CT: Welcome to our panel on Digital Sales Content: Why Relevancy Matters Now More than Ever. I’m very excited about this topic and to hear from our panelists today, because as we know this new world of work in terms of virtual and working remotely and digital selling is here to stay for a while. And so, I’m excited to hear from all of our panelists about how we can better enable reps to really reach out with the most engaging content for the buyer at the right time.
And so, I love to get each of you to just introduce yourself, say your name a little bit about yourself. Let’s start with you, Maryanne.
MB: Maryanne Bunton. I’m based in New York and I do product matching as well as sales enablement. And I do that for large global B2B companies.
KB: I am Keith Brooks, CEO of B2B Whisperer. Our company works with small to medium business B to B businesses who need to start adding some logic and process for their sales and marketing. We work on their pitches and how their content and website approaches their customer and how they train their teams and keep them up to date.
RW: Hi, I’m Russell Wirth. I am vice president of sales enablement with Showpad. My role is to both help our own sellers be more effective, but that of our prospects and customers really just understanding their sales process and method and how Showpad can best achieve effectiveness in their organization.
MF: Hi everyone. I’m Melanie Fellay, CEO and cofounder of Spekit. We’re a digital adoption and enablement platform really designed to help put all the sales enablement resources, process training on tool training that your employees need. Right in front of them and the applications they use every day to help drive productivity and really make it easier to onboard new employees as they join.
CT: Fantastic. So, we’re just going to jump right into our questions today, starting with a recent report that we actually did on sales enablement analytics and it found that reps spend on average 38% of their time creating or searching for content. So, I’d love to hear from you about, what can sales enablement practitioners do to really reduce this time for sales reps?
KB: So, one of the things that I’ve always advocated is there should be one place for people to go. There should be one URL, one database, whatever you want to call it, one Wiki, but there has to be one place that everybody knows. Everything is there. Now you may have information and other parts of your company and other places and other documents, whatever it is, but the links to everything has to be there.
And it has to be a simple URL for everyone to know whatever it might be, you know? Internal. And if you want it to be external, you can do that as well. And then, so you start out nice and simple, one product break, one URL, then break it down by product or solution and then break it up from there into the content types that you’ve got.
And that way everyone knows how to find it the way to find it. and, and then you, you also stop all the recurring people saying, Hey where’s this, where’s that? What about this? And it’s all there. It’s updated. We, we put out monthly and quarterly updates to people. So, they always are aware of what the latest pieces are and what’s going on.
And then every now and then we’ll have some emergency that we have to like post something and we let everyone know that there’s something new up there for them as well.
MF: I think when it comes to more like externally facing content, making sure that you have either a centralized location where all that content is stored, that’s neatly organized by persona type by product line by category. So that the user wants there in that organizational structure knows what to look for, what to search for, make sure that your, the titles of your documents are clear, for searching for it says, and then you’re at a little bit more advanced at this stage of an organization best in like in a CMS, something like a Highspot or Seismic can be really helpful for that.
And then when it comes to all that other kinds of information. So not just the kind of resources that you send customers, but the kinds of information that your team needs to be successful. So, think competitive battlecards, think, tool training, process information, again, having that centralized and then looking at tools like Spekit, or there’s a number of others in the broader enablement space that really helped you make all that information available directly in the tools that your team uses every day. So that they’re not, I mean, it’s a context switch on and they can easily pull that information up when they need them either in a client call or they’re reviewing their opportunity right before they hop on that call.
RW: Yeah, I think it really starts in contents with having a good sales process and methodology so that we understand what are the steps that salespeople are expected to take, to nurture leads to prospects through the buying journey. And then the sales methodology about the different techniques they have for sharing insights, doing discovery.
Highlighting use cases and requirements and providing proof points. So, you really need to have that structure first after that you really building an information architecture within your content. I think we’ve become a little spoiled with how easy search works, but not really understanding that if you have thousands of pieces of copy search, doesn’t solve, this problem structure does an organization does. So, having that structure around sales playbooks, and that methodology really helps. That’s why I see my role in sales enablement to do, and to keep it as flexible as possible for the sales team.
CT: So, we have all been working remotely for the past few months. And so, this shift has really been interesting, especially for sales reps today. So, I’d love to hear if have you seen a shift in the content that’s really resonating to buyers today in this new environment? And then what can practitioners do to really, address these different engagement needs? I’d love to hear from Keith.
KB: So, one of the things that we’ve been working on with people is smaller pieces of information. On one hand everyone’s home, people have a little more flexibility and time to maybe watch things or listen to things than they had previously, but at the same time, and in some ways, we’re also limited in that time, because now when we’ve got other things around. We maybe have kids; we may meet up; whatever else is going on at our home. So, what we’ve tried to do is make information available on like snippets and break things down, almost like Twitter levels it down to like one paragraph two sentences, like a one minute or 30 second type sound bites and give people for the benefit of all of that to make it easier, both for the sellers and for the people buying to basically feel like they don’t have to listen to a big long piece. Right.
And really, they want to know about this or that, and that can just get to what they need. As to whether that’s actually helping or not is probably too early to know, but some people like it and some people, I still prefer that one form of information. So, what all hard to know up front, but that’s something which I’ve been trying to push across to my people.
MF: That’s actually one that we’ve undertaken that project internally of really mapping out our sales process, mapping out our different sales playbooks. Right. So, depending on who we’re speaking to, or what size organization, or what industry they’re in. Looking at the different stages, right? The kind of content that you’re going to send a prospect before a big demo or in that initial introductory phase is very different than the kind of content that you’re going to send the executives when you’re approaching that signing phase and you’re really driving that home.
And so, I think really doing a map of those different playbooks for you. We use like draw.io. It’s a very simple process diagram, but we use this to basically outline what are the different stages in our sales process and what kind of content is going to be the most effective to accelerate the rep, getting to that next stage.
Right. And so, in the earlier stages of the conversation, we’re in a newer type of category of software, right? And so, it’s really focused more on educating the buyer, educating them on the why. Why do teams need a better way to share information internally? Why is helping your teams be self-sufficient in this remote environment, going to help you drive more results and help you onboard people faster.
And so, it’s a lot more on the educational side, versus as you start getting further in the sales cycle, right? Leading up to the demo, it might be a little bit more product focused, a little bit more differentiation focused, a little bit more focused on how you compare, functionality wise to your competitors. And then as you get later in the stage of the deals, it’s going to be a lot more about like, okay, great, now that they understand the why now that they understand our differentiation, how do we actually get them to make that decision, make that commitment as an organization to make that investment. And so, it’s going to be a lot more focused on customer stories, case studies, ideally similar customers to them that have experienced success.
Sometimes it might be referenced calls, so that’s not quite a sales collateral per se, but that you might send the customer case study and then suggest a reference call. And so, it’s going to be a lot more about proving out that value and proving out the ROI. Right. As you get closer and closer to that finish line. So, I’d say making sure that all that information is readily available, that your team knows what content to send at what stage, so that they’re not going to send that ROI collateral before they even get on a call with you, I think is important. So, having that clearly mapped out, can really help your team understand that.
And again, like the simplest way of doing that is having like a very simple process diagram that you just have like, Hey, here are the list of customer stories here, the list of different resources that you can do send at each stage, easily referenceable.
RW: We’re definitely seeing a bit of a shift, both for buyers and our sellers. I think now that everybody’s digital in front of their laptops all day long, it’s really, really tough to expect people to sit and read things at length in front of their laptops. So, the most engaging concept we have is things that can encourage people to use a mobile device and perhaps reading engage on your phone or on your tablet, in a different setting.
You know, you’re on your back porch or on the couch. So, things that you can quickly scan and read and get to the point. It went pretty quickly because we’re fully digitally transformed now, but we’re just overwhelmed with digital concept.
CT: And has anybody see a shift in the way that sales reps need to distribute content to buyers today? And how can you really better enable your reps to get the right content to the right buyer at the right time? Marianne, I’ll put this one to you.
MB: Yeah, to say 2020 has been disruptive would be an understatement. What’s been a huge learning for us is the speed at which we needed to react to the changing environment, both for ourselves and our customers. And for so much disruption and so much uncertainty, our reps were always looking for reasons to reach out to their customers, to connect, to understand what was happening in their industries, their companies, or even the households.
So, they were looking for content that they could share on a freer basis. That was more regularly updated. They were also very interested in helping, rather than just selling. They want to be able to share resources, to share helpful information, to share data and insight. And that’s whereas sales enablers, we were relied upon to craft those resources, to look at the data and how could our information inform our customer strategy as well.
MF: I think for us, we have a little bit of bias because I mean, we use our own tool internally that that does just that. So, I’m going to try and answer it if you didn’t have any tool that was designed to do that, either CMS or social like it. I think at the end of the day, it’s really making sure making the first step is awareness, right?
Making sure that your teams and your end users, your employees, your sales reps know that content exists. Right. And so, making sure that you have a clear communication channel with product marketing or your marketing team, as they’re coming out with these new resources. One of the things we did, because even with a place where all that lives, we were still missing, some of our reps are like, Oh yeah, I didn’t know that that piece of content just came out.
And so now we have a biweekly meeting actually on Friday afternoons. We have ours today between sales and marketing. For marketing to really do a brief on like, Hey, here’s all the content that we created over the last two weeks here are the new customer stories that came out and just really use that to communicate well between our sales and marketing teams.
Right. I think at the end of the day, that is the most important piece is making sure that they know the content exists. and then we send it over a recap. So, reinforcing the fact that that those resources exist. We sent out an email after that meeting just outlining. As a recap here, all the resources, and here are the links of where to find them just so that your team has an easily referenced school resource.
And so, I think the communication piece is really where things break down. It’s one thing to know what to send when, but you don’t even know that that resource exists. You don’t know where to start. And so, making sure that that communication channels. Clear making sure that you have a centralized place to make that information available are going to be key to making sure that as your rep is on their own at home navigating these deals, they can help themselves find that right content to send.
CT: And so, when it comes to content efficiency, we found going back to that report that I mentioned earlier, that most practitioners measure the percentage of content getting used. And so, I would love to know what other metrics you find ourselves. Super important when really tracking content efficiency and Marianne, I’ll put this one to you again.
MB: I mean sales enablement; we should always be looking at revenue. And if you’re fortunate enough to have a platform that connects to your CRM. We shall be looking at what pieces are contributing to sales. What’s leading to a closed-won opportunity? What pieces have been used throughout the sales cycle and as importantly, which pieces didn’t, and then we can reevaluate what’s working best. And some of the race sophisticated platforms will serve up the right content at the right stage in that buying cycle to other sales representatives then.
RW: One thing we’re trying to do in encouraging our customers is create send kits. So, it’s not just about specific pieces of content. It’s about the message we’re delivering supported by that group content. It could be a combination of a small intro video, a discussion deck, and then a data sheet or a proof point like a case study. So yeah. The most important thing we can do in enablement as a sales pro and in marketing is to think of content as a collection and that narrative and the message, but also then look at other ways we can measure effectiveness.
If we’ve got the meetings that are recorded with a video recording platform, as we’re doing these sessions. So then go back and watch that game film and see how the concept was used and then how it links to that follow-up that somebody actually open it and read it, things that we suggested in the meeting. Are they taking that action? So, this kind of analysis really helps us in sales that our marketing better craft. Some of those sales plays aligned to our sales methodology.
CT: I do just have another question expanding on that. You talked about different platforms that you can use. Is there anything that you’ve done in particular to drive adoption of those platforms with sales reps?
MB: I always look for my superheroes, my superstars within the sales organization, and again, tying it to how they have met their revenue targets. And done something innovative. I always like them to be the champion for that practice. I like to find platforms for them to tell that peers about how they’ve been utilizing the resources. They might not want to hear it from someone in marketing necessarily. That your job is to make them look like heroes.
CT: With this new world of work, we’ve really seen quite a few new challenges come up in the way that we have to sell and in the way that we have to reach buyers. So, what are some of those big challenges that you face to really make the relevant content, super easy to access for reps and how have you addressed those challenges? So, Keith, I’ll start with you.
KB: So, similar to what I said earlier we’ve tried to, again, it’s easiest passport to find because people are now not at the office, not as always easy to just do what they’re accustomed to and we want to make them feel comfortable, obviously. we’ve also created a, like helpline through various means that they can use so that somebody who’s like stuck.
Or can’t get to something or need something. They have a way to just get one of, well it’s on the phone or through IAM or whatever it is that they can do and say, hey here’s what I need here. Someone I’ve got to go do this and you know, can I get it? Can you help me with it? and if we have to, we spent the time with them coaching them to do it. And then in other cases, we basically have added it to a list of things to take care of and say, okay, we can do this, and we’ll get it done. And it’ll be ready spinning as we can.
RW: I’d say probably the biggest challenge is that with digital transformation everything is editable and manageable by sales teams. We create really good things and an element marketing, but we should expect them to be tailored by sales that needs to have a conversation. And they’re doing live A/B testing all week, all month as they engage with prospects and customers. So just getting that as part of the feedback loop is very important because that’s really where we’re able to test a lot of this messaging.
So we were able to get a little bit more agile and feed this back into our marketing, the asset management planning tools to then uncover what are better ways that we can tell them some of these stories, connect the messages, or connect the concepts with some of the messaging and have a real engaging experience with customers to encourage them to buy.
CT: So, when referencing content, oftentimes time is bursts and super limited. So, I would love to just hear any tips and suggestions that you have on really making it super digestible and snackable so that reps can go about their day. Melanie, I’ll start with you.
MF: Yeah. And I think that that is really going to depend. Like what mechanism you’re using to store and manage that content again making sure that titles are really clear, making sure that your folders are well organized so that it’s easy.
You define, in our software, what we do is we put like a little executive brief with bullet points on like what the content represents. So, we’ll put a couple of bullet points on like, here’s the perfect target audience. Here’s the perfect time to sell. And here’s what this piece of content covers.
Right? And then have the actual content piece attached. So that way, as I’m searching in my day, I can easily say, let me go to case studies and then let me go through the list really quick. A lot of software allows you to tag and allow you to organize it. I think at the biggest, the, at the end of the day, like as the sales enablement manager, your biggest responsibility is making sure that things are really well organized to limit that friction and finding the right resources.
Marketing is going to be focused more on like the content. Your responsibilities, how are things organized? How are we communicating things if they get updated, right? Sometimes you might give your product overview refresh. Like how are you making sure that your team is aware of that? I think is probably going to be the most important piece.
RW: So, yeah, sales has very little patience sometimes when it comes to trying to pull the right content that they need to have the right message and it’s really important to structure it. So that structure comes back to something I alluded to earlier that sales methodology and information architecture.
So, a lot of our sales plays again, try to understand the sales stage, that the customer’s in what information that the rep might need to have and share. And how it can easily be either copy pasted, or just add it as a PDF or a PowerPoint or a video into that narrative the message that they’re trying to deliver.
So again, having a good information architecture to make sure that reps can find what they know they need, they can browse because they may not know what they need to find, or just discover things that are suggested because we see that they’re down a single path and we want to recommend some of the constitute them, knowing what they’re trying, their intent is what they’re trying to achieve digital selling.
CT: We can’t ignore the topic of social selling and the importance of it. I would love to ask you what really does effective social selling look like since it’s becoming so increasingly important? Marianne let’s start with you.
MB: Our strategy is to make our sales reps thought leaders and industry experts. They need to be reading and sharing as much as their customers are about what’s going on in their industries. So, we created this content platform whereby sales could share really easily, articles that we’d picked out well as our own content marketing what’s most effective is that balance between, the selling piece, our own content and the thought leadership piece.
I think part of those real time conversations is really important. And then of course the measurement. So, what are our customers and prospects and our networks interacting with online as well. That’s been really insightful for us and for our sales teams too.
KB: We’ve taken a perspective that salespeople just like anyone else have their strengths and their weaknesses in what they do and what they know. And so we’ve encouraged people to reach out and social media for the product or solution that they really feel very strongly about and very comfortable in, where they don’t have to always rely on us to give them information, but they’re able to interact with people naturally and just talk to them literally the way they should.
And that’s worked for a number of them who have often wondered well, what if I say this? What if I say that? And we’ve given them guidance and instructions to say, it’s okay for you to do these things because you’re not viewing it, the place that you don’t know. you know, and that’s fine.
You can always tell people I don’t work on that product or I don’t sell it or whatever you want to say, but they should definitely get out and be more comfortable because. This isn’t going away. The odds of a seeing customers face to face in the near future is probably pretty low for most of us. And once you’re in my city, nothing. So, it’s this is probably what we’re going to be facing from at least the next six months, maybe a year. So, the social selling is really what’s going to have to happen and people are going to have to get over their worries about what they’re saying and how to just get out there and be a part of it.
CT: And then another topic that comes up when we talk about social selling within, particularly with like content, is there any way that you have found that is super effective for tracking the success of content in the social world. Since that’s a little bit harder to track, is there anything that either of you have done or used?
KB: In the past, we’ve tried a number of different things. Obviously, you’ve got your simple ability of how many downloads and that thing. And you can share stuff and see who’s done what. But the big question is what has led to sales? Has this content helped? Have the people even used it properly? And lately, not always, but we’ve seen a lot more where if people are sharing it on social media someplace, we can always get back to us and track it that way.
It’s hard to track it per se, but we can only see what’s going on and then work our way backwards, the follow, the path of who, what, where, and then when we not only get reads from that, obviously, but we also get the feeling that some things actually resonate better with people and are more, publicly accessible than other items. having said that we also have a number of things that are very internal, that we don’t really want to be external. And those kinds of things actually are more locked down. So, they’re actually not able to download per se. They’re more like a readable or visible on screen, but they’re not able to be downloaded and shared.
And there’s not so many things, like it’s not tons of stuff, but there’s enough things to let them keep internal, competitive information various battle cards and that kind of stuff where we don’t want it just being tossed about it and given to customers. Cause we don’t really feel that’s the best way to go, but the salespeople need to be aware of these things that need to make them part of their memory.
MB: We’re definitely looking at the engagement in the interactions online, as well as the and media value. So, what we would otherwise be paying for to get that content out there. The other important thing is that this has to go hand in hand with your sales outreach strategy. A lot of our sales reps are taking an ABM approach.
So, we know that if they’re following the right people and interacting with them on social media, that they will. By default, then see that content when they next log on, as long as those interactions are happening. So, it’s really two parts to, to that. There’s the content. And then there’s the outreach strategy.
CT: So, in today’s world, we are really just inundated with so much information, particularly in the virtual world where there’s so much noise. But studies have actually shown that I think it’s 90% of information is forgotten within a week. So, I would love to hear anything that you guys have to say on really reinforcing content for sales reps, so that it becomes like muscle memory. Melanie let’s start with you.
MF: This is a topic that I am very, very passionate about. I’ve actually spent the last few years just like really researching like science around how knowledge retention works and how the memory works. And the reality is with all these digital tools, like there’s more unfortunately creates more noise, right?
So, you might be investing in the best tools to disseminate that information, but that’s still a new tool that these are needs to learn. It’s still a new a new organizational structure that the, these are needs to now. And so, at the end of the day, like science shows like you just pointed out that One time, classroom trainings, or one-time webinars is not, what’s going to lead to retention, right?
Because as an individual you’re working memory. So, your short-term memory can only store five to nine things on average at once. Right? And so, making sure, and also quick tip the beginning and the end of the session is what people are taking the most. And so, making sure that at the beginning, you start off, like if you are going to present, Hey, here are the 10 new pieces of content we have available.
Start the session with like, Hey, here are the three or four things that you need to know and then recap at the end, just that you’re reinforcing it in that session itself. And then making sure that you follow up with an email, making sure that you have like office hours set aside, which are like, Hey, if you want to like, just talk about some of this content and review it and ask questions, you have those office hours set up so that you’re not going to get bombarded with follow-up questions afterwards is super important. And this pertains to new content that you’re making available or just really any training. Right? All of us are making constant changes and optimizing our processes. Like, I don’t think there’s a single organization in the last quarter that as a result of COVID, didn’t have to adjust their go to market strategy or their persona or their talk target audience or their messaging, you name it.
And that’s a lot of change for an employee to have to retain. On top of everything else they’re expected to do for their job. And so, I think like the reinforcement piece is by far the most important component. And then also make sure that as you’re communicating these things, you’re doing it in bite size and condensed format.
That’s right. You’re not scheduling a two-hour training to give them the lowdown on absolutely everything that’s happened and said, you’re breaking that down. And does sessions, then you’re working with your team leads so that the next day it’s stand up, they refer them, they reinforced that as well.
Then three days later, have you guys had a chance to share that content yet? Have you guys had a chance to do that process yet? And so, it’s getting, it’s spoken about it’s an and if it’s anything that has more to do with process or tools or anything like that, making sure that you have resources like either like two-minute videos or a quick recording.
That are easily reference-able by the team so that they can get on with their day. Cause at the end of the day, like our number one job, I think is enablement leaders is making sure that our teams know who to reach out to and what to say. There’s consistency in that understanding of our ICP, understanding of our messaging.
And then as we get people into the door and start going down the sales process, they have a really, really good understanding of what it’s going to take to move that deal forward. And so, as an enablement leader, you want to focus more of your time on that coaching, less on the here’s, how to find that.
And here’s where to go. And so that. The most, I think beneficial pieces, like get rid of all the friction there, make that process of finding information of knowing where to go of knowing how to navigate your tools and how to do your job really, really easy so that you can focus on the coaching. That’s going to have that highest impact on your actual results as a business.
RW: Yeah. And it’s funny, you mentioned muscle, never become it’s that comes down to core and repetition. You know, what’s the core that we’re trying to focus on with the value, the point differentiation, and then repetition, not necessarily seeing the same thing over and over again, verbatim, but saying it in different ways, different nuance ways to.
Make a point, whether it’s with a story with an exhibit sample, with some kind of visualization so that when we have that core message back to muscle memory, we’re exercising over, over in slightly different ways. So that reinforcement happens with our reps, know it and understand it, but that they can do the knowledge transfer to a customer again, how they engage a customer to share this content it’s reinforced in the customer’s mind because they’re hearing the same concept and similar phrases and similar things around that core message in different ways and different formats.
CT: We always end our soirée panels with one quick takeaway for our audience. So, I would love to get just one key takeaway that you want to leave everybody that’s listening right now with, and so Marianne, let’s start with you.
MB: I’d say be very open to new formats and new ways of doing these things because of the rapid turnaround time needed. We might have in the past had the luxury of building out a whole deck and a storyboard that goes alongside that as things are evolving, we need to get content out quicker ever before. So, the snackable size video bites that we mentioned, maybe it’s a tweet. I’m a huge advocate of social selling and employee advocacy.
So, we actually have a content library just for material that can be shared on social media and the engagement there has gone through the roof this year. Everyone wants to be part of those real time conversations and all it takes is one sentence under link on social media. So that’s been really impactful.
KB: I know Marianne said flexibility is key. We’ve got new times, new problems require a little bit of different thinking, but don’t be afraid to try something new or different. You know, if you’ve not gone whole hog into interactive social media, maybe now’s a good time because so many people are just around and there’s much more talkative than they’ve ever been.
I probably spent way more time than I should on Twitter lately and Facebook and various groups. And even on Slack channels, which historically have been kind of like every few hours someone’s around, people are all over the place right now. So, your salespeople, your marketing people should really get out and talk to people best they can.
And if you don’t have a team dedicated to handling it, then maybe you should assign somebody to even listen for a bit before they answer, but get in there because everyone’s available right now as enablement leaders, as operations leaders, like sometimes we get a little bit in over our head thinking through the process, thinking through everything, like at the end of the day, Simplicity always, always, always wins. Right. And so, when it comes to, if that’s documentation of your processes, like bullet points, two-minute videos, keep that piece simple, your content and organizational structure. Sit down with your users, get them to show you, how do they want to search for information?
What are they most likely? What keywords are they going to use? How do they go about searching so that you can use that to build the structures? I guess those are two things. One. Yeah. Keep it simple. Keep it simple. And then B actually sit down with not just your manager is not just your team leads, but with the actual newer employees and existing employees say, Hey, if you’re going to go look for content, walk me through the steps you take and try and identify like, okay, let me reverse engineer that.
And so, the right organizational structure so that I can make that piece.
RW: So, I guess in wrapping up, my one takeaway here just relevancy is constant engagement with your sales team first and foremost, your first level manager second, and then where you can engage with your customers. It may not be direct because we’re not frontline sellers here, but can we watch the game tape?
Can we see videos that the sales team had recorded and see what works and what doesn’t work and have conversations around that? Now more than ever. We have fantastic tools with instant messaging and chat groups that we can do follow up, but that engagement’s very important. So, follow this framework about what’s the information we’re trying to gather in terms of structuring a problem we’re trying to solve and where are we assessing and getting a lot of these data points as real time as we can.
CT: All right. So, we’re going to open it up for Q and A. So, if anybody has any questions for our speakers, please feel free to type those into the chat below, and we’ll give you all a moment to do that.