Building Blocks, Close Up! - Buyer Engagement Content

Hello Enablers!?

Welcome to the second edition of Building Blocks, Close Up!

If you're reading this, chances are that you are one of the almost-15,000 subscribers that signed up for this newsletter since last week. To say that we’ve been blown away by your response is an understatement, so thank you for your support! Felix and I are very grateful and appreciate you.?

We also believe it’s a testament to YOU... to the growth mindset of our community of enablers (and other leaders), who are lifelong learners and seeking to make an ever greater impact. A hat tip to you, for that.?

In this week’s edition, we’ll share a snapshot of the Buyer Engagement Content building block. It’s one of the most neglected yet impactful building blocks in the line-up. We’ll also share related podcast interviews with some of the leading experts in this space, and an update about the building blocks course.?

As always, please let us know if you have any suggestions on how to make this newsletter more valuable for you.?

Enjoy!

Building Block Close Up: Buyer Engagement Content

What is Buyer Engagement Content?

Buyer Engagement Content is valuable information - from your buyers’ perspective - that is packaged and delivered to them with the goal to reduce friction in their journey and support them outside of real-time conversations (which is referred to sometimes as “backstage” or asynchronous communication). It includes content to generate interest as well as to answer common buyer questions for your buyers personas/decision makers, to help them make a great purchase decision (aka, making it easy to buy).?

Getting Buyer Engagement Content right is now more important than ever. Only 17% of buyers’ time during their buying journey is spent meeting with potential suppliers (source: Gartner Research).?

• Report: https://www.gartner.com/en/sales/trends/b2b-buying-trends-rewriting-effective-selling

For your sales teams, that means that their window of opportunity to engage buyers face-to-face is limited, and buyer engagement content addresses this issue. Buyers spend a lot of their time thinking, exploring, researching, and deciding, without your sellers' involvement.

The two key content categories to consider are:?

1. Prospecting Content: This is often created by marketing for sales reps to support outreach, create awareness, generate interest, and trigger a response.?
2. Opportunity Management Content: This is specifically designed to meet buyer information needs (answer common questions and satisfy buying process exit criteria) to reduce friction across buyer journey stages.

When adding content to your sales content library, keep personalization in mind. Whenever possible, give reps the opportunity to tailor content pieces according to buyer needs. Developing content based on general persona data is important and necessary. Sellers need to take this one level deeper to understand the requirements of their very real, individual buyers.?When those individual requirements are reflected and addressed in what you provide, it makes the content more relevant, engaging, relevant, effective, and relevant. (Did I mention relevant?)

(Note: We recognize that in regulated industries, some content cannot be changed without pre-approval from the marketing, compliance, or legal department, due to compliance reasons. Act accordingly.)

Dot Connection: Systems Thinking

One last thing for today on Buyer Engagement Content. And this is an important point. You know that the building blocks are supported by multiple systems. But in addition to that, systems thinking is pervasive between blocks, as well. They are interrelated and interdependent - the very crux of systems thinking. As an example, this is the case with Buyer Acumen and Buyer Engagement Content.?

In Buyer Acumen, we learned the importance of roles, goals, COIN-OP (Challenges Opportunities, Impacts, Needs, Outcomes, and Priorities), and documenting the general buyers’ journey and process, with buying process exit criteria, by persona. (Reminder: Buying process exit criteria is whatever each decision maker needs to see, hear, feel, understand, and believe, in each stage of their buying process, to feel comfortable moving forward. Exit criteria may vary for by buyer persona/decision maker, even when in the same stage.)

Your Buyer Engagement Content should address all of these things, and particularly be designed to satisfy the buying process exit criteria, per persona, per stage.?

This is probably an obvious final point, but your content should include internally-produced collateral and materials (this includes customer testimonials and cases - they’re still built and published by you), and also include third-party, external content such as research, reports, expert opinions, articles, eBooks, white papers, ratings, and other supportive materials.?

Other Buyer Engagement Content Resources

Here are some resources you might find useful if you want to learn more about Buyer Engagement Content:

• Podcast: The Truth About Sales Content With Gaurav Harode | Interview
• Podcast: How To Create High-Impact Sales Content With Marcus Sheridan | Interview
• Podcast: Joe Pulizzi On How To Make Content Part Of Your Company’s DNA | Interview
• Blog Post: How To Decode Your Buyer’s Decision Criteria

Building Blocks Course Update

The production of The Building Blocks of Sales Enablement course is in full swing!?

As part of our effort to make this resource as valuable as possible to the Sales Enablement community, we don’t only ask you to help us answer questions (see the latest one below) but we have also engaged a small group of Enablers in a beta testing panel.?

These beta testers include some of the people in the enablement space whom we respect a great deal, and they are going to provide us with near real-time feedback, new perspectives, preferences, resources, and ideas.?

We have already established the course structure containing 28 lessons and have started outlining the content for about 30% of the course, including templates and resources for each lesson.?

The key challenge in designing the learning path of this course is to maintain the breadth of the building blocks system while creating the right amount of depth in the video content with the opportunity to dive deeper into the subject matter with exercises, templates, quizzes, meetings, and additional content.

That's why our question this week evolves around your preferences for complimentary course resources.?

SCENARIO:

Imagine you are taking the online course. You watch a video lesson about a particular topic (e.g. Sales Coaching) which offers you all the foundational knowledge you need to understand the subject matter. The lesson also contains a “Resources” section which offers links to resources that allow you to further immerse yourself in the topic.?

QUESTION:

What is your preferred content format for complimentary in-depth content??

A) Written: Books/eBooks/Decks

B) Podcasts

C) Webinars: Live or Recorded

D) Something Else (Comment)

Let us know your preference(s) in the comments below!

If you want to receive this weekly newsletter and you haven't subscribed yet, please sign up right here on LinkedIn. You can also sign up on the Building Blocks course landing page, and receive additional info on the course launch progress via email.?

Until next time, stay the course, and Make an Impact with Enablement!?

Mike