Content personalisation tailors brand messaging and communications to reflect the unique needs and characteristics of individual buyers. This includes content that is relevant to specific stages of the buyer’s journey, or it may go a step further with hyper-personalised messaging that acknowledges the buyer’s particular business needs or past behaviours. With customer expectations higher than ever, the use of personalised content creates a unique and highly targeted experience that is key to the success of every deal.

Why is personalised content important?

Buyer engagement and the sales cycle have drastically evolved over the past few years. Modern buyers are more informed and have had an average of 27 information-gathering sessions before they ever speak to a sales rep. When buyers finally interact with a seller, they expect the rep to provide tailored and hyper-relevant information. In fact, McKinsey found that more than 70% of today’s buyers expect companies to deliver a personalised experience, and 76% will move to another organisation if they’re unhappy with their experience. 

So while customers certainly expect it, it’s also proven to be more effective. Personalisation cuts through the clutter, allowing brands to get the attention of buyers who are constantly bombarded with marketing and advertising messages. We’ve seen firsthand how personalisation empowers sellers to effectively engage with buyers and customers. Our report, The Personalization Payoff, found that more companies are sending personalised content than ever before. This includes an 89% increase in personalised content sent by companies with fewer than 1,500 employees over a one-year period alone. These same companies saw their efforts pay off, with buyer engagement increasing by 57%, underlining the power of tailored content to generate higher conversion.

Challenges of delivering a personalised experience

While personalisation is critical to buyer engagement, both customer-facing and marketing teams encounter unique operational challenges in executing a successful approach. Additionally, 63% of GTM leaders say that the content their teams use is not personalised enough for customers.

Customer-facing teams 

Sellers are in frequent communication with prospects and need content to provide personalised and helpful content needed to close a deal. Often, the overall lack of time and/or a clear understanding of what content is available and approved causes sellers to reuse old decks and collateral. Or, they may even resort to creating their own content, which may not be compliant or consistent with the latest messaging. 

Marketing teams

Marketing’s goal is to produce engaging content that is accessible to sales. Catering to every individual request for content isn’t realistic, and 42% of B2B marketers say that their marketing efforts aren’t fully personalised. Building systems to create content at scale and finding the right delivery methods are two common roadblocks that must be solved to support a personalised content program.

Content personalisation strategies and tips 

Let’s explore three key strategies that support marketing and sales teams in addressing these challenges and delivering exceptional personalised content:

1.   Know your buyer

At the heart of personalisation is a deep understanding of the buyer. Building a research phase into your content personalisation strategy will ensure that teams are aligned on buyer needs and preferences so that the content can be as relevant and relatable as possible. Marketing can support this by building out personas and a customer journey map, while sales can provide perspectives from their more frequent communications with prospects. 

2.   Make messaging relevant

Once teams have a strong understanding of the buyer, it’s time to create content. It’s helpful to segment audiences into groups based on defining characteristics, like demographics, company size or job title, or even past engagement with your brand. Brainstorm what messages will be most effective for each group and the types of content that would most likely be consumed. The more data points you have on the customer, the more relevant you can be. 

3.   Curate content carefully

Discoverability is a key piece of the puzzle. As the volume of content grows, marketing teams will need to find a way to manage the library of content, organised by segment or buyer’s stage, and provide easy access for customer-facing teams. It will also be critical to keep content up to date over time and remove or add new assets as needed to support the business. 

Effective personalised content examples 

It can be challenging to know where to start with content personalisation. Here are a few examples to help you tailor your messages to your buyers:  

1. Incorporate the buyer’s logo or brand elements in pitch decks or proposals.
2. Reference the buyer’s past interactions or purchases to offer relevant recommendations or insights, reinforcing their connection with the brand.
3. Tailor messaging based on the buyer’s role. For example, use technical language for an IT decision-maker or share high-level business implications and data to show a return on investment for a CFO.
4. Implement dynamic content in emails or on your site that changes based on user behaviour.
5. Use case studies and testimonials relevant to the buyer’s industry or role. 

The value of enablement tools for content personalisation

Sales enablement tools are powerful resources that companies can use to generate personalised content and manage it effectively. Recently, Seismic found that sellers at companies without an enablement tool spend an average of 10 hours per week tracking down and revising content. Here are a few ways enablement tools can reduce this workload and boost productivity: 

Produce content at scale

Marketing teams often struggle to create enough content to serve the entire sales organisation’s needs, let alone with the level of personalisation required for today’s buyers. Content personalisation tools store and organise existing content and allow easy edits and updates to adjust for different segments and use cases. They essentially function as a vast digital library that allows for easy discovery. 

Personalise content

Enablement tools often include dynamic content features that allow for the fast personalisation of content based on buyer characteristics. In many cases, sellers can do this without the help of marketing and pull personalised content into different formats, such as PowerPoint presentations or Google Slides. Putting more power into the hands of reps allows them to focus on selling, not searching for content, and reduces the burden on the marketing team. 

Measure effectiveness

Content personalisation tools provide organisations with quantifiable data on their content performance and usage. For example, these tools can track everything from, click-through rates on a specific piece of content to the time the buyer spent reading the content. They also help attribute collateral to conversion and buyer decisions down the road. This wealth of data and insights helps organisations fine-tune their enablement strategy and build a plan for developing the most engaging content. 

Ready to make your content stand out?

The Seismic Enablement Cloud features solutions that make it easy for go-to-market organisations to build content at scale and harness the power of personalisation. These tools help marketing teams streamline content delivery so it’s more efficient and impactful. As a result, enablement teams can ensure the right messages and content are delivered to sellers precisely when they need it. And with our robust self-service tools, sellers can quickly and easily create personalised content that resonates with buyers and stands out from competitors. Ready to learn more? Read how Salesloft experienced a 35% increase in win rates after implementing Seismic. Or, get a demo where you can get a deeper dive into our sales content management and automation features.

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What is client engagement?

Client engagement is the act of cultivating impactful connections with prospects. It encompasses any interaction that takes place between sellers and buyers – from connections on social media to direct 1:1 sales calls. When done right, it’s a powerful strategy: reps who effectively engage prospects can foster long-term relationships, improve the sales process and close more deals.

How engagement has changed

The rise of technology and shift toward remote work has drastically impacted client engagement in recent years. Let’s take a look at some of the major evolutions.

• Proliferation of digital channels: In the past, client engagement activities often took place in person over happy hours, dinners or conferences. Now, with more people working remotely, as well as a global customer base, engagement largely happens over  digital channels. For example, a seller may reach out to a prospect on LinkedIn, exchange emails and eventually set up a time to connect on a virtual meeting.
• Consultative selling: Traditional selling has been transactional. Reps were laser-focused on closing a deal and often used assertive pitches to do so. Now, consultative selling is more common, with emphasis on understanding a prospect’s specific needs and developing tailored solutions for them, all to build trust over time.
• SaaS sales technology: Advanced enablement and sales engagement tools allow teams to better track interactions, send personalised communications and measure progress. The proliferation of technology in this space can be overwhelming, but the right tools can empower busy sales teams to reach buyers at scale.

Why is client engagement important?

Effective engagement has many positive benefits, from spurring prospects to action to building long-term advocates for your brand. Here are just a few of the benefits organisations see:

• Higher conversion rates: Consistent and targeted engagement can guide potential customers through the sales funnel more effectively, improving conversion rates. In fact, Salesforce found that companies with strong customer engagement strategies saw a 40% increase in conversion rates.
• Revenue growth: When sellers create meaningful interactions during the buying process, prospects may be open to current and future spend. One study showed that buyers who were fully engaged in the sales process accounted for a 23% increase in company revenue.
• Post-purchase advocacy: An exceptional customer experience can transform satisfied customers into eager brand advocates. 77% of customers who’ve had a positive experience say they will recommend the company to a friend. These customers also may be open to participating in case studies or speaking on behalf of the company, creating influential word-of-mouth testimonials.

Rewriting the Rules of Engagement

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The client engagement process

Successful sellers take a thoughtful approach to engagement by understanding their buyer’s needs, tailoring their pitches and working to build a relationship that goes beyond the sale. Consider these five key steps reps can take to build a client engagement plan:

Research the buyer 

Buyers expect reps to be informed about their needs – even on the first interaction. For reps, this means that research comes first. Learn about the company and the role your prospect holds, and then consider what might have prompted them to seek your services. This sets the stage for a productive first meeting and demonstrates genuine interest in their success.

Connect where they are 

In order to stand out, it’s important to meet prospects in the channels where they spend their time. For many, this is on a social media platform like LinkedIn or X (formerly Twitter). While digital is queen, sellers can also look into the events or conferences that prospects attend and make a valuable in-person connection.

Tailor your pitch 

As you start to engage with the buyer, practice active listening and ask questions to understand their current challenges as clearly as possible. A customised consultative pitch is proven to work as 84% of businesses are more likely to buy from reps who understand their goals.

Build a trusted partnership

Today’s sellers are expected to become industry knowledge experts, providing insight and value beyond the product. Managers need to consider how they can help their reps upskill in this area. This is when additional training and coaching programmes, as well as opportunities to attend educational events can help sellers improve their craft.

Measure success

Establish clear metrics to measure the effectiveness of your client engagement programme. This includes reporting on client interactions or views and engagement with enablement materials.

Client engagement strategies

By utilising client engagement best practices, sales teams can effectively connect with clients, drive meaningful conversations and uncover new revenue opportunities. Let’s dive into some strategies that every go-to-market organisation can put into action.

Build a strong digital presence
Buyers often do their own fact-finding before speaking to a rep, most commonly through online channels. It’s important for sales to develop a strong digital presence and be prepared to share personalised content and the right messaging at the right time.

Provide personalised experiences
71% of consumers expect personalised interactions. Tailoring the customer journey and content to individual needs can significantly impact a company’s revenue and customer retention. Organisations that excel at personalisation generate 40% more revenue than those that don’t.

Help, don’t sell,
Sales teams should adopt a consultative approach, offering valuable insights and solutions, to build credibility and foster relationships that transcend products (or even companies).

Ready to take engagement to the next level?

With the Seismic Enablement Cloud, businesses can effectively streamline and support client engagement with the necessary tools and insights to foster meaningful interactions, create personalised experiences and train and upskill their teams. Seismic’s sales Content Management enables reps to discover and deliver engaging, personalised and informative content throughout the buyer’s journey. Our learning and coaching capabilities also help sellers build client engagement skills through continuous training and 1:1 coaching. Interested in learning more? Get a demo to start honing your team’s client engagement strategy.

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Fast forward fifty years, and there are now thousands of sales operations professionals in the United States alone. The role only continues to grow, but what does the modern-day role of sales operations look like for today’s go-to-market (GTM) organisations?

What is sales operations?

Sales operations support the greater sales team so they can successfully drive revenue. The primary goal of sales operations is to streamline and improve sales processes so sellers can be as effective and efficient as possible. This involves:

1. Sales planning and strategy implementation
2. Sales analytics and reporting
3. Sales process automation
4. Sales forecasting and pipeline management
5. Sales tool management and administration

Why is sales ops important?

The world of sales is quickly evolving, and teams need to make smart investments in order to remain competitive. Many organisations are also trying to do more with less in today’s economic climate. At the same time, buyers have changed the way they interact with sellers. All of these scenarios mean that GTM teams need to make strategic business decisions that will lead to as much success as possible. Sales ops makes this possible by supporting sales leaders and sellers alike with the strategies and tools they need to be effective. In fact, a study by McKinsey found that organisations with a strong sales operations team experience higher productivity and greater revenue than those without one.

What does a sales operations team do?

Now that you have a better understanding of what exactly sales operations does and why it’s so important, let’s take a closer look at specific responsibilities and tasks.

Drive sales strategy

Sales operations teams work closely with sales leadership to develop sales plans, set goals and create strategies that enable sellers to hit targets. This includes:

• Cross-functional collaboration: Sales ops acts as an advocate and partner for sales teams. They work with product, marketing and leadership teams to create alignment across the GTM organisation.
• Analysing sales metrics: Sales data is not only important for compensation and forecasting. It’s also critical for deciding how to adjust the sales organisation and GTM model. Sales operations can help spot trends and provide recommendations on how to adjust the sales strategy.
• Forecasting: Using data and predictive models, sales operations take an active role in this strategic function by making accurate predictions of what will close, where there’s pipeline opportunity and which deals are at risk of losing.

Organise sales teams

Sales operations also play a key role in recommending the organisation and responsibilities of the greater sales team. This includes:

• Hiring: Who makes it through the doors and onto your team will dramatically affect the performance of your organisation. It can demotivate your top-performers or it can lead to an all-star team. Sales operations help establish hiring practices and criteria to ensure the right sellers join the team.
• Territories: The allocation of territories – by geo, zip code, vertical and more – can have a major impact on success. Sales operations can balance territories for fairness and maximum ‘exploitation’ of opportunities.
• Compensation: This one is actually mislabelled. A more complete approach is to look at ‘incentivisation’. That is, how monetary rewards, gifts, training, career progression, recognition and other tools can encourage positive actions that drive revenue. Sales operations often manages these programmes and is generally involved in balancing pure compensation versus industry benchmarks.

Drive team efficiency and execution

Sellers only have so much time in their day, and Gartner found that they only spend 18% of it selling. Therefore, any amount of time that you can give back to them to focus on core selling activities is going to pay large dividends. Sales operations can have a major impact here by implementing tools and processes that automate manual processes, remove barriers and streamline processes. This includes:

• Transaction processing: Friction in the sales process can dramatically slow any deal. Sales operations measures where bottlenecks occur in the selling process and make necessary improvements.
• CRM administration: Sales ops often oversees the administration and management of the team’s CRM. They ensure accurate data entry, set up tool integrations, create reports and dashboards and report on activity.
• Managing the tech stack: There are a number of tools that make sales teams more effective. From data quality and appending to email management tools, sales operations should pioneer the discovery and adoption of the best sales productivity tools possible.

Sales operations rightly deserves a strategic seat in every GTM organisation. While not all of these responsibilities will apply to your team, it’s important to evaluate them and identify the best areas for your team to focus on.

Boost sales success with Seismic

Best-in-class companies are eager to jump in and use the best tools and resources to help their organisation create a winning sales enablement strategy. Hungry for more knowledge about sales enablement and how it can help your organisation operate efficiently? Get a demo and we’ll show you how!

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Sales engagement is the communication that happens between sales reps and buyers. By improving these touchpoints, teams can increase conversions, build relationships and ultimately close more deals.

Sales engagement’s meaning has changed in recent years with the rise of virtual selling and sales engagement platforms that support workflows and processes. Sales engagement and the technology that powers it have become closely interconnected, leading to more personalised and automated customer interactions that drive business growth and success.

The modern sales engagement process

The process has evolved over the years, with many sales engagement activities relying on digital channels to support the sales cycle. Today, it’s common for buyers to do extensive research before speaking to a rep – by some accounts, as much as 27 information-gathering interactions. That’s why digital channels, like social media, email and online messaging, are critical components of the sales engagement toolkit.

While phone, Zoom and in-person meetings are still important at later stages in the buyer’s journey, sellers should leverage digital channels to build rapport with prospects during earlier touchpoints.

To engage effectively, sales teams must have a strong digital presence and be equipped to share personalised content and messaging through the right channels. The good news is, sales engagement technology and enablement can support reps in delivering targeted content to prospects through the right channels. They also help reps prepare for pivotal selling moments.

The connection between sales engagement and enablement

Sales engagement is a critical component of any successful sales strategy, but it requires more than just enthusiasm and persistence to be effective. That’s why organisations need both sales engagement and sales enablement to thrive.

The sales engagement process is about optimising interactions between sales reps and prospects. Sales enablement provides reps with the tools, training and resources they need to be effective in those interactions. It also helps sellers better understand their audience, anticipate their needs and provide value at every stage of the buying journey.

For example, sales engagement might focus on tracking and improving email engagement with leads, while sales enablement provides the messaging reps use in their communications. By prioritising these approaches equally, organisations can drive seller success, deliver a better customer experience and achieve their revenue goals.

What is a sales engagement platform?

Sales engagement platforms are tools that help sales teams automate and improve engagement with prospects. Sales engagement software often includes features like email tracking, call recording and social media integrations. These tools often integrate with your CRM to connect the dots on digital touchpoints and build a holistic picture of a buyer’s behaviour.

Ultimately, sales engagement platforms are designed to improve the quality of interactions with prospects. They are becoming more common, with Gartner finding that 87% of sales teams have adopted a sales engagement platform.

Enabling Effective Buyer Engagement,

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Why is a sales engagement strategy important?

Today’s buyers expect their interactions with reps to be useful, informative and convenient – on the platform of their choice. A strong sales engagement strategy allows reps to meet these expectations and directly translate engagement into business. Buyers who are fully engaged in the sales process account for a 23% increase in revenue.

Because sales engagement touches everything from email marketing to social media planning, it’s crucial for companies to adopt a comprehensive strategy that prioritises clear goals and tracks analytics for improvement over time.

Enablement + engagement = seller effectiveness

Enablement is key to strong engagement, and sales engagement tools are how organisations can take action with buyers quickly and easily. By building enablement and engagement strategies in tandem, organisations will drive engagement and achieve more impactful results.

The Seismic Enablement Cloud^TM empowers sellers with the skills, content, tools and insights they need to drive engagement and grow the business. Seismic offers sales content management, learning and coaching functionality that integrates with sales engagement tools for optimal sales effectiveness. Join the 2,200+ organisations that use Seismic to build successful sales enablement strategies and improve win rates by 35%. Get a demo here.

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Before we dive into how to improve efficiency, it’s important to understand what the term means. Sales efficiency measures the speed of your sales team during a specific time period. It’s one of the most important sales operation metrics to track as it also helps leaders identify how much it costs to close a deal.

How to measure sales efficiency

Measuring your efficiency is simple if you follow the sales efficiency formula. First, you need to gather these numbers:

1. The gross revenue earned during the amount of time you want to track, such as a quarter or fiscal year
2. Sales and marketing expenses including salaries, training and tools from the same time frame

Once you identify both figures, divide the gross revenue by expenses to calculate your overall sales efficiency metric. For example, if an organisation generates $3 million in revenue and spends $1.5 million, the sales efficiency calculation is 2 or 200%. It is also easy to calculate this for individual reps, a group of new hires and entire sales forces.

Sales efficiency vs. effectiveness

Sales effectiveness measures seller performance throughout the sales cycle. Organisations need to track a number of different sales metrics and KPIs in order to measure effectiveness. These include lead conversion rates, win-loss ratios and quota attainment. So, the more effective a seller or team is, the more conversions and wins they’ll have at each stage of the pipeline.

Since sales efficiency and effectiveness aren’t the same thing, organisations shouldn’t focus on one over the other. Instead, sales leaders should leverage efficiency and effectiveness in order to reach business goals.

Why sales efficiency matters

If an organisation’s efficiency is stagnant or declines from one quarter to the next, it’s an indicator that there’s a problem with your existing sales process. As a result, sales leaders should investigate what’s working and where there’s room for improvements.

Additionally, sales efficiency directly correlates to an organisation’s revenue. Efficient sellers have the resources they need to interact with buyers, answer questions and close deals more quickly. As a result, organisations can expect to reach quotas and revenue goals. However, organisations with lower levels of efficiency have longer sales cycles and require sellers to put in more time and effort to close a deal. Therefore, they’ll likely experience lower profits and slower revenue growth over time.

The 2023 Value of Enablement Report

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Financial institutions are experiencing unprecedented change. Economic uncertainties, emerging technologies and rapidly evolving client expectations are changing the way firms operate and connect with existing and potential clients. After all, client engagement and loyalty are no longer driven exclusively by the products, rates and services a financial institution provides. Instead, clients want to do business with firms that meet them where they are to provide helpful and personalised financial information.

One of the growing channels where this happens is social media. In fact, a recent study by The World Economic Forum found that more than half of U.S. adults go to social media for news and information on investing and banking. And this number is growing rapidly.

“As the power of social media continues to expand, firms need to offer technology tools that help teams meaningfully engage on these platforms in a compliant and relevant way.” – Kerry Ryan, CPWA®, Director Financial Services Marketing, Seismic

Shifting mindsets: the advantages of social media have evolved

To keep up with current and prospective clients, more financial institutions are turning to social media. And, even as more firms embrace social media, the way it’s used is constantly evolving. Originally, many firms thought of social media as a broadcast channel where they pushed out ads, promotions, news and other forms of branded content. But, people don’t have conversations with brands – they have conversations with other people.

“As often misleading and fragmented information on social media proliferates, respected firms can elevate their brand and capture new clients by showcasing their expertise, credentials and valuable insights.” – Kerry Ryan, CPWA®, Director Financial Services Marketing, Seismic

Now, financial services firms view social media as a way for their client-facing employees to have personalised conversations with other people. This does not mean that marketing teams only equip employees with branded posts or advertisements. Instead, they enable and empower their client-facing teams to be subject-matter experts who share unique content that resonates with their clients and their network in addition to some branded content. By sharing informative, inspiring, entertaining content, client-facing professionals build their personal reputations in a credible and trustworthy way that cultivates relationships over time.

“Modern client-centric social media is nothing like old fashioned pitching and promoting. It’s about your people showing up and speaking up in ways that strengthen reputation, nurture relationships and build trust at scale. Done well, over time, it’s incredibly powerful.” – Steve Watt, Director, Market Insights, Seismic

However, this doesn’t come without challenges. After all, financial institutions and their client-facing professionals have to worry about the credibility and accuracy of information, legal stipulations and compliance regulations. 

This presents a unique opportunity for firms that want to leverage social media to deepen existing relationships and forge new ones. In order to do this successfully, firms need to enable client-facing teams with tools and enablement programmes that ensure high-quality, accurate and compliant discussions around financial topics.

The roadmap to social media success

It’s important to understand that you can’t simply launch your social media strategy or implement a new tool and expect it to flourish right away. Here are a few strategies we’ve seen financial services clients use to launch their social media engagement programmes and encourage adoption with their teams.

1. Define – or redefine – your strategy: For firms that are just starting out, survey your client-facing teams so they can provide input on your social media strategy. Ask questions about content, formats and preferred social channels. For example, while some employees may prefer text-based posts on LinkedIn, others may be more compelled by video content on YouTube. Getting these types of insights will be helpful as you define your plan. If you’re redefining your strategy, look at all of the available data on your social efforts. This will help you analyse performance to identify what’s working and where there’s a new opportunity.
2. Outline roles and responsibilities: Most social media programmes should be a shared responsibility between sales, marketing and enablement teams. But, in order for this to work, there needs to be alignment and ground rules that are established from the start. Agree on the approach, identify key deadlines and goals and create a plan for moving forward.
3. Align with compliance and legal: Regulatory and legal compliance is critical for financial services, especially as new regulations like the US SEC Marketing Rule, come into effect. This requires organisations to think carefully about their goals for social media. Additionally, client-facing employees may be wary to embrace social media due to compliance concerns. By putting risk management tools, processes and platforms in place, everyone can rest assured that your social media programme is done right.
   
4. Regularly share tips and best practices: Client-facing teams are already busy, so employees may be quick to assume that this will only add to their already hectic workload. Therefore, it’s beneficial to provide tips and best practices for crafting the best social media posts, ideally from other client-facing advocates. By educating, empowering and enabling them, they’ll be more likely to see how this can fit into their daily schedule and be beneficial in the long run.
5. Give them tools for success: In addition to ongoing enablement and training on social media tips and best practices, look for tools that will make it easy and efficient for your teams to leverage social media. Social selling platforms automate content creation, enable authentic and personalised sharing and manage everything with compliance in mind.

Measuring success and effectiveness

Deploying a social media strategy for financial services is not a one-time launch event. Instead, it’s a journey that requires iteration and improvements over time. Here are a few helpful goals to consider when it comes to setting expectations and measuring success.

“Bad measurement and unrealistic timelines can be the death of social media programmes before they even have a chance to thrive. It’s a journey, so it’s important to devote the time, energy and resources to learn, grow and get it right.” – Steve Watt, Director, Market Insights, Seismic

Create quarterly milestones and goals

Social media is a long-term process, but firms can’t sit back and measure nothing. And while organisations won’t experience full adoption the week a programme launches, there are ways to track progress over time. For example, look to see if adoption and activity are better than it was in the first three and six months. Did adoption increase or decrease? Are employees sharing more on a consistent basis than they once did? Then, a few months after launch, begin tracking marketing metrics like traffic from social and increased company page followers. By looking at these metrics over time, you’ll easily be able to gauge if your social media efforts are resonating with your team.

Look for ways to encourage incremental improvements

We’ve found that when launching a new initiative or programme, employees usually fall into three buckets:

• High motivation & engagement: “Help me be excellent.”
• Moderate motivation & engagement: “Make it easier.
• Low motivation & engagement: “Show me why I should care.

While you likely won’t get an employee to move from the bottom tier to the top tier overnight, you can encourage them to get 1% better each and every day. For example, help the people who are consistently active with new, helpful content and data. Those who fall more in the middle may just need help building momentum. Map and plan your ongoing enablement efforts around these tiers and develop appropriate strategies for each.

Lead by example

Finally, financial services leaders who consistently engage on social media are much more knowledgeable and credible when they ask their client-facing employees to leverage social media. Instead of telling them what to do and how to do it, show them how you embrace social media yourself.

Final thoughts

An effective social media engagement program can create tremendous value for financial services firms. While it is an investment that requires thought and intentionality, it can deliver great returns over time. The financial services firms that empower and enable their people to embrace and engage on social media with confidence will deepen relationships, build trust at scale and create a competitive advantage over other firms.

How Seismic helps

Implementing a successful social media programme requires a platform that makes it scalable and efficient. Seismic’s enablement suite features LiveSocial, a social engagement platform that tens of thousands of financial service professionals use to foster authentic relationships and grow client trust. 

It’s the only tool in the market that provides a unique feed of current, relevant and compliant third-party content for each of your client-facing employees, in addition to the corporate content that your marketing team and partners create. LiveSocial also provides robust reporting and analytics so users know what content most resonates and drives engagement. Interested in learning more? Watch how client-facing professionals build trust online and meet clients where they are using LiveSocial.

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The evolution of sales playbooks

Sales playbooks have been integral to sales success for decades. But, as buyer journeys have shifted, sales playbooks have also evolved. Let’s take a brief look at how far they’ve come in recent years. 

Why are sales playbooks important?

We’ve already mentioned how helpful sales playbooks are when it comes to navigating rapidly changing sales processes and evolving buyer preferences. Sales playbooks also positively impact your entire GTM team and promote ongoing company growth. In fact, one study found that companies with well-defined sales playbooks and processes are 33% more likely to be high performers. The win rates also exceed 50% for two-thirds of companies that have these in place. If that isn’t encouraging enough, here are some of our other favourite benefits.

Decrease ramp time

New reps have access to a step-by-step guide that they can follow to engage with customers and learn important information.

Improve productivity

Because reps know where to find important information, they spend less time looking for what they need and more time interacting with buyers.

Drive consistency

Playbooks create and clear, concise and easy to follow processes for every function of the GTM organisation.

Increase effectiveness

By equipping sellers to navigate various scenarios, they can quickly and efficiently interact with buyers and close deals faster.

The Sales Playbook Blueprint

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Buyers also want the content they receive to be personalised and informative. Content that is irrelevant to a buyer will simply be ignored. So, in order to get the content experience right, organisations need to create content that helps them to build relationships with buyers and, ultimately, generate more revenue.

What is sales collateral?

Sales collateral includes any document or materials that sales reps use throughout a deal cycle. While there are many different types of sales collateral, the primary purpose of collateral is to educate, inform and engage prospects so they’ll move closer to making a purchase decision. Effective B2B sales collateral gives buyers more information about your company, its products and services and how they help customers solve their unique business challenges.

What’s the difference between sales collateral and sales enablement collateral?

Before we dive into examples of common collateral, it’s important to understand the difference between sales collateral and sales enablement collateral.

Sales collateral includes the sales and marketing materials that are designed to support the sales process. Sellers use sales and marketing collateral with buyers and customers to educate them on your products and services. These are intended to be external-facing and used during sales presentations, meetings and other communication with buyers.

Sales enablement collateral is broader in scope. It includes materials, tools and resources that empower and enable sellers to perform at their best. Sales enablement assets equip and support sellers with the knowledge, skills and resources they need to succeed in their roles. Sales enablement documents include both customer-facing materials (sales collateral) and internal resources like training content, sales playbooks, messaging desks and competitor analysis materials.

Sales and enablement collateral are equally important because they both help sellers do their jobs quickly and effectively. In this post, we’ll dive into specific examples of sales collateral and how they impact your company’s bottom line.

Effective sales collateral examples

Regardless of the type of collateral you send buyers, it should clearly convey useful information that addresses their questions and needs. Some of the most common collateral materials include:

• Blog posts: Blog posts are one of the best formats for building awareness with new buyers. They demonstrate thought leadership, helpful knowledge and expertise on a variety of topics. Blog posts have high shareability and are great for sellers to share on social media and in emails.
• eBooks: Similar to blog posts, eBooks effectively promote and raise awareness of your organisation. They also provide helpful education on common challenges.
• Case Studies: Testimonials are powerful sales materials. They provide tangible and social proof that your company has helped others navigate and solve similar challenges and pain points.
• Research reports: Research reports, also called white papers, often include third-party research that positions your company as a market leader. Organisations may also conduct their own research on a specific trend or topic and share the findings. These are best for presenting research findings, facts and figures, and other specific data. 
• Product demos: Personalised demos are a direct way to show buyers the ins and outs of your product while demonstrating how it helps them solve their specific challenges.
• Knowledge bases: A knowledge base or FAQ site provides a solid collection of articles and reports created by your organisation. These bolster a buyer’s confidence in your capabilities and availability to answer their questions once they become a customer. 
• Newsletters: Newsletters can help keep your brand top-of-mind, share important company news and foster deeper relationships. 

Why is sales collateral so important?

Sales collateral is an important tool in the sales cycle. In fact, 95% of purchasing decisions are directly influenced by content. Sales collateral helps sellers: 

Mapping sales materials to the buying process

Today’s buying process is more complex than ever. The best sales collateral aligns with the buyer’s journey and supports buyers as they move from stage to stage. Let’s take a closer look at these stages and what types of sales collateral is most effective for each.

The first stage is awareness. Buyers have identified a challenge they want to solve and are actively researching information to better understand the problem and possible solution. Awareness-level content brings buyers to your site, introduces your company and products, and provides helpful information. This type of collateral often includes eBooks, blog posts and webinars.

Once a buyer discovers your business, you need to deliver relevant collateral that keeps you at the top of their consideration. This is when sellers start conversations, build relationships and learn more about the buyer. Because they’re likely considering multiple vendors or options, sales collateral needs to show how your product can fit into their business and help them reach their goals. This is when case studies and personalised demos are useful.

Over time, buyers will narrow down their options and make a final decision. So, it’s important to provide materials that facilitate conversations, foster authentic relationships and reinforce the benefits of partnering with your organisation. Pricing guides, case studies and competitor comparisons are essential during this stage of the deal cycle. 

The buyer’s journey doesn’t stop once a prospect becomes a customer. Now, it’s time to drive satisfaction to encourage retention and growth. By providing FAQs, newsletters and customer-only events, your organisation will build stronger relationships and encourage customers to become advocates.

Sales collateral best practices

Now that we’ve covered the meaning of sales collateral and the value it brings, let’s look at some best practices to help your organization leverage collateral as much as possible.

Assess your sales materials

First, take inventory of your current sales collateral library. Gather all your content, then take a step back to review each piece. Consider if it supports your organisation’s goals and objectives. This will help you identify what type of collateral is missing. And remember, if one part of your collateral becomes outdated, it doesn’t mean the entire piece is useless. Search for ways to keep the parts of content that works while discarding anything that’s no longer relevant or up to date.

Tailor collateral to the buyer’s journey

It’s important to understand the process your buyers take to make a purchase decision so you can customise your collateral accordingly. Remember, personalised sales content is far more engaging than generic marketing materials. Give your sellers the ability to quickly and easily customise content for each buyer.

Talk to your sellers

The people who have the best ideas and feedback about your content are the ones who use it each day. Ask your sellers what content they find most useful or used most often. At the same time, find out what they rarely use or would like to see created to better address their needs.

Track and measure collateral effectiveness

Monitor content analytics such as open rates for email attachments, engagement with digital collateral and conversion rates at different stages of the sales process. This will help you refine and improve your collateral over time.

Leverage a sales enablement tool

Let technology be your partner! A dedicated sales content management system organises, stores and manages sales collateral. Let’s learn a bit more about the value of an enablement tool and how it helps organisations manage collateral.

The value of enablement tools for sales collateral

A recent survey of more than 1,200 full-time sales, enablement and customer service professionals found that enablement tools help organisations effectively manage and use their sales collateral. In The 2023 Value of Enablement Report, 9 in 10 respondents report using enablement tools in their job, and 99% of them agree that it makes their jobs easier. Let’s take a look at why organisations need enablement technology.

Time saved

Sellers in organisations without an enablement tool spend an average of 10 hours per week searching for and updating sales and marketing materials. However, respondents at organisations that use an enablement tool save 13 hours each week.

Confident sellers

It’s also worth noting that quick access to sales collateral enables sellers to not second-guess themselves. 97% of sellers say that quick access helps them speak to buyers from a more informed standpoint. Comparatively, 51% of respondents at organisations without an enablement tool say that they have misspoken during a sales or customer call.

Increased productivity

88% of respondents say that an enablement tool allows them to be more productive in their roles. When sellers can quickly locate the right content at the right time, they can shift their focus to other high-priority and revenue-generating activities. However, productivity significantly decreases at organisations without enablement technology. 91% of respondents agree that not having access to the content they need makes them feel less productive.

How to organise sales collateral

Sales collateral only works if it’s easy to find, personalise and share with buyers. Effectively storing and organising sales collateral is crucial for ensuring that your sales team can access, use and distribute materials effectively. Here are some tips organisations can follow to streamline sales collateral management and organisation.

1. Create a clear folder structure: Create a logical and consistent folder structure within your sales CMS. Organise materials by type, product/service, industry, buyer persona or any other relevant criteria. Consider using a taxonomy that makes it easy for salespeople to navigate and find what they need.
2. Implement metadata and tagging: Use metadata and tagging systems to add descriptive information to each piece of collateral. This metadata should include keywords, descriptions and other relevant details. This helps in quick searching and categorisation.
3. Establish version and access controls: Clearly label and archive older versions while ensuring that the most current versions are readily accessible. This prevents confusion and ensures that outdated content isn’t used. Be sure to also implement access controls and permissions to restrict who can view, edit or download specific pieces of content.
4. Audit and clean content: Conduct periodic audits of your sales collateral library. Remove outdated or irrelevant materials. This keeps the library clean and reduces clutter.
5. Build a content approval workflow: Establish a content approval process to ensure that all collateral meets quality and branding standards before it’s added to the library. This can include review by marketing, legal or other relevant teams.

Say goodbye to sales content chaos

Sales collateral is a valuable tool for every go-to-market team. But, in order for sales content to be effective, it has to be easily accessible, engaging and personalised. Sales and marketing teams use Seismic’s sales content management tool to power content accessibility and personalisation at scale. With Seismic, sellers can find useful collateral, customise it for each prospect and share it in a matter of seconds. The result is faster deal cycles and more engaged buyers. Want to learn more? See Seismic’s content management platform in action.

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What is sales content automation?

Closing a deal takes precision, attention to detail, and the ability to nurture relationships with buyers over time. Longer sales cycles coupled with ever-changing buyer preferences mean that your reps need to find and share the perfect content in order to move a deal forward. But, because reps have such a large quantity of sales collateral to choose from, this process can take up precious time.

If this sounds familiar, it may be time to consider sales content automation. Sales content automation streamlines the content workflow and gives sellers access to all of the content they need. By deploying sales content automation software, sellers are enabled to personalise content at scale so they can spend more time on selling, which is something that should be a top priority for every organisation. This software uses artificial intelligence to automate repetitive tasks and include data from other sources so sellers can craft content in a matter of minutes.

Why sales content needs to be personalised

Adding content automation software to your sales toolkit can help you meet a fundamental benchmark of successful sales: personalised content. Making your sales content unique to each buyer can make all the difference between closing or stalling a deal. Over 90% of consumers indicate that they feel more inclined to engage with brands that personalise content as compared to brands that only send generic content. These numbers mean that you simply can’t afford to skimp on your personalised content.

However, creating and delivering personalised content can be overwhelming. Who has the time to produce unique content for every prospect? To reach content personalisation at scale, your organisation needs some level of automation that’s powered by content AI tools.

How to automate your content workflow

Automating the sales content process sounds good, but how can a company actually go about integrating content management tools and artificial intelligence into their sales enablement efforts? Let’s break down a few of the tasks that sales content automation can take off of your plate.

• Creating: The real name of the game for content automation is templates. Whether it’s a proposal or pitch deck, your reps can swap out and replace content as needed to tell the right story to the right customer. All this can be done without the hassle of manually compiling content and reorganising it for each buyer.
• Integrating: Data can be tricky to pull together in a way that helps your reps and makes sense to your customers. Automating data organisation and collection can help your sellers pull highly relevant information with the press of a button.
• Approving: Getting approval for new content can take more time than actually sending it to buyers. With content automation, marketing and enablement teams can limit the areas of personalisation to ensure that reps are staying on brand. Automating the approval process according to your brand’s standards and governance gives everyone the peace of mind that content is consistent and correct.
• Sharing: Long gone are the days of manual email and hours dedicated to rehearsed sales calls. Sales content automation allows your sellers to share personalised content widely and efficiently.
• Reporting: The analytic and reporting features of many content AI tools lets you see which buyers are engaging with your sales content and which may need an extra nudge. It also tracks what content sellers are using the most so teams can make informed decisions on what content marketing and sales collateral is most beneficial to move deals forward.

Benefits of sales content automation

Stress isn’t the only thing that gets better with sales content automation. Other benefits of automating your sales content workflow include:

• Improving efficiency: Save yourself and your sellers immeasurable time scouring unorganised drives and folders for helpful content or sweating over entirely organic content creation. Content management tools and automation removes all of the muddling and allows sellers to focus on what they do best – building relationships with prospects and customers.
• Shortening the buying cycle: Now that your sellers are free from the slog of content generation, they can dedicate more time to buyers. They can dedicate their attention to the essential conversations and interactions that get buyers to move from the leads list to active customers.
• Increasing buyer engagement: We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again – customers love personalised content. In fact, 76% of consumers feel upset when they don’t experience any sort of personalisation during the buying experience. Automating your sales content means that each of your prospects gets the content they want, when they need it.
• Creating a scalable workflow: With the power of sales content automation, your sellers can mass-produce content, as well as locate relevant information with ease. Bringing your organisation to the next level has never been easier.

How Seismic enables sales content automation

When you decide that sales content automation is the next step for you and your business, reach out to Seismic. Seismic’s Enablement Cloud features content automation tools that allow your sellers to repurpose and personalise content, integrate other sources of data and generate highly engaging content at the push of a button. Click here to see it in action!

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What is sales enablement?

Depending on your organisation, sales enablement can have various meanings. We define sales enablement as the strategic use of people, processes and technology to improve sales productivity and increase revenue. While sales enablement isn’t just about the software and tools used, it isn’t just about the practices and processes used either.

What is sales enablement software?

Sales enablement software is technology that reduces the workload of sales and customer service professionals, streamlines their workflows and provides go-to-market (GTM) teams with valuable insights to improve performance and revenue growth.

A good sales enablement platform includes multiple capabilities and solutions. Let’s take a closer look at what these include.

Essential sales enablement tools

If you search the G2 sales enablement software listings, you’ll find hundreds of enablement tools to choose from. These solutions automate, organise and streamline several sales processes so organisations can help their sales team become more successful. Some common sales enablement solutions include:

Content management and automation

Sales content management is the process of creating, storing, organising and sharing content. Sales reps can use sales enablement content to engage with prospects more effectively. They can also address prospects’ concerns quickly and accurately by rapidly accessing the right data, statistics and information with sales content software, increasing the chances of a successful sale. 

Strategy and planning

Sales enablement planning is a vital step in the enablement process. Enablement planning creates a roadmap for the tactical sales content, materials and training needed to support a specific campaign or goal. Sales enablement planning software streamlines the entire planning process so teams can audit existing content, get actionable data and manage requests all in one platform.

Buyer engagement

Interactions between sellers and prospects aren’t successful unless the buyer is as engaged as possible. After all, the more personalised and meaningful these interactions seem to the customer, the more likely the sale will go through. Buyer engagement software stores information about prospects and provides sellers with specific channels and tools to best interact with buyers.

Training

Sales enablement training software is also vital. Contrary to what many organisations provide, sales training doesn’t end after a rep’s first week on the new job. Sellers not only need excellent onboarding training, but ongoing sales training as well. New knowledge is constantly changing how we sell, so keeping learning materials like how-to’s, product knowledge and resources updated is essential.

Coaching and feedback

If you want to maximise sales performance, providing sellers with ongoing coaching can make all the difference. While training equips reps with critical skills and knowledge, sales coaching reinforces this information and targets specific areas for additional development for each individual rep.

Analytics and insights

Teams need data-based insights in order to measure how their enablement efforts are performing. Enablement intelligence also enables sellers to accelerate deals through granular buyer insights. 

Who uses sales enablement tools?

Sales enablement tools can improve the processes of many different business departments, thus increasing the company’s performance as a whole. But who are sales enablement tools intended for, and who do they benefit the most?

Sales teams

It’s not uncommon for sales reps to make split-second decisions while interacting with a prospect. Without the right resources, they may struggle to make the right decision or provide the right information. By giving them access to sales enablement apps and software, they are more informed and don’t have to spend time searching for relevant content to share with buyers. This allows them to be more productive and focus on moving deals forward in an efficient way.

Marketing teams

Sales enablement apps provide a single place for marketing teams to create, store and manage sales content and collateral. Sales enablement software also tracks the usage and success of this content so marketing teams can make informed decisions on what content is most useful and where there may be pain points.

Enablement leaders and managers

Enablement leaders and managers can use sales enablement platforms to keep track of certain aspects of the business, including employee performance, revenue, ROI, and more. They can use this information to improve many areas of the sales process and provide employees with resources to increase their performance.

Benefits of sales enablement tools

The most immediate benefit of the use of sales enablement tools is the vast amount of information your sales force will have access to in order to meet your objectives. We recently surveyed 1,200 sales, enablement and customer success professionals across the US and Europe to better understand the value of sales enablement technology. 

The report found that sales enablement tools are exceedingly popular, with 82% of respondents saying they use it on the job. 99% of those respondents agree that enablement tools make their jobs easier. Here’s a glimpse at some of the benefits highlighted in The Seismic 2023 Value of Enablement Report. 

Higher productivity

Sales enablement software gives sellers a way to quickly find the information and content they need. In fact, we found that enablement tools save respondents an average of 13 hours per week. This time can then be used for more productive and revenue-generating activities.

Increased effectiveness

Buyers can be unpredictable, but with the right sales enablement tools sellers can formulate well-informed responses with little, to no, hesitation. 97% of participants say that quick access to information and content helps them speak to clients from a more informed standpoint.

Improved customer experience

Tracking down content, comparing versions and making revisions negatively impacts the customer experience. 63% of respondents who work for an organisation without sales enablement technology say that the content they use isn’t personalised enough for customers. Furthermore, more than 40% say that the content is also irrelevant to their clients’ use case or industry.

Enablement software and best practices

With so many technological advances, there’s no reason not to use enablement tools to improve everything from sales enablement automation to training and coaching. The best sales apps and software will comfortably fit your company’s culture while providing valuable support that helps you meet goals. But when it comes to finding and implementing the best sales enablement software for your team, remember these best practices:

1. Identify seller pain points: The first step to solving your sales team’s challenges is identifying what they are. Talk to your sellers and get feedback about what they think would help alleviate some of these issues.
   
2. Establish goals: By setting goals for what you hope to achieve through the implementation of your new sales enablement software, you can establish a more accurate timeline of how long this will take. These goals can also help establish what enablement leaders need to focus on when coaching sales teams.
   
3. Educate sellers: While sales enablement software is an excellent tool for sales teams, they can’t use something they don’t understand. Educate your sales teams on the new software and make sure to get frequent feedback and address any questions they may have.
4. Keep your customers in mind: The purchase process is a journey that rarely goes in a straight line, which is why you should use a sales enablement platform that best targets your buyer’s journey. By keeping the customer on the path to a successful sale, the software enables reps to follow the customer’s journey and create content at each stage.
5. Track usage and performance: There is no way to know whether a specific enablement tool will be effective until you try it and analyse the results. Through these performance metrics, you’ll be able to tell if anything is improving or if you need to make a few tweaks to how your team utilises the tool.

How Seismic can help

The Seismic Enablement Cloud allows organisations like yours to empower go-to-market teams with the right skills, content and insights to engage customers like never before. The Enablement Cloud features six essential sales enablement apps across content management, learning & coaching, strategy & planning, content automation, buyer engagement and enablement intelligence for an all-in-one unified enablement platform. This helps rapidly growing organisations accelerate sales and cultivate growth. Ready to learn more? Check out all of the benefits and capabilities of the Seismic Enablement Cloud here.

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