Creating truly useful sales tools is not as simple as you might think. Without the experience of actually selling IT products or services, it’s hard to make sure the information architecture of each tool meets the process needs of sales as well as the information needs buyers. That means creating illustrations and writing copy could fall squarely in your lap—maybe not what you had in mind.
KC Associates marketing executives have been in the trenches selling B2B IT products and services. We understand many of the nuances and challenges your sales people face trying to get in front of buyers and close deals. That perspective gives us a unique approach to developing sales tools. Before we get started, we like to meet with members of your sales team to better understand your selling process. We do this for two reasons: first, to make sure we understand the priorities of your sales force, the obstacles they face, and their views on buyers; and second, to identify the best tools to support the selling process. The result is what we call a Sales Materials Roadmap, which can include:
Our Sales Materials Roadmaps identify the sales tools needed to support the selling process. By mapping collateral, ROI and proposal templates, case studies, white papers and so on to buyers’ information needs, we develop tools that shorten selling cycles and create a scalable sales channel.
To develop a Sales Materials Roadmap, we dig deep into the sales experiences—both yours and ours—that are representative of your target customer and sales model in order to uncover common factors and patterns. More complex enterprise-level sales models have many more milestones or steps—and resulting buyer information requirements—than do niche sales models. Our objective is to create a standardized set or system of materials for your unique sales process (whether or not your process is formalized) so your sales people or channels aren’t reinventing the message or bringing in valuable company resources too soon in the cycle.