The other day, I came across an interesting content building workshop and decided to attend it. The outcome of it was quite fruitful than I had expected. In this 5 hours long workshop, we had a guest speaker from the medical background. He narrated a story in which; his company had recently cracked a big deal (that involved huge bucks of course) using content to shorten their sales cycle. “Deals that usually took anywhere between 10 to 12 months to crack took only 3 months this time” he explained.
When one talks about content, people often relate it to marketing strategy, when instead you can make content diminish your sales cycle. There is no better time than now for making content generate leads and closing the sales loop. How can content generate more leads and diminish your sales cycle? Here is an interesting content funnel by Kelsey Meyer that determines what type of content can generate qualified leads.
The above funnel comes handy when you are formulating a content strategy. It guides you to target content better and help sales quicken the process. A recent research found that a 20% increase in sales opportunities when leads are nurtured with targeted content.
Content can work as a promising sales person if directed in the right path. While creating content, there are a few key things to go by:
• Address Customer Queries:
Most part of a sales person’s job is to address the queries of a prospecting buyer. To diminish the sales cycle, it is but obvious that the content you create must focus on answering the queries of the buyer. Leads have questions, and content can help link that knowledge gap successfully even before a sales person gets involved. Authentic content, that is aimed at solving issues not only builds readership but also subconsciously works on brand building in the prospect’s mind.
• Pitch The Content Right:
While creating a sales pitch, the sales people target it not to the lower level of managers but the top level executives since they are the final decision makers. The top level executives in a company (B2B scenario) are the people who will decide the budget and what is to be purchased or not purchased. For situations when you can’t get hold of the CEO a simple email with targeted content and maybe a personalized video thrown in can further narrow down the sales cycle. Therefore, the content has to be written keeping the decision makers in mind.
• Content To Retain Customer:
In B2B, the first time a product is purchased is not the last time. Keeping that in mind, generate timely content that will give value to a current client. 67% of executives’ surveyed said, content that contains timely or unique information has a meaningful impact on their perception of a brand. Keeping present customers happy will automatically generate word of mouth publicity for your brand. Content in the form of surveys, contests and prices, specialized newsletter and e-books can be an asset.
• Emphasize On Education And Not Promotion:
This is where most sales people go wrong which expands the sales cycle. Most often, in the process of selling, sales people focus on promoting their brand/ product or service when instead all they need to do is educate their prospects about the product. When one tries to promote a product or service it comes across as a negative behaviour since the prospect feels like he or she is being pushed to purchase. Therefore, while creating content that is aimed at selling, make sure you educate and not promote.
• Work Parallel To A Typical Sales Cycle:
If you want to diminish the sales cycle then you will have to work parallel to it and use content that can match up to each step of a typical sales cycle. From the first step of prospecting till the last step of closing the deal, various forms of content, (like the above content funnel) can be used. In addition, here are some tools that can help you achieve your sales goals:
In a typical sales cycle, studies have shown that a prospect engages with a brand at least eight times before a purchase is made. Can you imagine the amount of time wasted? Use the power of content to reduce this time. These are just a few ways that can help shorten the sales cycle using content. Tell us what you think, share your experiences of using or not using content to drive sales efforts.
