There are several benefits to using content marketing for your business, but some overlooked areas are how a blog can actually directly help your sales team by saving them time AND getting them better leads. Here are 4 reasons your sales team needs your company to have a blog.
A Blog Will Position Your Company As The Experts
If a prospective client is researching online and find information they are looking for on your website, they are going to see you as a thought leader in your industry and a top expert. By positioning your company this way in your prospects mind, it takes away the selling aspect of your services.
When a prospect contacts you to work together, you won’t need to “sell” the value that you provide, only a matter of ironing out the details of the relationship and determining that you are a good fit for each other.
A Blog Will Save Time For Your Sales Reps By Having Prospects Prequalify Themselves
When a sales rep begins a conversation with a prospect, the first thing they should be doing is determining if there is even a possibility of working together. This is called qualifying the prospect. It can be quick at times, and other times it may take two 30 minute phone calls, sometimes it can last the course of a couple of months. What if this step in the process was eliminated altogether?
By publishing content to your blog, prospects will come to learn about your company, what kind of relationships you are looking for, and what an ideal client looks like for your business. This means that many prospects will prequalify themselves before determining if they should waste their own time trying to talk with a sales rep from your company.
No one wants to be shopping for a Mercedes on a Hyundai budget, or vice versa.
A Blog Will Cut Down On Educational Conversations To Save Time
Different research studies have shown that consumers today are educating themselves at least 60% of the way through their decision making process (most studies show higher than that), and are using upwards of 10 different content sources for their consumer research. By having a blog and publishing content that your customers are looking for, then you can put your company on the decision making path of your ideal customers. This shifts your position from being an interruption (with things like cold calling or traditional advertising) to becoming a valuable source of information.
Now that the prospect has been “self”-educated with your company’s blog, you already know what they know, and that they are more prepared to have a real buying conversation with one of your sales reps. This helps your sales team by cutting down on the time they need to take educating prospects.
Reactivate Old Prospects With New Blog Posts
There are plenty of times where qualified prospects will enter your sales funnel and for an uncontrollable reason, the deal never closes. You can of course continue to follow up with them with annoying calls and emails that sound to them like “is my money ready yet?” and eventually they just stop answering or responding to your correspondence.
OR you can reactivate an old prospect by sending them a valuable piece of information, such as a new blog post that describes solutions to the problems you know that they have, and become a valuable source of information for them.
Think about it, what would you prefer to receive this email:
“Hi – Been a while, are you still interested in hiring a company to help you?”
Or this email:
“Hi – Been a while, I know you were having issues with XYZ. We just published a new blog post that I thought you’d be interested in since it covers similar problems to what you described you were experiencing. I’d love to get your feedback on it since we’re always looking to improve the content we’re putting out on our website and I know you have valuable insight to this experience.”
Which one do you think will spark a better conversation for your sales rep?
Do You Want To Attract More Qualified Leads And Save Time For Your Sales Reps?
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