Can my salespeople create content?, Tim Hughes

I'm currently delivering the last module in our social selling course to a team of salespeople. We have trained and coached them on why they need a great profile, we have trained and coached them on how to grow their network and prospect, we have trained and coached them on how to be found, we have trained and coached them on how to grow their influence across their territory. And today is creating content.

The "students" are starting to write and so, I always write as well.

Can salespeople create content?

There is an interesting difference between US social sellers and us people here at DLA Ignite. US social sellers say that sales people cannot create content. Really? We see this is strange, not just because we have successfully trained thousands of salespeople to create their own content. But because content is a fundamental building block of sales today.

The first thing you do when you get into sales is send emails to colleagues and customers. Often this it trying to get somebody to do something for you. This is content where you are driving action.

Let's say, you need a demo for an important prospect and the demo team are full. What do you do? You write action based content to persuade people to free up the resource.

RFPs (request for proposals), ITTs (invitation to tender), RFQs (Request for Quotation), all of these documents require you to write.

In fact, I would say that for salespeople communication skills are a key skill, don't you agree?

Content that will drive you quota achievement

Last week, one of my team had a deal stuck in their pipeline. We all get this from time to time. So he wrote an article detailing the business issues that the client felt (lack of pipeline) and how pipeline growth could be achieved.

We spotted (via the analytics in LinkedIn) that 15 people from that organization had read that article. Not only had the decision maker, who called my sales guy, but 14 other people had read it.

That article also was spotted by another company and they contact my sales guy, and now we have a purchase order (PO) from that business.

Another of my sales guys put out a blog and 25 people from an organisation read it (we know that from Linkedin analytics). That company is now in our pipeline.

This is just some the ways that you can proactively prospect by using content.

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