Inside Sales Lead Management Featured Article

When it comes to inside sales lead management, the landscape is always changing. While the goals remain the same, the materials used to achieve sales are ever-changing and continually show up in new forms. Unfortunately for many sales people, the material is not often available in the form they need. This leads to one of two outcomes: lazier salespeople sending out materials that are unsuited to the moment in the sales process, or diligent salespeople spending (read: wasting) a lot of time continually reinventing the wheel.

According to a recent article by sales and marketing consultant Mark Gibson (News - Alert) writing for Business2Community, sales materials often come in old and tired containers, and it needs to be freed from these boundaries.

“Once text is freed from container, it becomes unstructured content,” he writes. “But unstructured content can be more than just text and includes images, video, graphics, audio and hyperlinks.”

Even more critically, the information needs to be well cataloged so sales professionals don’t need to spend a lot of time hunting for it, or risk duplicating the efforts of others.

“Salespeople need inventories of unstructured content that is buyer-relevant and sales-ready for the top three customer problems, selling purpose, buyer’s role, buying stage and even industry context,” writes Gibson.

Let’s face it: sales enablement projects are often wasted effort. Either the material created isn’t relevant, or it’s in the wrong format. Perhaps it’s confusing and the potential buyers aren’t getting the most out of it. Perhaps it quickly becomes outdated. This means that a successful sales organization needs an enablement process to create content that is up-to-date, easy, collaborative and relevant.

According to Gibson, this content might take the form of e-mails and LinkedIn (News - Alert) messages (for all key selling scenarios and versions); customer stories and proof points; facts, trends, and research findings; answers to customer questions and objections (and these need to be updated often); Tweetables and LinkedIn and Google (News - Alert)+ short posts; curated articles (both company produced and third-party) with summary explanations; key messages such as recommended language and phrases; and links to key blog posts and landing pages. Outside research might be beneficial, too, if it can be condensed into an easy-to-understand and immediately applicable and relevant format.

Once this material is all pulled together, it needs to be entered into an easy to use and share content management solution that all sales personnel are trained to use effectively. The information should not remain static, but instead should be a living, breathing, organically growing source of sales enablement information.