Are Your Salespeople Inspiring Action with the Way They Tell Your Story?

The overall redeeming quality that sets a successful salesperson from the rest is their ability to create relationships and be seen as a resource for the buyer rather than a traditional seller. You can achieve this by establishing yourself as the go-to-resource for all of the information that a buyer would need to make complex purchasing decisions.   You can further your role as the trusted advisor by only targeting prospects with the content that is most relevant to them. According to Elinor Stutz, the CEO of Smooth Sale, “consistency in sharing best practices and insights develops high credibility, trust, and sales.”

In order to put the buyer in the center of our focus and actually make the sale, we need to engage buyers with a story that compels them to act. As you are developing this story, make the buyer the hero. Present them with information that breaks their current beliefs to replace them with new ones that lead back to your company. Creating that perfect story gives your prospects a reason to connect on an emotional level while keeping your marketing message at the forefront of their mind.

There are three main parts that the story told by your sales reps and their content needs to include:

1. Convince prospects that the status quo can no longer be tolerated and needs to change.
2. Educate your prospects about their problems and what your opinions are for overcoming these challenges.
3. Inspire them to make a change in their current behavior and overcome any doubts in order to make a change.

It is important to include these points in your selling content because there is so much other content that is being created that produces little to no value for the consumer. You need to break through this noise and establish business value that other suppliers cannot offer through your selling and marketing content.

Don’t get distracted with activities that take away from selling

When your sales reps are spending 65% of their time digging up sales literature and making it presentable for their prospect instead of actually selling, there is a lot of valuable time wasted and opportunities lost. This is where marketing comes in. Sales and marketing need to be able to work more closely together to create this content.

A smart plan to implement within your company is to get agreement from marketing that they will keep sales informed of any new content that is created. This includes key messages and take-always, where assets can be found, and talking point for follow-up conversations.