With Dani Buckley VP & General Manager at LeadG2 by The Centre for Sales Strategy
When I heard Dani Buckley, who's well known for helping businesses sell smarter and faster, was giving a talk at INBOUND2021, I knew it was one I couldn’t afford to miss. And I was proved right.
She gave away some amazing actionable tactics for warming up prospects and leads through the use of different content in the sales process. With real-life examples of when to use video, articles, premium content and more, I was left with immediate strategies that I couldn’t wait to share.
A Good Place to Start
Dani started by confirming to us some information that we’ve hypothesised about in the UK construction industry but it’s finally been confirmed. These stats are great to keep at the back of mind when we’re creating and distributing content.
“4 out of 5 sales managers admit that appointments are more challenging to secure than 5 years ago.”
“Only 24% of sales emails are opened.”
“9 out of 10 B2B buyers say online content has a moderate to major effect on the purchasing decision.”
4 Buckets of Sales Enablement
1 - Strategy
Content Audit – Evaluate everything and organise your content into 4 categories; ready to use, mostly done, very outdated but needed, and outdated and irrelevant.
Understand Your Buyers – Create target personas and ask yourself what content do they like. Then create your buyer's journey. Understand their pain points at each stage, what their questions are at each stage, and what helps them make their decisions.
Build a Sales PlayBook – This should be a step by step process that outlines the steps salespeople should take at any stage with any prospect.
Here are some examples of sales plays that Dani recommended.
You need to ask yourself, “what content would be most useful in each of these plays?” Use your content audit to know what you’ve got available or create new content so each play has a unique and helpful piece of content to go in it.
2 - Content
You’ll need to nurture, engage & educate your prospects through the buyer’s journey.
So here are some types of content, that people want to consume, which you can use in your communications.
They could be about the same topic but presented in a different format, this is a great tip from Dani and one we’ll be aiming to do more of at Project Prospecta.
Dani has seen that video makes a huge difference to the success of content. Here are 4 types you can create:
- Case studies & Testimonials
- Branding & Positioning
- Educational
- 1:1 Personalised Videos
Some examples of best practices for creating content are:
Repurposing - turn 1 eBook into 5 blogs
Don’t overthink it - start simple and go from there
Diversify - cover a wide variety of subjects and types
Outsource - this helps save time and it’s a good way to get started
3 - Technology
The right tools make things easier but start simple. Here are some foundational tools to get started. Email and task automation to help replicate processes, this will save time and keeps your messaging consistent. Email templates with links to the right content, again this saves time. And Dani’s suggestion is to use personalisation to maximise their effectiveness. Document sharing and tracking, use live content so you can see how and when it’s viewed, this provides you with insights into your prospects.
4 - Training
Set your team up for success, don’t set and forget your training modules. Keep it fresh with the latest research and techniques.
Salespeople were hired to close, not to use technology, so train them up in how to use it. Doing this also limits resistance to change because understanding it leads to getting the benefit of it and therefore buying into it.
Keep it simple and repeat points across sessions. Leadership must take the lead and show team members how and why training and development are important.
And remember, know yourself and ask for help. Look for training in your development areas and work with colleagues to hold each other accountable to learn and push each other.
So there you have it, Dani’s 4 buckets of sales enablement. This is a great base for how to introduce content into your sales process with plenty of actions and takeaways that you can get started with today! Thanks so much, Dani for another great session at INBOUND 2021.
