Many of my clients are neck deep in preparations for their annual sales meetings. They are creating presentations and content to get Sales jazzed about the year, and to educate them about new products, pricing, initiatives, etc.
Unfortunately after the dust settles and everyone has flown back to their patch, Marketing will moan about Sales not using all the tools they worked so hard to create. Sales will complain that they don’t have the right tools. How, after all this work, is that possible?
Part of the problem is that while marketers think about the content of sales and marketing tools, they often ignore usability. Just as with a complex product, great features (content) are only as useful as the user’s ability to access and exploit them.
To improve the usability of sales and marketing tools for your sales channel(s) and for customers, ask these questions BEFORE your create the assets.
Internal Usability Questions
- How is the offering (product/service/solution) marketed and sold, exactly?
- Who will use the sales/marketing assets and how?
- Which form or medium is appropriate for each type of marketing and sales activity?
- How much customization will be required with each use?
- How will the users obtain the asset when the need for it arises?
- What kinds of responses or questions are sales or marketing people likely to encounter when they use this asset?
- How will we know whether the asset is useful and effective?
Usability Questions for Customers
- At which points in their decision-making process does each audience need this information?
- Where and how do customers find this information?
- What medium is easiest for customers to access and use?
- Under what conditions will they most likely use this asset? (In a meeting? On the phone? At a computer? At a dusty job site? On a plane?)
- How much time will they have to interact with this asset?
- Will they want to share it? (If yes, how do we make that easy?)
- How will we know whether the asset is useful and valuable to customers?
Please share additional usability considerations when developing content and tools for us in sales and marketing.
When President Kennedy announced the goal of putting Americans on the moon, no one had any idea how to do it. Not even the Russians, who had inspired the race with their ventures into orbit, understood how to get to the moon. Yet Kennedy got us there. He used the sheer confidence of his belief to convince Americans that the moon was an attainable objective. He then dedicated extensive resources to enable the scientists and engineers in the effort to achieve it.
There is a lesson here for sales organizations. Setting big goals at a sales kickoff and barraging reps with information about the newest products just isn’t enough. The top reps will deliver the numbers in any case. The rest will struggle without extensive resources and support.
Sales reps report that the following are especially effective in helping them achieve their targets:
- Case studies, case studies, case studies. Repeatedly and consistently rated as the most useful sales tool. (Post on making case studies more useful)
- In-account deal support from subject-matter, industry, or technology specialists. This is especially critical in larger companies, where account managers must be relationship experts, but cannot possibly know the details of every product, business process, or industry (unless they are vertically-aligned). The very fact of bringing in an expert who is perceived as more senior by the customer is often enough to move a deal forward.
- Business-level messaging and sales tools targeted at the high-level decision makers and budget holders. These should complement detailed product-focused content, which is necessary but insufficient bu itself. Business messaging targets the audience evaluating the investment rather than the people evaluating your product.
- Training & tools that enable sales reps to ask great questions and have intelligent conversations with customers at multiple organizational levels and functional roles. Asking great questions accomplishes three critical things: Positions the sales person as an ally and advisor, demonstrates that they can listen, and provides valuable information about the customers that can guide the rep in structuring the deal.
- Quantitative results achieved for other customers. While compliments (customer testimonials that discuss how easy you are to work with) are good, hard numbers about specific improvements they achieved are always more powerful. Numbers in the elevator pitch get attention and meetings, and numbers in the business case help close the deal.
Share what do your B2B sales reps value most!
