Content Is For Closers: How to Leverage Content For Sales Enablement

1. MARKETINGMARKETING
HOWTOGUIDEHOWTOGUIDE
Content is for Closers:
HOW TO LEVERAGE CONTENT FOR
SALES ENABLEMENT
By Hana Abaza

2. TABLE OF CONTENTS
i. Introduction
ii. Myth Busting
iii. A Framework for Using content to Enable Sales
iv. Building A Content Library For Your Sales Team
v. Creating Targeted Content Streams for Specific
Prospects
vi. Spoon Feeding Your Sales Team
vii. Closing with Content
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3. Editing
Writing & Research
Graphic Design
Braveen Kumar
Hana Abaza
Jenny Choi

4. Put. That coffee. Down.
Coffee’s for closers only.
If you work in Sales or Marketing (and were born
before 1992), you probably recognize that line from
Alec Baldwin’s character in Glengarry Glen Ross. But
let’s shake it up a bit.
Forget coffee.
Content is for closers.
“
1

5. t’s time to consider content
an integral part of the sales
process. We all know that
content can be a reliable source
for lead generation, keeping us
flush with a steady stream of
qualified prospects. But, in many
cases, that’s where the ball drops.
From a marketing perspective,
leads come in and we do our
best to qualify them, score them,
and nurture them. Eventually, we
pass them off to Sales and all of a
sudden the steady flow of useful
content dries up for these sales
qualified leads.
Maybe it’s not being sent, or
maybe it doesn’t exist.
The sales process becomes long
and cumbersome. The prospect
begins to waver in their belief
about the value you provide.
They doubt whether they truly
need your product.
This, of course, is a scenario that
can be avoided.
Leveraging content throughout
the sales process is a powerful
way to educate and persuade
potential customers, clarify
the value proposition, manage
objections and expedite the sales
cycle.
To be clear, I’m not talking about
bottom of the funnel content
versus top of the funnel content.
I’m talking about content your
Sales team can use to overcome
the challenges specific to each
prospect to help close a deal.
I

6. Myth Busting
If you know content marketing, you know it’s important
to create content at every stage of the buyer journey. On
paper, this seems like a nice, clean way to guide people
towards a sale. People will consume content at one stage,
then move along to the next.
Awareness
Consideration
Decision
“I think I have a problem, but
I can’t quite put my finger on it.”
“Got it! Now I need to research
my options for a solution.”
“I’ll go with Company A. They’ll
cost more, but have better
customer service.”
ii
3

7. But the reality is not that
linear—people won’t just
magically find their way
along the path you created.
While it’s true that great
content marketing can help
bring a prospect closer to
becoming a sale, there are
often more questions or
concerns that arise once
they speak to a sales rep.
The more complex and
expensive your product, the
more likely this is to occur.
This is why Marketing and
Sales have to work together
to expose relevant content
during the sales cycle.
But before we get into how
you can do this, we need to
bust a few myths.
“Content is the marketer’s domain.”
Yes and no. Social, blog articles, websites, videos, the list
goes on and on—they all start with the formulation of
content. Many take this to mean that content belongs only
to the Marketing team. To craft great content you need to
stretch past the perspective of a marketer. Yes, you need
to talk to customers. But beyond that, your content must
be informed by Sales.
If your Sales team can provide input about the type of
content that’s created, they’ll be more likely to use it. On
the flip side, understanding the conversations that Sales
reps are having daily can help marketers create amazing
content.

8. “Salespeople are lazy.”
“Salespeople don’t care. They just want
something to send in their follow up email.”
While in some cases this might be true, “lazy” isn’t
necessarily the problem. But “busy” might be. If you’re
on the marketing side, how many times has a Sales rep
asked, “do we have a blog post about X?”
So, you go to the blog, search for the post, forward the
link, and as your temper rises you secretly imagine the
Sales rep spontaneously combusting. After all, couldn’t he
have done all that himself!?
Part of making sure your sales reps use content
throughout the sales cycle is to make it as easy as possible
to access the right content at the right time.
Wrong. Good salespeople — effective salespeople — do
care. They understand the impact that a well-crafted,
strategically placed piece of content can have on the sales
cycle. And if they don’t, fire them.
5

9. UBERFLIP GIVES MARKETERS
FULL CONTROL OVER THE
FRONT END CONTENT EXPERIENCE.
Aggregate all your content
blogs, videos, social media, eBooks and more
into a single content hub designed to
boost engagement & generate leads.
Learn MORE

10. A Framework for Using
Content to Enable Sales iii
In a perfect world, Marketing and Sales are like bees and
flowers, participating in a give-and-take relationship that
enables both of them to flourish together. But the world
isn’t perfect and history has shown that marketing and
sales need defined processes in order for a company to
thrive. It doesn’t have to be a complicated process, but it
does have to be explicitly understood.
When it comes to leveraging content for Sales
enablement, there are a few things you should consider
as you develop your process.
90% of the best performing firms surveyed by Aberdeen
Group show that marketing is primarily responsible for
sales enablement.
7
Did you know?

11. Aligning Content Creation With Sales Insights
Mining insight from your Sales team can help you surface
gaps in your content marketing, identify questions at
each stage of the sales cycle and manage objections via
content.
Here are a couple of questions I like to ask my Sales team
to get the conversation going:
This is a great way to mine for “top of the funnel” content that
would resonate with your broader audience. Chances are
that if your sales teams’ prospects have these questions, so
do many others. And remember, just because it’s top of the
funnel, doesn’t meant it can’t be helpful at the bottom of the
funnel, as you get closer to closing that deal.
Creating content that addresses these “big” questions will
give you the opportunity to answer them before the prospect
1. What is the biggest non-product
related question you hear?

12. even speaks to a Sales rep. And if they don’t see the content
beforehand, then your Sales reps are now armed with relevant
content that they can use to help close the deal.
A great example of this type of question at Uberflip is
about content curation. While our solution does offer tools
to facilitate curation, the questions our team hears are
often around best practices or processes to curate content
effectively.
So, our team put together a killer webinar called 7 Tips to
Conquer Content Curation.
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13. First, let’s talk about what we mean by objections. These are
reasons “why not” - reasons why a seemingly qualified prospect
won’t commit to your product or service.
Whether you’re talking content marketing, marketing in
general, or the entire organization for that matter, it’s essential
to understand the objections that potential customers might
have. Do they think your product is too expensive? Do they
have other priorities that take precedence? Is it something
related to the product itself?
Understanding the objections that your Sales team hears on a
regular basis will help you understand what kind of content you
can create to help put these objections to bed before prospects
enter the sales cycle. And even if these issues are still brought
up, your Sales team is now armed to deal with them.
Here’s an example of a blog post we wrote that answered one
of the objections our Sales team heard when we first launched
Uberflip Hubs: “We would love to create a content Hub, but we
don’t have enough content.”
2. What are the most common
objections?

14. The reality was that most of these people had a ton of content.
Between blog posts, eBooks, videos and social media content
that needed to be organized into a better experience - they
were the perfect candidates for our solution.
Once again, our content team stepped in to help address this
concern.
Top-performing companies for sales enablement, surveyed
by the Aberdeen Group, have a significantly higher adoption
rate of critical technologies: content marketing, marketing
automation and CRM softwares.
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Did you know?

15. Like objections, pain points are something that your entire
Sales, Marketing and Product engine must be in tune with.
Pain points are the specific struggles and challenges that your
customers experience, ones that your product or service will
solve for them.
Much like the process for developing content around managing
objections, developing content that addresses a person’s
pain points can be a powerful way to hook them in at the top
of the funnel by speaking about the topic broadly. And by
understanding the pain points thoroughly, you can also drive
them towards a sale at the bottom of the funnel by relating the
pain point to the solution you provide. Both scenarios provide
your Sales team with relevant content that provides real value
for prospects.
Here’s an example of our content team addressing a major
pain point that many of our customers face — namely, how
to deal with the IT bottleneck that often slows down the
Marketing team.
3. What is the biggest pain point
we’re solving for people?

16. While these questions are a great start, the key is to continue the
conversation with your Sales team. At Uberflip, we have a weekly “stand
up” to touch base with our Marketing, Sales and Customer Success teams
that usually lasts between 10 and 20 minutes.We stand because it’s less
formal and keeps the meeting short. The topics usually span these three
areas:
Quick updates from all teams (Customer Success, Sales and Marketing)
“Asks” from Sales and Customer Success Team (e.g. content, sales
collateral, etc.)
Product related issues and updates (e.g.. new features in the pipeline,
etc.)
While this doesn’t take a ton of time, it does help us stay aligned, not
only with respect to content, but for everything else from product to
promotions to customer marketing initiatives.
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17. Building A Content Library
For Your Sales Team iv
We all know that experience matters, whether we’re talking
about customers or your own Sales team. One of the best
ways to ensure that Sales can find and use the content you’ve
created is to set up a content library.
When it comes to building your content library, take an
integrated approach when you’re selecting the content.
Here’s what to include:
Content that answers the non-product related
questions we talked about before
Content that manages objections and addresses
pain points
Case studies that also speak to the pain points
Whitepapers or eBooks that relate customer
challenges and needs to your solution
Videos or webinars that do the same
Once you’ve identified the right type of content, take the time
to organize it for your sales team. There are many different
tools you can use to do this.

18. For example, if you’re already using content automation
software like Uberflip, you can create a stream within your
content hub that’s dedicated to these types of resources.
This way, your team has one link to access and they’ll find
everything they need at their fingertips, including blog posts,
case studies, whitepapers and videos.
Another option is to include the content in a shared Dropbox,
Box or Google Drive folder. In it, you can easily include things
like case studies and whitepapers, as well as a simple resource
document that includes links to any other relevant content.
While it might not be as visual as a content hub, it gets the job
done.
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19. Creating Targeted Content
Streams for Specific Prospects v
Whether you’re sending a blog post, a whitepaper or a video,
the content experience is key. Remember that perfect world
we talked about? In it, Sales reps can send prospects to a highly
targeted stream of content curated just for them.
Here’s a custom content stream that we created for one segment
of our customers who use Pardot.
This was created by our marketing team and provides
information about our Pardot integration and marketing
automation in general. It’s a great place for our Sales reps to
send prospects that fit into this segment.

20. We’ve even been able to target individual prospects specifically
thanks to one of our account executives, Jon, who took it one
step further with our content marketing software.
Below is an example of a custom content stream created
specifically for one of his prospects. The stream is hidden,
meaning that only those with the link can access it, but you
can see that everything about the experience is targeting this
company, including the title, description, even the call-to-action
that prompts them to “email Jon” directly.
Depending on the industry, 57% of the purchase decision is
made before customers ever speak to a Sales rep.
17
Did you know?

21. At Uberflip we have an advantage. Our product revolves around
content marketing and, as a result, everybody (including our Sales
team) buys into the power of great content. If your Sales team
isn’t ready to take the initiative themselves, then as marketers we
need to create these experiences for them to leverage.
Want to see an example of how this works? Here’s Jon, from our
Sales team, showing how quick and easy it was for him to create a
custom content stream for one of his prospects.
Want to learn more? Watch this full webinar as our VP of
Marketing and Sales Team Lead discuss using content to help
close deals.
SALES ENABLEMENT WEBINAR

22. At this point, we’ve talked about everything from content creation
to building a content library for your Sales team. You might be
thinking, “how can we possibly make it any easier for them?”
In a sense, you have to think of the Sales team in your
organization the same way we think about our customers. You’d
never limit yourself to one channel when creating a marketing
campaign or program, so why limit yourself with the Sales team?
Here are a few ways you can make things even easier and
facilitate better communication:
Update your Sales team regularly about new content,
particularly if it’s something they’ve been requesting. At
Uberflip, we use Skype company-wide for quick, on-the-fly
updates.
Send a monthly newsletter with a roundup of new content
and other assets.
Spoon Feeding Your
Sales Team vi
1.
2.
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23. Tag content based on buyer persona so your Sales team knows
who the intended audience might be (because, let’s face it, they
won’t read all of your content).
If your team leverages a CRM like Salesforce to manage email
followups, include content links within the email template they
might use.
Use a content marketing platform that facilitates the search
and curation of your content so your sales reps can easily do it
themselves.
Hold “content reviews” and ask sales people what their go-to blog
posts or whitepapers are and why.
5.
4.
6.
7.
Hold an internal webinar to explain new content releases and
assets.3.

24. Closing With Content vii
As we round off this eBook, let’s recap the essentials of effectively
leveraging content to enable your Sales team:
A Sales team armed with content—content inspired by their own
insights—is a Sales team that can more effectively close deals. To
make this happen you’ll need the right tools combined with the
right processes for your company. So before you craft another
piece of content, take a step back, walk over to the nearest Sales
rep, and have a conversation.
Align insight from your Sales team with the
content you create (they’ll be more inclined to
use it!)
Build a content library that’s easy for your
Sales team to use (keep them updated and
listen to their feedback around your content)
Enable your Sales team to target specific
segments or even individuals to personalize
the content experience around the prospect’s
needs.
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25. tips & tricks?
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