Sales Collateral

A Complete Guide
[Plus 20 Examples]

As business owners and sales managers, we have but only ONE goal:

Providing our sales team with all the necessary resources to sell our products effectively and recurrently.

More importantly, we want to create a functional system that follows a predefined set of rules and metrics we can later measure – known as a Sales Content Strategy.

After reading our sales collateral guide, your company will be able to employ a successful sales content strategy, which will include a powerful sales enablement system. And the tools required to make it all possible? A functional collateral program focused on your buyer’s journey.

If you’re only just beginning your sales journey and this is the first time you come across some of these commercial terminologies, don’t worry.

Our collateral review is thorough and comprehensive without getting overly technical. We won’t leave you with a false impression that your company is not ready to embrace it, just yet.

Trust us. If your company has 1 or 1,000 employees, it doesn’t matter. Everyone can benefit from a functioning collateral system.

And in this guide, we’ve broken it down to every type of sales collateral we could think of.

Chapter 1 Sales Enablement:

Empowering Your Salesforce

“Talent without discipline is like an octopus on roller skates. Plenty of movement, but you never know in which direction” – H. Jakcson Brown, Jr

Much like everything else in life that’s worth anything, organizing your sales collateral requires a fair amount of discipline and focus.

Having a talented team is great, but if they don’t have the tools they need to be able to execute, well, they won’t.

So as managers, we must enable sales, and we will be able to accomplish that by providing our teams with all the necessary tools, resources, game plans, and (most importantly) training required to sell our products, both efficiently and recurrently.

But if you do even a bit of searching online, you’ll immediately be overwhelmed by the flood of sales tools and resources out there.

That’s why we’ve broken it down here just to the bare essentials that follows the Buyer’s Journey. Matching the Buyer’s Journey with the right sales enablement tools is your recipe for sales success.

What is sales enablement?

Sales enablement is a customer-driven strategy focused exclusively on the buyer’s three-step journey, rather than on what your company wants, thinks, or needs. We can split this strategy into two core components: inward and outward-facing content.

Inward-Facing (from your company to your sales teams): It includes information, training, best practices guidelines, immersion into the company’s culture, and branding awareness.

Outward-Facing (from your sales reps to your customers): It includes everything your reps can provide your buyers, at any point, throughout their journey. Let’s call it Sales Collateral, from now on.

What are the benefits of Sales Enablement?

Steady Revenue Growth

Shorter Sales Cycles

Sales and Marketing Alignment

Tailor-made Sales Touch-Points

Steady Brand Messages

1 - Steady Revenue Growth

A recent study from Aberdeen shows that a company that successfully implements a sales enablement program could benefit from an increase in contract value of up to 13.7% per year.

Your reps will become more educated on who their buyers are and what they want to hear and experience. With sales enablement, commercial training sessions are regularly scheduled, rather than planned whenever there’s something specific to address.

2 - Shorter Sales Cycles

In companies without sales enablement, reps can spend up to 43 hours per month trying to find relevant information that will help them close more sales, according to a 2015 Aberdeen study.

With sales enablement, your company will increase productivity, and your sales reps will be better prepared to close more deals.

3 - Sales and Marketing Alignment

We know what you’re thinking, but it is possible to have these two departments working together in harmony, rather than at each other’s throats.

All jokes aside, though, many companies still fail to acknowledge the importance of bridging this departmental gap – and they keep on losing revenues in not doing so.

However, with sales enablement, your company can finally have a collaborative environment under a shared purpose, making it possible to increase your conversion rates by up to 36% and your sales rates by up to 38%.

4 - Tailor-made Sales Touch-Points

This point is particularly true when dealing with longer sales cycles. Without sales enablement, your sales team will reach a point where they’ll be hand-tied, making those same, casual phone calls and e-mails, over and over again – probably to your buyer’s much-unimpressed reaction.

Leads go cold, and the whole deal goes to waste.

With sales enablement, your reps will have actionable, relevant content to provide to your buyers on every step of their journeys, bringing them closer toward closing those sales.

5 - Steady Brand Messages

Inconsistent branding can cost your company dearly. By making sure your brand is coherent and consistent, your company can increase revenues by up to 23%.

Everything from website synergy passing through messaging, phone calls, and the reps interactions must be uniform, and sales enablement gives you that possibility.

Chapter 2 The Buyer's Journey:

From Stranger to Customer

What turns a stranger into customer?

The Buyer’s Journey.

So before we go any further and talk a bit more about sales enablement and sales collateral, we MUST understand the reason why all these strategies exist in the first place – our customers.

Let’s forget about our companies for a bit, and instead, let’s try to remember the last time we wanted to make that one big purchase or decided to sign up for a new service. Now, answer the following questions:

Did you, at any point, feel as if being prospected?
Would you say that the sales experience felt pointless and added little to no value to your life?
Could you notice the rep trying one tactic after the other, much like following a manual?
Was it clear to you that their focus was (only) closing the sale?
Was the sales interaction disruptive, maybe even invasive, at any point?

If you answered yes to some (hopefully not all) of these questions, then it means that the sales rep you were dealing with knew nothing about the buyer’s journey and its importance in the entire content strategy. They didn’t empathize with you, nor did they establish rapport or tried to earn your trust and respect.

Although it sure sounds terrible, there’s nothing wrong with their actions, in the end. After all, that is the way they learned how to sell. However, customer-focused sales will always present a much higher conversion rate than sale-focused approaches.

The Buyer's Journey - A Simple, 3-Step Process

Regardless of their social backgrounds, life experiences, or economic capabilities, all buyers go through the same logical process before they effectively make a purchase – it’s a part of the human cognitive nature. Those three steps are:

1. The Awareness Stage

This stage is all about identifying pain points. Simply put, the buyer begins to realize they have a problem, but they are far from feeling cornered into taking action to solve that problem. Depending on what they're dealing with, this stage can last from a few hours to a few months.
Think about your brand and truly dive into what you have to offer to the market. - How is your company going to improve that buyer's life? - What questions are they asking themselves at this very moment? - How much will they lose if they don't buy your product or hire your services? Identify those pain points, target those wounds, and begin establishing a sincere relationship with your customers in a non-invasive (yet honest) way.

2. The Consideration Stage

At this stage, the buyer is fully aware they have a problem, and they have decided to solve it. This stage usually offers the shortest window of opportunity, which is why your sales collateral assets must have pinpoint accuracy.
Here, you want to be more incisive and straight to the point, with an advertising campaign focused on relevant keywords and on how your product or service is the best alternative for them. Your sales rep must successfully plant the seed in your customer's mind - to the point they admit they can't do without your offer.

3. The Decision Stage

In the final stage of the buyer's journey, you have two primary purposes. First, it's your last chance to sway the buyer into choosing you rather than your competitor. Secondly, if the buyer has, indeed, chosen you, make sure you do everything in your power to reassure them that their choice is the right choice. Now, it's the moment to play your winning cards and show your customer what makes you unique, what makes you stand out from the crowd. It won't always be a lower rate, but whatever it is, showcase it and promote it as passionately as you can. Of course, no two customers are alike, meaning there are several kinds of sales collateral assets you can use at this stage.

Chapter 3 Sales Collateral:

All the Tools You Need

Finally! We have talked a great deal about the whole sales content strategy, going through the sales enablement conception, its execution, its benefits, and why such a program exists in the first place – because of the buyer’s journey. But, how exactly do you transform all that information into real, tangible sales tools? By implementing sales collateral, that’s how.

What is Sales Collateral ?

In simple words, sales collateral is a collection of company assets designed to help your sales reps glide through the sales process, making it easier to convert and close deals, both effortlessly and efficiently.

The best possible way to use sales collateral is when you and your team can align these assets to resonate with every step of your buyer’s journey.

Remember, what truly defines a good sales collateral strategy is the fact that it will always be relevant to your buyer’s specific purchase moment. When done correctly, they will also trigger a favorable response, moving the customer one level further up the journey – and more likely to close the deal.

Here at Printex Graphics, we excel at providing printing solutions for all kinds of businesses, both for marketing and sales collateral assets. Keep on reading to find out more about our portfolio, as well as learn a bit more about some of our successful case studies.

Types of Sales Collateral

In this section we’ll break down the different types of sales collateral, according to each phase of the buyer’s journey. If you’re looking for a particular type, you can choose one from this list and jump to that section:

Now, let’s break it all down one by one.

There are two essential groups: digital and printed assets. We’ll discuss both types and split them in the same way we divided the journey, within those same three steps.

1 - Sales Collateral for the Awareness Stage

2 - Sales Collateral for the Consideration Stage

8. Product Brochures

we're all probably guilty of the following scene: getting a brochure down the street, politely grab it, and throwing it away when no one is looking. Your company doesn't have to suffer from that, though. Highlight your benefits and be crystal clear about why the buyer's life will improve with your products, such as we did with this Refuah Brochure.
Also, it's a great idea to offer a tangible reward exclusive to print materials, like a considerable discount or a free sample.

3 - Sales Collateral for the Decision Stage

The Buyer's Journey - Extra Steps

What if I told you there are two more levels you should know about the buyer’s journey. The reason why we haven’t told you about these earlier is that they take part in the customer fidelity program. Meaning, these levels are for clients who have made, at the very least, one purchase from you – they are called the retention and advocacy stages.

4 - Sales Collateral for the Retention Stage

Objectively speaking, you want to keep your customers happy and satisfied, because according to Bain & Company, if you fail to do so, it could cost you up to seven times as many resources to find a new customer.

5 - Sales Collateral for the Advocacy Stage

No matter how hard we try to come up with brand-new marketing strategies and better conversion rates, nothing beats word-of-mouth endorsements. According to Forbes, around 80% of B2B purchases had one form of personal recommendation, at least. Also, when compared to other marketing methods, word-of-mouth still converts five times as much.

Conclusion

Hopefully, this guide has proven itself useful to you and your brand. Now that you understand the critical importance of sales collateral assets for your sales and marketing departments, we'll be looking forward to hearing back from you at Printex Graphics.

For a complete list of the printing services we provide, click here.

Or give us a call at (866) 737-7468, or e-mail us at hello@printexgraphics.com

Sales Collateral

A Complete Guide [Plus 20 Examples]

Contents

Chapter 1

Sales Enablement:

Empowering Your Salesforce​

What is sales enablement?

What are the benefits of Sales Enablement?​