Brand Wings - Blog #Selling

The Importance of a Content Management System (CMS) for Sales Teams

Tue, 07 Feb 2023 12:51:46 +0000

Content is an essential sales tool to help customers make informed buying decisions. From assessing needed product features and functionality, to reviewing case studies and testimonials, providing customers with access to the right information at the right time can make all the difference in helping customers make the right product or service choice.

A potential customer's buying journey is often influenced by the information they consume, and that's where relevant content comes into play. Relevant content provides value to potential customers by answering their questions and addressing their needs. It educates them about the product or service being offered and helps them to determine the best solution to solve their problem or achieve better results.

Relevant content also creates trust between the seller and the buyer. By demonstrating expertise and understanding of the buyer's needs, the seller builds credibility and gains the buyer's confidence. This trust is critical in the decision-making process and can be the deciding factor in advancing and ultimately closing a sale.

At the same time it can be challenging for sales teams to keep track of all the content available, as well as stay organized and be able to quickly find what is most relevant. That's why a content management system (CMS) is such a valuable resource for sales teams.

A CMS is a platform that allows sellers to manage and store all relevant sales content in one central location. Whether you're a small sales team or a large enterprise, a CMS can help organize content and help sales teams be more effective and efficient.

There are many benefits to a CMS, including:

Improved Accessibility and Searchability: With a CMS, you can easily find the content you need and quickly access it from anywhere, at any time. The ability to search, categorize, and tag content makes it easier to find what you need when you need it, so you can spend less time searching for information and more time selling.

Better Collaboration: A CMS makes it easier for sales teams to collaborate and share content. Teams can work together to create and edit content. Once published, everyone works from the same information resulting in a consistent customer experience.

Increased Efficiency: A CMS automates many of the manual processes involved in content creation and management. For example, you can set up workflows to ensure that all content is reviewed and approved before it's made available to the sales team. This can help reduce the risk of errors and improve the quality of your content.

Improved Content Relevance: A CMS can help you understand which content is most valuable to your sales team and your customers. By tracking content usage and engagement, you can identify which pieces of content are most effective and adjust your strategy accordingly.

Better Version Control: With a CMS, it's easy to keep track of different versions of a piece of content. You can see who made changes, when they were made, and easily revert to an earlier version if needed. This helps ensure that everyone is working from the most up-to-date information.

A content management system is an essential tool for sales teams looking to be more effective and efficient. The Brand Wings sales enablement software platform provides sales teams with one central location for all sales and marketing content so they can quickly and easily find what they need, when they need it. Assets can be easily added, and the platform supports any file type. With Brand Wings digital delivery tools, your direct sales team or channels can easily send personalized and brand-approved content to help customers make informed buying decisions.

Find out more at Content Management | Brand Wings

Customer Spaces

Sat, 17 Dec 2022 13:54:28 +0000

Brand Wings allows your sellers to easily share assets with current and potential customers. While helpful, there are times when your sellers may want to provide an organized and professional collection of sales-supporting digital assets to a group of customers. With our latest release, this is now possible with our new feature called Customer Spaces. Let's take a look at how to take advantage of this.

To begin, you'll want to set permissions to allow users to take advantage of customer spaces. In Settings-->Sales Team Roles, select the role you want to enable and then click the Permissions tab. Check all the options for Customer Spaces:

Next, go in to the Admin Roles and also enable permissions for any roles you want to empower.

Customer Spaces are based on templates that you, as an administrator, first define. A template is a defined set of assets along with default notes and explanations you create. Think of this as providing a quick and easy starting point for your sellers. When you create a template, you will be able to define whether the seller can modify the list of assets you have selected and change the default text. In this way you can either tightly control how Customer Spaces are used or provide flexibility to your sellers.

To create a Customer Space template in the admin, go to Sales Tools-->Customer Spaces. Next, click the Create Template button. You'll be prompted to provide a name for the template and then be brought into the template administration page:

On the Details tab, you have a number of options:

Primary Image: Upload an image that will represent the Customer Space template. The check box below it indicates if the seller can change this image you have provided.
Name: The name of the Customer Space template
Description: This description will be made available to your sellers, but will not be seen by customers
Default Sales User Note to Customer: A Customer Space includes a note from the seller. You can provide some default content here. You can also indicate if the seller is able to edit this note.
Allow Sales User to Add and Remove Items: On the next tab you will select which assets should be assigned to this Customer Space template. This checkbox indicates if the seller can change this list of assets you are defining.
Labels: Like other sales tools in Brand Wings, you can set Labels that will be associated with this template.

Next, click the Items tab:

In this tab, you can find Assets on the left, and drag them into the Customer Space box on the right. Note that you can rearrange the assets in the Customer Space box by clicking and dragging.

Now click the Permissions tab:

Like other Sales Tools in Brand Wings, you can define which sellers will have access to this Customer Space template. You can select Roles and/or Sales Teams. Just remember that if both areas have selections, both must be true for the sales user to have access.

Remember to click Save when finished!

Now that you have defined a Customer Space, the next step is to make sure the sales portal is properly configured. First, you may want to add a navigation menu item that points to a list of all available Customer Space templates. Click and drag the Customer Space List from the General Items into the appropriate location on your menu:

Two other potential updates to make in the admin are:

On the Inside Pages tab of the Portal Theme area, be sure to map a layout to the Customer Space type.
Since customers can be notified about the customer space via email, you can also define a notification template. Be sure to use the {{Link}} Merge Tag in the template so that a URL to the Customer Space can be added to the email.

Sales Portal

Now that we have created a Customer Space template in the admin, let's review the seller experience. After your seller has logged into the portal, there are a few different ways they see and use the Customer Space templates you have created. If you added the Customer Spaces List menu item to a navigation menu, the seller can click (or tap) this link to see the templates:

Next, your seller can click on "See Details" for the desired template. This opens a detail page:

After reviewing the details, the seller can click the "Create New Customer Space" button to get started. This next screen allows the seller to customize the space (if needed) and share it with contacts:

Depending on the permissions you set in the template, your seller has a number of options:

Update the Customer Space name
Update the image
Update the note to the customer
Add, remove, or re-order assets.

The seller can also select one or more contacts to send the customer space to (if desired) as well as an expiration date. When finished, your seller should click the Save button. Next, your seller is prompted to either send an email to the contacts or generate a link to the Customer Space:

The seller can access this Customer Space through the Activity Stream. By clicking on the detail icon on the right of the activity stream item opens a detail screen:

Note the tabs on this screen that include additional information:

Items: List of assets in the Customer Space
Contacts: The Contacts that have access to the Customer Space
Activity History: Key events such as when Contacts visit the Customer Space

We hope you find this new feature useful for further enabling your sales teams!

What Motivates Customers to Buy?

Tue, 19 Jul 2022 18:47:26 +0000

You’re about to meet with a customer. You’ve done your research and have learned about their circumstances. You have some ideas regarding how you might help the customer achieve a better outcome.

Now how do you start off the conversation?

One approach is to introduce new insights, new technologies, or new methods to accomplish the jobs to be done. When you can present a frame-breaking idea that gets the prospect to say “I hadn’t thought of that before”, and “I think I could benefit from that approach”, you’re framing the conversation in terms of something that is both relevant and important to them. In other words, you’re giving them a reason to listen to you. And if you want to change someone’s mind you need to change their beliefs and the way they think.

The challenge is that most people naturally want to stick with the status quo. They resist change. Even when a problem is known they may simply “live with it”. Our role in sales is to make the current way of doing things more painful - and more risky - then making the change to a different and better way to get the job done.

So how do you structure the conversation? Here is a framework to follow:

Educate or teach your prospect about something new
Inspire your prospect to think differently about how they are currently doing things
Identify a problem or uncover the need to achieve a better result

Understand the impact or implication of the problem, or staying with the status quo
Determine if your customer has a desire to change

When you present a frame-breaking idea, you get your customer talking about their current process, their struggles and challenges. From this discussion they will likely realize what needs improvement. When you listen to their answers, you’ll gain a much clearer picture of their situation and begin to assess whether you have a solution that will help them.

Keep in mind that in the "awareness" stage, people looking for insights into ways to solve problems or uncover new and better ways of doing things. This “top-of-funnel” content is content that doesn’t try to sell your customer on a product or service, but instead educates, helps, and answers common questions.

What type of content can be used at the awareness stage?

Reports or whitepapers, ebooks, webinars or instructional videos can be helpful content to help educate your customer or prospect about something new – new technologies or new methods that can simplify work processes, improve productivity or boost efficiency.

Paint the picture of a better future and give your prospect the perspective of understanding what can be possible if they’re willing to make a change. Only when your customer has made a commitment to change will they be motivated to consider your solution.

6 Steps to Set Up and Run an Account Based Selling Program

Thu, 09 Jun 2022 13:42:11 +0000

Account Based Selling (ABS) is a program that focuses in on a target account’s unique challenges with messages and content that are customized and personalized. Essentially the program orchestrates the flow of phone calls, emails, and meetings to deliver timely and relevant content to drive the engagement needed to influence all the stakeholders within a target account.  

The engagement happens because your content and interactions are tailored in a way that shows target accounts how your specific product or service solves their unique challenges and helps them achieve their objectives. With Account Based Selling you present insights and information in a way that makes it the most relevant and the best option for your target accounts.

Keep in mind that Account Based Selling is a team effort. Team selling is a sales strategy commonly used in account-based selling to close more deals. Simply put, team selling is a collaborative sales approach where two or more team members work together to win business. That’s why it’s important to ensure the appropriate sales support team members are involved in account planning. That’s why it’s important to ensure the appropriate sales support team members are involved in account planning.

Equally important is the creation and sharing of personalized content to reinforce how your solution can solve a problem or achieve a desired result. Creating the content is an essential step, but not the first step. Here are some steps to consider when developing an Account Based Sales Plan.

1. Identify the accounts you want as clients

Identify and list the specific accounts you want to target. Include current accounts with cross sell or up sell opportunities as well as known prospects that fit your ideal customer profile (ICP). Note: Prospecting to add new accounts is essential to be sure your pipeline remains healthy.

2. Get to know them
Before you can target these accounts with any messaging, you'll need to know who within these accounts are decision makers, influencers, and users or operators.  Research these accounts and consider developing a stakeholder map of roles and reporting relationships.

3. Identify insights, implications and ideas
Before you can target these accounts with any messaging, you need to know what information or content would speak to them and resonate with them.  Start with listing insights around industry trends, new technologies, or new regulations. Identify the implications of these insights and offer some ideas on how to address these challenges.

4. Start brainstorming and creating content for the target accounts
Develop content to create conversations and engagement.  Make sure the content provides insight, perspective, and is relevant and worthwhile for them.  The sales team would work with the marketing team to create the content. The content would be available in a content management system (CMS) or sales enablement platform. Ideally the sales team would be able to customize and personalize the content when needed.

5. Distribute content
Be proactive and do everything you can to get your content directly in front of the people at the accounts you are targeting.  Make your message stand out.  In addition to sharing content through email, call attention to content on industry sites and in social media.  Drip feed information over a period of time and use the information you send to start conversations.  

6. Measure, measure, measure
Measure your efforts. Set tangible goals around your tactics, and measure how close you are to achieving them. Start with analytics in your sales enablement platform. Follow prospects on social media and use other channels of communication.

Implementing an Account Based Sales plan may the right approach to advance sales cycles, reduce sales cycle time and ultimately result in higher win rates.

Personalization provides an advantage

Wed, 01 Sep 2021 18:10:27 +0000

What's the hidden cost of poor sales productivity?

Tue, 06 Jul 2021 15:08:12 +0000