Great Recipe, Wrong Ingredients: Honing Your Strategy with Sales Outsourcing

by | May 20, 2019 | Sales and Marketing Integration, Writing Marketing Content

Great food starts with quality ingredients. Black truffle oil adds something to a dish that canola oil cannot. But, if you only have bottles and bottles of truffle oil, you’re missing a lot of what it takes to make a mushroom risotto or the best grilled cheese you’ve ever had. You need more than just one quality ingredient to make a dish.

The same is true for your business and your content. You may have a great sales recipe and dozens of pieces of great content, but do you have the right content for your plan? That’s where sales outsourcing steps in. An outside look at your sales plan and content can help you identify the missing pieces you need for satisfying sales success.

Questioning Your Content

Experienced sales outsourcing teams know sales and marketing go hand-in-hand. An Aberdeen Group report showed those who made a solid sales + marketing plan saw conversion rates six times greater than those who did not.

So, you have to ask yourself: do we have the right marketing ingredients? Start by investigating the following questions:

  • Does our sales team have the content they need/want to be effective?
  • Do we have content for each part of the buyer journey?
  • Does the content we have move prospects along in the sales cycle?
  • Do we have content to match our various buyer personas?
  • What is our “go to” content? Is it making the impact we want?

 

Once you’ve answered these questions, it’s time to bring in sales outsourcing to fill in what you’re missing.

Matching the Buyer Journey

When it comes to sales and content, the most important part is matching content to the buyer journey. Hubspot recently found that organizations with a sales and marketing collaboration are three times as likely to be effective. Get your 3X boost by putting the below content marketing journey into effect:

Stage 1: Interest

This stage is all about helping your prospect admit they have a problem. Your focus should be to 1) expose their needs, 2) show you have the solution, and 3) discover more about their needs’ nuances. Content for this stage includes:

  • One-pagers and infographics showing the state of their industry and the issues faced
  • Case studies highlighting how you directly fill their needs
  • Demo videos showing your value

 

This content should be coupled with questions or an invitation to connect to find out more.

Stage 2: Engagement

In this stage, you want to firmly position yourself as the solution your prospect needs. You can do this by posing yourself as an expert and speaking directly to their requirements. By now, you should have more information on their specific needs and can share content focused on those such as:

  • Sell sheets and video testimonies highlighting how you can help them overcome their individual challenges
  • eGuides, whitepapers, and blog posts showing your expertise in the industry

 

The Engagement Stage is a critical stage: you need to keep the prospect moving. Be sure to add in something to make your contact personal, referencing a common interest or connection to show you’re paying attention to them as an individual.

Stage 3: Consideration

Once you’ve moved a prospect along to Consideration, you don’t want to lose them. They’re in a delicate state where something small can push them one way or the other. The right content at this stage is what moves them from feeling hesitant to being confident in their decision to buy. Content to use here includes:

  • Promotions targeted at their pain points
  • Testimonial videos that closely relate to their journey
  • Proposal templates differentiated for their needs

 

At this stage you should be staying in touch, keeping your potential deal top of mind. A well-timed referral call can go a long way here as well.

Stage 4: Commitment

Don’t start congratulating yourself yet! Once you’ve got a commitment, it’s time to start building a foundation to turn your new sale into a life-long client. This stage is all about setting expectations and ensuring on-boarding is a seamless, pleasant process. Critical content for this stage is:

  • On-boarding doc or video laying out exactly what to expect, including their next steps (and yours)
  • Thank you email or newsletter letting them know you appreciate their business
  • FAQ docs or pages to give them all the info they need to stay informed

 

From here, you should have a variety of nurturing content for all clients such as a regular newsletter, holiday and birthday emails, and event invitations.

The Sales Outsourcing Difference

Though this post gives a guide of what type of content you need, you won’t know what to say in that content till you know who you’re talking to. That’s why sales and marketing go hand in hand: sales does the listening and tells marketing what they need to say.

That’s how it’s always been done at NuGrowth Solutions. We recognized early on that an effective sales processes rely on prospect-minded content to move it forward. That’s why we tie in content audits with all our sales outsourcing consultations, helping our clients recognize their missing ingredients.

If you’re struggling to identify the content holes in your sales process, we’re here to help. Call us at 614-304-3917 or fill out a quick contact form and explore how NuGrowth Solutions can help you whip up a winning sales strategy for your business.

 

Sarah Deak

Author: Sarah Deak
Sarah is a veteran copywriter and content strategist with NuGrowth Solutions. She likes to look for the unexpected angle and uses her background in education, business development, and marketing to create interesting and informative pieces to equip readers with actionable data.