[Listen to this article on our podcast, But We're Different. ]

Most businesses today do some form of 168极速赛车平台:content marketing, 🥂but I’ve foundಌ that only a handful are getting as much out of their efforts as they could.

M꧟ost don’t really k✱now what marketing content can actually do for their business, so they play it safe, think small, and are stuck getting minimal results. 

They hire a marketing agency to publish a few blog posts every quarter — or they hire a video production company to produce a high-quality “about us” video for their homepage.

And that’s it.

They’ve 168极速赛车平台:checked the box and moved on. 

This approach misses the true impact great content can ✤have on a business. 

Search traffic? Brand recognition? Sure these are fine corollary benefits. But the most impactful application of content is sales enablement. 

If you’re serious about 168极速赛车平台:content marketing — and you want to do it right — you have to realize that the main focus isn't really marketing at all. It should be buyer education during the sales process. Not just education about the company, but education around the buying decision.

But, according to statistics, forget to focus their efforts on sales 𒉰enablement.

This is a big problem — and a huge opportunity.

First off, what do we mean by ‘sales enablement content’?

In modern marketing, “content” is a catch-all term. Over the years, it’s become a bigger and bigger umbrella, with different definitions depenܫdꦉing on who’s talking. 

Today, “content” can mean blog articles and vid⭕eos, but also social media posts, website copy, podcasts, emails, guidebooks, research reports, and more. 

So before we go further, let’s define our terms.

๊What I’m talking about today is less about format and more about purpose. 

I’m talking about content that enables sales.

Think about it this way: When your💝 sales team is having a meeting with a potential buyer,

• What pieces of 🎃content can help that buyer make a better decision more quickly?
• What pieces of content can answer their questions or erase their doubt?

It could be a 🍰blog article addressing a common question about price, a video explaining a service, or an in-depth guide comparing several product options. 

These would count as sales enablement content, and they should be designed specifically for the sales process — 168极速赛车平台:with heavy input from the sales team. 

The power of content in the sales process

Every day, your sales team spends hours answering the questions of potential buyers. Some of these prospects are serious and reaꦜdy to buy, some are just gathering information. But either way, the questions are largely the same. 

Whether you sell boat trailers or accounting softwa💟re, financial services or office furniture, your buyers want to know about price, about features, about timeline, and about logistics. They want to compare options and hedge against buyer’s remorse.

They have questions, and🏅 your sales team has to provide the ans🅘wers. This puts your salespeople in the position of educator, which is exactly the role you want your sales reps to play. 

But they need help.

Imagine if you could get those questions out of the way before they even get asked.

Instead of answering ♏the same questions about price in each sales call, your sales reps should send the following email when someone books a call:

Hi there!

I’m looking forward to our meeting on Wednesday. In order to have the most productive call possible, I’m sending you a resource that explains the pricing of all of our models, including the different factors that can make that number go up or down. 

Take a look before our meeting so you get a ballpark idea of what to expect. This way, we can get right into talking about your unique project.

See you Wednesday,

Zach

Now, the meeting can be 𒉰way more productive. Instead of rote answers to t൲he same old questions, sales reps can listen to each prospect’s unique challenges, tailoring their message accordingly. 

This is the true purpose of content: To make it easier for your customers to buy from you.

This kind of content will shorten your sales cy𒀰cle and improve your close rates. 

So, what does it look like in practice?

Changing the way we think about content

When we work with companies getting started with our 168极速赛车平台:They Ask, You Answer fraꦰmework, we remind them that it i𒊎s a sales-first initiative.

Early on, we teach them to put almost all of their effort into producing sales enablement content. For everyܫ 20 videos and articles they make, as many as 15 might be just for use by the sales team. That means these pieces of content won’t rack up 🌊views or clic🌃ks or traffic. 

And we’re fine with that. 

Think about it: Would you rather have 1🌌0,000 views that lead to 10 sales or 1,000 views that lead to 100 sales? Most businesses would chooꦓse the latter.

This requires a shift in focus. It means getting your marketing and sales teams together s🧸o this content can get produced. For many companies,💫 this is no small task. 

Years of entrenched siloing has pulled sales and marketing farther and farther apart, but statistics show that sales teams that work close𝕴l𓆏y with their marketing teams have up to .  

How to produce sales enablement content (in 6 steps)

To produce the sales enablement con🏅tent your salespeople need, you and your team should fo✤llow these six steps:

1. Set up regular meetings between your sales team and marketing team. In these meetings you will brainstorm content ideas and talk about the questions sales reps are hearing from buyers.
2. Have marketers watch sales calls and (if possible) interview customers. Your content producers need to hear directly from potential and actual customers. Listen for repeated questions that could be answered with a piece of vetted content.
3. Produce and publish content specifically for your prospects. With this input, your team can get to work making, writing, and filming content. As a team, decide whether you want sales enablement content to live on your blog, YouTube channel, website, or be non-indexed or hosted somewhere more private. 
4. Let your sales team know what content is live — and what’s in the backlog. At each brainstorm meeting, go over what’s been published, explaining particular use cases.
5. Utilize a platform like or to organize and track engagement. Salespeople can use these tools to share content, build personalized landing pages and see how prospects are engaging.
6. Iterate and improve the process. You won’t get it perfect at first. But keep at it and work together.

This will take some time — and there will be bumps along the way. Just remember the out🦩come you’re after:𝕴 a shorter sales cycle and a higher closing rate. 

I promise thaꦆt all the effort will be worth it. 

One piece of content, two purposes

Your focus on sales enab🍬lement content doesn’t mean you should abandon organic search. In fact, you can double your impact by repurposing content to serve both ends: sales ena💝blement content to share with buyers and SEO-focused content to drive traffic and build awareness.

💛With slight modifications, the same piece of content can do 🌠both. 

Say you’re a financial planning company:

1. You produce an article and a video to explain the specifics of what you charge for financial planning. This gets shared with good-fit prospects ahead of their first sales call.
2. You repackage the same content to explain the general pricing structure for financial planning. The article gets posted to your blog, the video gets posted to YouTube and chopped up for social platforms. 

With♔ a little more effort, you get twice the benefit. 

Getting your sales team on board

Resistance to sales enablement often doesn’t come from the marketers making the content but from the salespeople themselves. They’re hesitant to buy in for two bi𝓡g reasons:

1. They don’t want to give up their time for new meetings
2. They don’t think content will really help them

These are big objections, and to overcoꦦme them you’ll need to be smart. Remember, people don’t like to be told what to do, so a top-down approach will yield compliance but not buy-in.

I’ve found that a bett💜er approach is to help the sale💝speople see what’s possible.

Start by asking questions to prompt some self-discovery. Focus on the time that could be saved by not answering the same questions over and over again. Then, select several of the most willing sales reps to pilot the new approach. Salespeople are competitive by nature, and once they see one of their teammates being successful, they’ll get o♉n board too.

Put your content to work

The line between marketing and sales gets more blurry e𝄹very year. The customer education that used to be the domain of the sales team now happens through content, website tools, and social media𒆙 at the buyer’s own discretion. 

So it doesn’t make sense to d🗹raw clear lines in the sand between the two dཧepartments. 

Instead, put your marketers to work producing content that will directly help the sales team close d🧸eals. The results can be transformational for your busi😼ness.

If you’re looking for more information on exactly how to get started, head over to IMPACT+, where꧅