Sales collateral is essentially educational and persuasive content that describes a company's product and services. Sales professionals use it as a tool in influencing the customers to make a purchase. Earlier, the term "collateral" referred to physical brochures, but it has now expanded to include digital assets.

Implementing sales collateral into your marketing strategy is one of the best ways to seal the deal quickly. Now, let's answer the most common questions related to sales collateral.

#1 What is the difference between marketing collateral and sales collateral

Both marketing collateral and sales collateral work hand-in-hand to achieve sales, but they have few differences. While marketing is the gravitational pull that attracts customers, sales are the last nudge that causes them to buy your product or service. Marketing collateral sits at the top of the sales funnel, intending to capture an audience's attention and build their trust. A good example is an explainer video that may help pull the customer closer to your brand. On the same line, sales collateral talks about the value and prompts the customer to buy the product.

#2 What are the different types of sales collateral

An organization should develop different materials that target every stage of the buyer's journey. Here are eight types of sales collateral:

Email templates – An email template comes in handy as it saves valuable time in crafting emails from scratch. Your sales team will need email templates for cold email outreach, industry and persona-based emails, and specific marketing campaigns. 

Whitepapers – They show your expertise on a subject to help build your brand image and generate new leads when used as a top-of-the-funnel offer.

Spec sheets – Such sheets outline specific aspects of your product to make them stand out from the competition. These work well in the consideration and decision stages.

Case studies – If executed properly, a case study helps position your product as a viable solution for the problems faced by customers.

Tip sheets – You give tip sheets to your customers in exchange for their name and email. It is an insider's view of your expert content.

Product video – It is a powerful asset for sales professionals and should be used in the long-term strategy.

Buyers guide – Located in the middle of the sales funnel, it helps push prospective buyers closer to your product.

Customer success stories – These documents serve as proof of the performance of your products. They help solidify product benefits to prospective buyers.

#3 Best practices

Include a clear call-to-action (CTA) – While providing great content on a topic is essential, if you don't directly ask for the sale, you're not going to get it. For this, you need to include a clear CTA within the body or at the end of the post.

Use an easy-to-digest format – Big blocks of text can easily overwhelm the readers. Make sure that your content is easy to read and scan. To do so, you can organize the information by using lists and different colors. 

Use content analytics – Make use of software that gives you valuable insights into the success of your sales collateral. 

About On-Target

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