Sales enablement consists of the tools, training, and content that sales teams need to increase their efficiency and sales for their products or services.
As a B2B writer, I’m sure you are the most interested in this: What types of content can I help my clients with?
Well, according to B2B copywriter, author, and trainer extraordinaire Steve Slaunwhite, sales enablement content is the fastest-growing specialty in B2B writing today!
In fact, sales enablement grew 343% in the last five years, according to learn.g2.com. And next to sales training, sales enablement content is the most significant sales enablement investment companies are making.
So, what are the most popular sales enablement content projects that sales managers and their sales teams need? Here’s a list of the top six sales enablement content projects:
1. Cold Prospecting Email Templates
These are pre-written emails that salespeople can adapt for different prospects. These could be for different companies or industries, or templates for separate customer personas within an organization.
The best practice is to keep these email templates short and sweet, using the “Power of One.”
Basically, that means they should focus on one customer benefit, with one call-to-action at the end. A typical project consists of 5 to 15 email templates for one client.
2. Follow-up Email Templates
As the name suggests, these are templates used after the cold prospecting email to help move prospects towards the sale.
These emails should be helpful to the lead by giving them resources to make a better buying decision. For example, they could include links to a product benefits sheet or case studies, an online demo invite, or answers to questions other clients have had.
Most importantly, they should not focus on what the salesperson wants (this could be seen as being a pest!), but on the information the potential client needs.
For these kinds of emails, a typical project could be to write 10 to 20 follow-up email templates.
3. Battlecards
You may not know this term, but these projects are also known as Selling Guides or Sales Scripts, which you might be more familiar with.
These consist of sales copy and scripts that a salesperson can use while communicating with various prospects. They help keep the salesperson organized and protect him from “just winging it” when talking to a hot prospect.
Battlecards can have many sections, but the five most popular include:
- Elevator pitch for the product
- Features and benefits
- Competitor advantages and how to overcome these
- How to describe what’s different and better about the product
- Overcoming potential buyer objections
A typical battlecard project will be one to eight pages in length.
4. Call Scripts
Salespeople can use these scripts as a guide during phone conversations with prospects. Call scripts can help salespeople in many ways, including:
- Beginning a call with confidence
- Keeping the call on track
- Avoid getting flustered or at a loss for words
- Saying the right words
- Having powerful copy lines at their fingertips that can be adapted for different situations
Writing effective openers and closes is where the sales enablement copywriter’s skills are the most valuable with call scripts. The middle portions of prospecting calls are mostly about product features and benefits. The salesperson can glean these from battlecards or product literature already written. A typical project includes short scripts for 5 to 10 situations.
5. and 6. Sales Decks and Proposals
These both utilize similar content to get the prospect to make a buying decision. They must close the deal!
A sales deck is a stack of presentation slides a salesperson will pull from to create a sales presentation (often in PowerPoint) for a client. As a copywriter, you are not responsible for the images and artwork, only the copy for each slide. Slide decks typically contain 25-50 slides and can be varied for different prospects and industries.
A proposal is a document that pitches a product, quotes a price, and asks for the order. These could be anywhere from 5 to 25 pages in length.
Both projects use similar formats, which include:
- The solution story — the problem/difficulty the prospect has, how your product will solve this, and how their business will look after the product is implemented
- Product features, details, and outcomes/benefits of using the product
- Expected results summary, price, and a call-to-action
In addition to these six sales enablement projects, other types of content can help salespeople move prospects through their buying process. Here’s a list of other commonly used content:
- One-sheets
- Case studies
- Product brochures
- Blog articles
- Web pages
- Explainer videos
- Lead magnets such as white papers, e-books, etc.
If your client doesn’t already have these, you should also ask if you can write the copy or content for these projects as well!
As a B2B sales enablement content writer, I believe it can be rewarding to help an organization’s sales department become more efficient and effective.
Not to mention helping them increase their revenue in a profound, direct way.
