13 Types of Sales Enablement Content Your Team Needs

Close leads; boost sales. Don’t let the inundation of new products and services distract your customers.

With the right sales enablement content, your team can answer questions, address objections, concerns, and pain points, and be the engine for growth to convert prospects into customers.

Discover the most effective types of sales enablement content and how to arm your reps with the materials they need to succeed.

What is sales enablement content?

Sales enablement content includes the resources sales reps can use throughout the selling process, including product information or knowledge needed to convert a sale. 

These resources may come from other departments; for example, your marketing team might create an infographic or sales sheet that you include in your email template. Or you might have a list of product features you want all sales reps to discuss with qualified leads. 

Reps need the right sales enablement content at the right stage of the buyer’s journey to address prospects’ pain points and concerns. 

Why is sales enablement content important?

Without sales enablement content, you’re asking customers to “take your word for it” rather than proving that your product will solve their problems. If the messaging is backed with sources and written or expressed with confidence, your enablement materials build credibility and establish authority on your customers’ issues. 

The best types of content give you a secure foundation to build customer relationships. 

“Creating an optimal customer experience hinges on dynamic selling because reps need to align to the customer buying process and arrive prepared to each conversation,” according to Melissa Regan, WorkRamp’s Senior Sales Enablement Manager. “Enablement materials that are consumable, accurate, and relevant equip reps for value-based conversations and will boost reps’ confidence as they navigate each unique customer journey.”

According to the 2018 B2B Content Marketing Report, companies spend an average of 26 percent of their marketing budget on content, but the most successful organizations spend more than 40 percent. 

Sales enablement solidifies the customer’s purchase decision by reinforcing that you understand their pain points and how your product can help.

How do you organize sales enablement content?

The best way to organize your sales enablement content depends on your company and creating a solution that equips reps with the content they need when they need it based on where a prospect is in the sales process. 

Reps have an average of 1,400 sales assets to choose from, according to Forrester. Still, the taxonomy of available assets has widened, often leading to a disconnect among content producers, managers, and users. 

Creating effective sales enablement content is only half the battle; you must also organize it to make it easily accessible for your reps. 

Some helpful ways to organize your sales enablement content include:

• Keep materials in a database or Wiki. Reps can access sales content on demand
• Use a content management tool. Organize assets in a way where reps can find and use the appropriate resources 
• Use a learning management system (LMS). An LMS can serve as a unified platform for all of your training materials where you can create and plan learning programs and track learner progress 
• Create a content map. A map serves as a visual outline to show reps what types of content are available and which assets are appropriate for various situations or use cases 

How do you create sales enablement content?

Sales enablement starts with your ideal customer profile (ICP), so you can pick a strategy that targets their unique pain points. Then, follow the steps below to create effective sales enablement content to empower your reps to close more deals.

Identify your buyer personas

You may already have buyer personas, but it’s worth checking if your profiles are as detailed as they can be. You may have learned more about your customers’ needs since you first wrote the personas. If you have existing customers, you can build your personas from the knowledge you have of your existing customers’ everyday lives and pain points. 

If you’re starting from scratch, you’ll have to research your ICP. Start with a niche and decide what kind of people in that industry or lifestyle would need your product or services. 

Ask yourself the following questions:

• Where do they work?
• What is their job title?
• What are their interests? 
• What is their family life like?
•  What pain points are related to your product?

Decide what will influence your prospects

Once you know what makes your ideal customer tick, you can decide which sales enablement content would influence prospects the most. 

For example, suppose your ideal customer is a wellness company that needs your project management software to organize their team’s new product launch. In that case, you might need case studies, customer success stories, pricing options for them to review, and a sales script and slide deck to illustrate how your project management software will organize their team’s work by project, team member, and product. 

Talk to sales reps

Don’t forget your sales reps are an untapped resource to determine the types of enablement content your team needs. They can provide invaluable insight into the resources they need to help them understand your product, address customer concerns, answer questions, and close deals. 

Your reps also communicate directly with customers and prospects so they may know pain points or product benefits that should be addressed in your enablement materials. 

Map your enablement content to the customer journey

Having the right sales enablement content is only half the battle. You also must ensure your reps have the content they need at the right time. Create a map of the customer journey and use this to determine which materials are most helpful and effective during each stage of the process.

For example, battle cards, which we describe below, may be helpful during the consideration phase when a prospect compares the features, benefits, and price of your product vs. competitors. 

Create a sales enablement strategy to help your team close the deal

Suppose you know which enablement materials will be most useful for your team. In that case, you can decide on a sales strategy that will target potential customers with the attributes of your personas (high-quality leads). Your sales enablement strategy is essentially your sales organization’s approach to distributing the marketing materials to your reps and deciding how you will measure success. 

You’re creating an environment that encourages sales professionals to use the resources for their benefit. 

Here’s a high-level overview of how to set up your sales enablement strategy:

• Pick specific goals and KPIs (number of calls made, conversions, revenue goals, etc.)
• Establish a sales enablement team to train your reps on the use and importance of enablement materials
• Track conversions and customers in a centralized place like a customer relationship management (CRM) tool
• Give your team the right sales enablement tools to do their best work (data tracking software, CRMs, LMSs, prospecting tools, etc.) 
• Make your sales enablement materials accessible to your whole team
• Train your sales reps to use the tools or software you’ve given them to track and complete conversions
• Follow up with team members regularly to offer support and learn what works for them
• Analyze the conversion data to understand which sales enablement materials work and adapt as needed 

Read more: 5 Focus Areas for Your Sales Enablement Strategy

With the right content, tools, and a clear strategy, you can refine your enablement resources and generate more revenue through a targeted approach to your customer’s pain points. 

Sales enablement content you need to empower your sales team

The truth is sales enablement materials are not one size fits all for every company or sales professional. Various enablement tools serve different purposes, so you’ll want to get familiar with them so you can offer your team the most fitting resources for their work and customers. 

Sales enablement content for your team

These are the resources your team will use internally but will not share with current customers or prospects.

• Buyer personas. Fictional profiles that describe your ideal customers and their pain points. Personas are based on patterns you discover while researching current customers and include detailed descriptions of people from your target audience.
• Talk tracks. An outline you provide for sales reps. It acts as a loose guide to direct their conversations with prospects.
• Sales scripts. Written dialogue for sales professionals to use during client meetings (usually more detailed and specific than talk tracks).
• Sales playbooks. Guides on how a rep should respond in various situations based on past calls/interactions.

Sales enablement content for customers

These are resources your reps can distribute or use on customer calls.

Slide decks. Visual presentations that explain to potential customers why they should buy your product and how it works. 

• Case studies. Data, stories, or other proof that demonstrates how your product benefits customers. 
• One-pagers. Documents that explain your business’s value to potential investors, customers, or partners on a single page
• Email templates. Pre-written email content that a sales professional can easily adapt to send to a lead or customer.
• White papers. Factual reports that inform readers about an important topic related to your product or company.
• eBooks. Short (usually 3,000 words or so) digital books that can be used as a lead magnet, a freebie for potential customers, or an informational packet with a pitch for your product at the end.
• Blog posts. While a blog post is marketing content that’s generally used during different stages of the sales funnel, it can still be valuable as part of your sales enablement content strategy. Blog posts build brand awareness, answer FAQs about your product or service, and help to build user trust in your company.
• Customer success stories. Testimonials from previous or current customers that explain how your company or product helped them in a meaningful way, such as by improving their processes or increasing their revenue.
• Battlecards. Comparisons between your company/product and competitors’ companies/products with visual aids, such as charts, diagrams, or data tables. 

Building the right sales enablement content for your team

With the sales enablement material options you have at your disposal and a strategy that targets your ideal customer, you can empower your team to generate revenue, close deals, and feel confident in their product knowledge. 

You may notice increased collaboration among your team members, a renewed focus on your sales goals, and more time spent on the work that drives revenue. 

Training your team to use your sales enablement content may seem daunting or overwhelming, but a learning management platform can help to make the training process easier. With an All-in-One Learning Platform like WorkRamp, you can optimize training for current and new employees to use each type of enablement content at the right stage of the buyer’s journey while remaining consistent across all sales teams.

WorkRamp can help you provide training programs that coach your reps on product knowledge and sales tactics to help increase win rates. You can also build a resource center that allows your team to learn wherever and whenever with a self-service library of training courses.

Want to learn more about using WorkRamp to create on-demand training to increase rep efficiency, drive revenue performance, and close more deals? Contact us to schedule a free, personalized demo.