team worked hard on creating this content, and since your sales team expressed a need for it, then prospects enrolled in your email nurture campaigns could definitely use it as well.

As you go through your drip campaigns, replace old content with your newly created sales enabling content. And if you need to create new drip campaigns or emails, your new content will help serve as a guide to what needs to be created and adjusted.

Enabling your sales team is one of marketing’s biggest jobs. It doesn’t have to be challenging, and as long as there’s an efficient content creation process, and both teams are aligned on what content to prioritize, it can be a total breeze.

What other tips would you add to this list? Share your best advice for creating sales enablement content by leaving a note below:

Natalie Slyman

Natalie Slyman is the Content and Social Media Manager at Benchmark Email. When she's not writing content or posting on Instagram, she's thrifting with her husband, cooking a mean Italian dinner, or finding a new St. Louis restaurant to check out.