Make Your Content Your Best Salesperson. The sales industry has come up with a host of tools and services to make the sales process more efficient. My company has been providing our clients with content marketing tools and services for over 20 years. The more relevant content our sales team shares with prospects, the more informed and comfortable they are to make a purchase. Demand generation, however, kicks off the inbound marketing process. Leadpages, a Minneapolis-based landing page and inbound marketing agency, recently put some big money into their content game. We even created our own content marketing platform to streamline content production efforts so that we can spend more time creating it. It also took months of evaluating customer data and fine-tuning our content calendar to maximize our interaction with them. It’s especially important to create transparency with the sales team. The sales process has been streamlined over the years.
Ask any salesperson the reasons they love their job, and “the thrill of making a sale” will usually be in the top three. Why is it such a rush? Getting to a “yes” is a win. It’s a hard-earned commission.
It’s really hard, actually. Making phone call after phone call and chasing lead after lead can get tiring. Add performance-based compensation, activity scrutiny, and lofty goals and you’re left with a highly rewarding, but stressful profession.
The sales industry has come up with a host of tools and services to make the sales process more efficient. But it’s still challenging, particularly if you’re developing business all on your own. Fortunately, some companies are beginning to realize there might be serious benefit in supporting their salespeople with more warm leads in something they’re already doing: content marketing. My company has been providing our clients with content marketing tools and services for over 20 years. So what does effective content marketing look like and why should it be such a priority?
We use tools like Salesforce and Pardot to help streamline our sales processes from lead generation to close. They help keep track of our pipeline and free up our salespeople to focus on making high-value client interactions. But we also use the narrative powers of content to provide even more value to our prospects. Some of our most successful salespeople leverage our content by sending relevant articles or videos, for example, that tackle objections and guide prospects to the right solution. The more relevant content our sales team shares with prospects, the more informed and comfortable they are to make a purchase. This has played an important role in our own inbound lead process.
There’s an important factor at play here called demand generation, and it differs from lead generation in a significant way. In most organizations, lead generation kicks off the sales process. Demand generation, however, kicks off the inbound marketing process.
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Develop Reusable Content
Unless you’re selling air conditioning in July, sales typically requires steadfast outreach to clients and prospects. Tools like Salesforce and Pardot make that…
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