Connect with the world's leading business experts.
Get instant access to their expertise via world–class Q&A, Research, and Events.
5 Common Mistakes with Sales Collateral (and How to Fix Them)
Introduction
We've all seen awful sales collateral. We could go on and on about why it's bad, why it doesn't work, and what it should look like and do instead to drive customer interest and action.
But here are five things most bad sales collateral has in common. Don't let it happen to you.
Analysis
Too Much Copy: Whatever you wrote for a first draft, you can probably cut the word count in half. Say the same thing with far fewer words. Let the words on the page breath with more white space around it. Let the shorter copy put greater emphasis on the points you want to really sink in, that you want the prospect to remember.
No Customer Testimonials or Results: Unless this is your company or product's first rodeo, you've got successful customers behind you. Why not feature them? Demonstrate that others have made the leap to use your product or service, and succeeded. Don't just use the typical "I'm so happy" quote, but back it up with real data. How have those customers quantified the ROI? How has their business changed, how have their results improved, because you are in their lives?
No Compelling Visuals: If you surround copy with clipart, that's not good visuals. If you use pictures of your building…you get the point. What visuals will reinforce the points you're making? What visuals could - alone - communicate what you're about and what you can enable for your customers? It might be a chart, it might be physical examples of your work. But think carefully about what you're showing, and what it's communicating.
Features Before Benefits: It's bad enough when collateral focuses on features without explaining what they do. But even if you're including both features and benfits, too often marketers put them in the wrong order. List the benefit first, then follow with the feature that enables that benefit or outcome. Prospects want the benefits, they want the outcomes your product or service represents. Start with what they want to hear, then (if you must) explain how you do it.
No Call to Action: Your sales collateral is not meant to be a direct-response piece. But if you do everything else right and the prospect wants to learn more, what do you want them to do? Plenty of collateral lists the company's main line. Do you want motivated prospects to call the receptionist? Or could you promote a dedicated line to a sales consultant? Better yet, what about including a value-added offer so that both ready-to-buy and not-quite-ready-to-buy prospects are equally compelled to respond, engage and keep walking the path with you towards a sale?
Conclusion
What have I missed? What else do you hate about bad collateral, or what are some of your best practices for making yours shine?
Events
- Social Media and Content Marketing For Business Q&A Feb 14 @ 11 am PT
- #TNLive Radio: Workforce Marketing & Recruitment Feb 14 @ 4 pm PT
- The Rise of Pinterest in B2B Feb 15 @ 11 am PT
- ERP – Priming Your Business to Deliver Value From Strategy to Operations Feb 15 @ 1 pm PT
- How Not to Coach Your Salespeople Feb 16 @ 1 pm PT
Related Activity
5 Comments
Printed sales collateral in the Internet/Web era and the print-on-demand era needs different thinking.
For my B2B clients in the tech industry, I can't recall the last time mass-produced collateral was part of the communication mix. Outside of business cards, presentation folders and give-aways, nothing is printed and in inventory. Customers in the tech industry are satisfied with everything for early stage research being on the web.
White papers and success stories are in PDF but everything else (85%+ of all content) is either HTML on the web site or personalized and printed on-demand for a late-stage prospect. Examples include proposals and sales presentations.
There is nothing like a printed piece for face to face visits by sales reps and hand-outs at marketing events. But the power of print in these situations is driven by the context of the meeting.
Web design today has moved so far beyond what printed collateral can do, but the elements you list: compelling visuals, customer testimonials, results, and calls to actions (including detailed measurement) are all part of modern web site design.
I would add ALTERNATIVE OPTIONS to the list in order accommodate the needs of different types of prospects and styles of sales reps. Sales and Marketing organizations tend to take a one-size-fits-all approach to collateral instead of developing more targeted options for specific types of buyers and sellers.
For example, sales reps should be armed with something 'Product Overview Visual Only', 'Product Overview Short' and 'Product Overview Long'. This way they can actually ask the prospect which type of information they want, or they can make a judgement call based on their previous conversation (i.e. Did they go in-depth with an educated buyer or scratch the surface with a plan to drill deeper later).
Sales reps should be able to say 'OK, I'll send you the brief overview and we can get into the nitty gritty later." or "I'll send you the whole shibang so you can really dig deep into what we offer."
Also, the header needs to be immediately engaging or prospects just won't read on...usually asking a question works best.
All good points, Matt.
The main point I would add is, overall, to convey how your product/service DIFFERENTIATES from the competition.
You don't need to mention the competition to do this, but you do need to characterize your product/service as the ONE that addresses key user needs and that yours is only one of its kind.
Al Shultz
http://www.alshultz.com/
Hi Matt,
I enjoyed reading your brief and the community's feedback. Like a well-designed resume that can get your "foot in the door," sales collateral, in essence, should strive to do the same by establishing value, expertise, and differentiation. It should get a conversation going between buyer and seller. Collateral should be written in the most clearest way with economical use of copy (this respects the prospect's time and keeps marketing spin in check). Conveying a sense of obsession about what makes what you deliver special can't hurt either.
-Chris
Matt, thanks for your brief, a lot of very valuable issues are already addressed and explained! I'd like to add a few aspects:
1. Often, sales collateral is developed from an inside-out perspective which means how the vendor looks into the world. It should be done the other way around: outside-in, how the customer's world looks like – that should be the first design point. Of course, that requires a different approach:
First, model the (potential) customers, define different selling situations for your sales collateral, e.g. for different messaging levels (business leader, CIO, IT management) and for different phases along their problem solving process.
2. Wrong focus - on product and solution benefits instead of focus on business outcomes:
We often see to much focus on technological benefits and on general business impact as generic cost savings, but to less focus on what these solution benefits actually mean for the customers, for the different messaging levels in terms of business value which is relevant for them? What does it mean, e.g. cost savings for the CIO, what for their IT management? How does it look like for the CFO or the CEO? What's on their agenda, how can it be mapped to their scorecards? What are their current interests and against what do we have to design our solutions and their business impact?
Sales collateral has to be focused on the related business outcomes, tailored by messaging level and along the problem solving process.
3. Consequently, sales collateral should be designed dynamically, based on different content modules to be composed easily along the customers problem solving process and related messaging level.
Answer This Question