Imagine that you are a salesperson in a large sales team… You are highly motivated because you have good leads and you have scheduled meetings to finalize the deals. However, just as the customer meeting is about to begin, you realize you cannot find your presentation anywhere!
You can't win a hockey game without a stick
You get nervous and try stalling to buy more time. When you finally find it, you’re not even sure whether it’s the latest version or even in line with your company’s brand!
Panic..make up a story…lose the deal.
These very common incidents reduce efficiency and also erode the image the customer has of your company.
Put your materials to a good use
According to research, up to 40% of all sales materials are left unused. The main reason for this is that the materials are not stored in a single location, easily accessible to the salespeople. Another common factor is the lack of communication between marketing and sales. Up to 50% of all companies still use email as the primary tool for distributing sales materials. In many companies, the materials are scattered all over: on the intranet, on the website, in cloud services, or on the salespeople’s own computers. As a result, the presentations are either dated or inconsistent with the company’s visual identity.
Learn more about sales enablement.
Salespeople struggle to find the latest version or don’t even know what materials they are supposed to show. Creating new presentations and looking for the existing ones takes up a lot of the sales team’s time that could have been used for customer service and meetings. The issue is solved by providing your sales team with a tool that is easy to bring along to a customer meeting and gives easy and fast access to all the latest materials. This will result in better utilization of sales materials as well as higher-quality of sales presentations.
According to research, up to 40% of all sales materials is left unused
Clearly delegate management of materials
Whichever method of storing and distributing sales materials you choose, it is vital to clearly state who has the right and the responsibility to manage the materials. These people will then figure out what kind of presentations the sales team needs, and they are also responsible for storing and organizing the presentations so that they are easy to find. This responsibility should not be dumped on the salespeople.
It is generally more efficient for the company to provide its salespeople with complete and consistent presentation materials rather than allowing them to create their own. If the company fails to do that, the sales team might end up using dated materials with mismatched visual identity and possibly even wrong factual content.
57% of customers think that salespeople are poorly or not at all prepared for the first meeting (IDC)
Use only the latest versions...
Imagine the following scenario, You’re running a few minutes late, and about to leave for an important customer meeting. Sitting in your office, you decide to quickly check the PowerPoint presentation. To view it, you have to first find it. Skimming through your emails and cloud services on your laptop you slowly (thanks to slow internet) but surely come to realize that there are in fact three different versions! All of which have been updated. A sigh of frustration leaves your mouth… your head falls on your keyboard in defeat as you shout out the words, “Which is the right one?!” Sound familiar? This calamity is a reality for many sales organizations whose materials are scattered in several locations.
...and tools that are designed for customer-facing work
Document management systems provide the basics – but as everyone knows – they are way too complicated and inflexible to use in the busy sales metropolis. Thankfully, you can save your company a headache of a lifetime.
By using a tool that is specifically developed to make selling a breeze, such as Showell, you are guaranteed not only ease of use and access to only the latest versions of all materials, but also the option to notify your salesperson when this new material is available!
Learn next