Your sales team is your most effective channel for building preference among your medtech and B2B customers. More than any other marketing tool, your sales team members are trusted advisors with intimate knowledge of their accounts' challenges, allowing them to personalize value propositions that precisely meet customer requirements.
In previous articles, we've discussed enhancing your salesforce’s abilities to differentiate your company and your solutions, through strategies such as comprehensive training, market shaping and increased engagement opportunities.
In today’s article, we delve into content strategies that support your salesforce in winning deals. We'll explore practical aspects such as the most effective content formats and the types of content that make a significant impact.
Implementing an effective and enduring sales-focused content strategy will empower your sales teams to convincingly position your innovations as the top choice for customers
What Type of Content Aligns with Customer Preference and a Salesperson's Needs?
There is often a disconnect between what marketing deems essential and what a salesperson actually needs. This discrepancy results in significant resources being spent on developing content, while sales teams still end up creating their own supplementary materials. Through my research as Head of Sales Excellence and Head of Marketing, I have identified that salespeople seek content with the following attributes:
Customizable and Configurable Salespeople want to run presentations and give demos in a style and flow that feels most natural for them and is most appropriate for the customer they are engaging with. This means they need to tailor not only the value proposition to highlight what they believe works best for their account but also to start, order, and finish a presentation in a sequence of their choosing.
Impactful Messaging Salespeople seek content that helps them deliver key claims and value propositions in a clear and easy-to-understand manner. They need materials that give customers compelling reasons to believe in the proposed solution.
Is up to date. Content must always reflect the latest products and features. Outdated products and messaging should never be included in the materials your sales team uses.
Helps the Customer Envision Their Future In medtech and B2B, salespeople often sell a vision rather than an individual product. They are asking for significant investments in technology that will transform entire hospitals or departments over many years. The most common request I received was for content that illustrates the customer's journey through this transformation, helping the customer visualize their future and understand the steps to get there.
Shows the Product in Realistic Scenarios It’s not always practical to bring a product to a sales presentation, and in medtech, it’s even more challenging to demonstrate a product in use. My sales colleagues frequently requested demos, videos, and other content that shows the product in action across various scenarios.
Provides Answers A salesperson typically covers more than one product line and cannot be an expert in all of them. They appreciate content that allows them to quickly refresh their knowledge before meeting with a client and provides answers to customer questions they may not immediately have responses to.
Looks Good Sales teams want to use content that reflects positively on them, their brand, and their products. The content must be smart, professional, and easy to use.
Beats the Competition While not for use in front of a customer, sales teams want to understand the advantages they have over the next best alternative. Competitive analysis content helps them position their products more effectively.
How Does a Salesperson Use Content?
We've explored the types of content that salespeople are looking for in order to effectively convince customers of the advantages of your solutions. However, it's equally important to understand how your sales teams utilize content. Too often, beautifully crafted content lacks practical utility. Understanding how your salespeople engage with existing and prospective accounts can help prioritize and define which assets to develop. Consider these key questions:
What Environment is Your Salesperson In?
Are they typically delivering formal presentations to groups in standard meeting rooms, meeting one-on-one across desks in offices, or standing alongside customers during their daily tasks?
Do they schedule meetings with clients in advance, or do conversations occur more spontaneously?
What is the Scope of Their Discussions?
Are their discussions strategic and enterprise-wide, or do they focus more on intricate product details?
Answering these questions and more will clarify which types of content are essential versus nice-to-have. For instance, do they require printed brochures and VR product overviews, or is quick access on mobile devices and self-sufficient product demos more practical?
What does this all mean for your content development and management?
Aim for Easy, Bite-Sized Content Chunks: Develop content in manageable, bite-sized chunks. This approach allows for easier updates, customization by salespeople to match their style, and better configurability to align with individual customer needs.
Showcase Solutions in Action: In medtech, demonstrating how your product works and its impact is crucial. Showcase as many features as possible without overwhelming with complexity. Move beyond PowerPoint and static images to demonstrate the actual product. The SIMPI how-to platform exemplifies this approach, offering easily digestible and configurable content which can be tailored to the sales person’s own flow. https://www.simpi.me/medical
Provide Reasons to Believe Emphasize key claims, share success stories, and illustrate how the product will be used in real scenarios.
One source of content: Use a single source of content and repurpose it into different formats for consistent messaging, easier regulatory approval, and easier content updates.
Designed to be left behind Enable customers to review materials, interact with demos, and envision the solution within their own environment, even when the salesperson is not there.
Provide the answers! Incorporate FAQs into your content and provide detailed information accessible as needed but without interrupting the key messaging. Consider leveraging AI to assist in answering open questions.
Prepare for battle! Internally used but highly valued by sales teams, battle cards provide structured points for positioning your solutions against competing portfolios.
Optimizing Content from Training to Sales to Technology Adoption
The ultimate goal is to establish a single, easily updatable and configurable source of content—used seamlessly from training and sales enablement to supporting customer technology adoption. We will explore this ideal scenario further in our next article.
In the meantime, begin evaluating the essential types of content required to empower your sales teams as they build customer preference, and identify the best formats and tools that align with their workflows. Consider leveraging platforms like the SIMPI how-to platform https://www.simpi.me/medical for rapid development and deployment of easily digestible, and tailored product content to both sales teams and customers.
Your sales team serves as the most crucial and effective channel for persuading customers to invest in your technology. Equipping them with the right content in the optimal format is sure to positively impact your business goals.