Creating a sales proposal is a major undertaking, a key element of your interaction with a potential buyer, and there’s a lot riding on it. An effective proposal:
- demonstrates that you understand your prospect’s needs and expectations;
- convinces them that your offering is the best solution; and
- inspires the buyer to take action.
So how do you create sales proposals that can achieve all these objectives? It all comes down to your content. Whether you’re drafting a sales proposal or responding to an RFP, content is king. It’s true – access to up-to-date and approved content is crucial for sales teams to deliver real value to customers.
The content you choose to share with your prospect can guide them effortlessly to a purchase decision or overwhelm them with irrelevant or ill-timed information that doesn’t reflect their business challenges or speak to their individual needs. (We don’t need to tell you how the latter approach plays out.)
Best-in-class salespeople have learned, more quickly than under-performers, to customize their buyer-facing communications with non-generic, topically relevant content that speaks directly to the needs of their prospect.
The wind beneath your wings
A comprehensive, tailored content library is a sales professional’s best friend, saving precious time and many headaches when preparing proposals. Nobody wants to be chasing down subject matter experts (SMEs) across multiple departments to collect their input every time you’re putting together a proposal. In fact, the value of organized, easy-to-access content is immeasurable—and if it’s on brand, up-to-date, and pre-approved, you’re off to the races.
From a bottom line perspective, curating a content library is integral to quickly creating sales proposals that close more deals. With content at your fingertips, you can create proposals that anticipate any questions and roadblocks your prospect may face and provide all the information and resources needed to address their pain points, helping manage these obstacles with ease.
Plus, looking beyond content used solely for the purposes of the sales proposal, content-based sales enablement helps provide value with every buyer interaction. HubSpot research found that 82% of customers expect an immediate response to their sales or marketing questions. Does your sales team have content at the ready to meet client expectations?
Armed with a well-organized and up-to-date content library, you can support buyers with targeted, timely collateral and sales assets as they move through the buyer’s journey on the road to a purchase decision.
Get organized
Did you know an IDC study found that as much as 80% of the content created by marketers isn’t even used by sales? The Content Marketing Institute attributes this disparity to three possible issues:
- Sales isn’t aware that content exists.
- They don’t have time to look for it.
- There’s too much content to sift through.
This is where the content library shines. By curating a content library with well-organized, easy-to-access sales content, the sales team has a frictionless avenue to disseminating the information and resources that buyers are looking for to help them make a purchase decision.
When it comes to building a content library, organization is critical. A good high-level place to start is differentiating between internal and external documents. A library of internal assets provides the sales team with the knowledge, insights, and best practices they need to do their job. Content might include:
- Training videos
- Market research
- Reference material
- Product data sheets
- Competitor analysis
External content is aimed at educating prospects and convincing them of the value of your product or solution. Sales content may include:
- Pitch decks
- Product demo videos
- Case studies
- Customer testimonials
- Industry whitepapers
- E-books and how-to guides
- Detailed solution specs
Understand the buyer’s journey
It may be helpful to organize content around the phases of the buying cycle: Awareness, Evaluation, and Selection. An understanding of the complexities of the buyer’s journey provides a foundation for developing sales content that engages the buyer—whether they’re just getting the lay of the land, reviewing your proposal, or looking to validate your solution with real-world references.
By making it easier for sales reps to find content that aligns with the three stages, you’ll help your team have more effective sales conversations with buyers, conversations that elicit purchase decisions. Here are some ideas of the types of the most popular content used by sales teams, aimed at each stage of the buyer’s journey:
Awareness
- White papers (industry)
- Blog posts
- Articles in industry publications
- Infographics
- eBooks about the problem/ challenges
- Educational webinars
- Tip sheets
- Press releases
- Social media
- Website
- How-to video
Evaluation
- Ebooks
- Case studies
- Reviews
- Whitepapers (solution)
- ROI calculator
- Product guides
- How-to content
- Checklists
- Product demos
- Competitive analysis
Selection
- On-demand videos
- Case studies
- Client testimonials
- Third-party reports
- Vendor comparison
- Detailed solution specifications
Getting down to business
Curating a proposal content library may seem like a daunting task, especially when you’re already faced with multiple proposal deadlines, but don’t worry—you’ve got this. A recent article in Winningthebusiness.com had some great advice for minimizing the overwhelm: “The trick is to leverage the best content from your most recent proposals, limit the scope of the initial build, and put in place a good process to ‘grow as you go.’” Think ‘evolution,’ not ‘revolution,’ if you will.
At QorusDocs, we help you see which content in your proposals resonates with prospects, eliminating the guesswork with instant client engagement insights. Our built-in measurement tools track how long buyers stay on each page of a proposal, what they click on, and what they share. These insights enable your team to tailor more meaningful follow-up communications, while helping to curate the most effective content library to create proposals that ‘wow’ prospects.
If you’re struggling to put the right content into your sales team’s hands to help them craft winning proposals, QorusDocs can help. Start winning hearts and minds today! Dive into the rewarding world of content libraries and check out our definitive guide to setting up content and pursuits libraries in Microsoft Teams or our super helpful guide to setting up a proposal library in SharePoint.
