The content plan

When implementing a corporate sales methodology through digital or social channels, #CorporateSocialSelling, the development of the content plan for the sales force must meet several objectives. Achieving these objectives should accelerate the opening of sales dialogues with your company’s clients and non-clients, increase corporate brand awareness, and improve the relevance and visibility of each person on the team.

The first objective is security. Customers belong to the company, and nurturing this relationship and their perception of the company is a challenge for those responsible for the company’s marketing or communications department. Therefore, in keeping with this objective, these departments must provide the sales force with sufficient content so they can interact with customers. With the same focus on security compliance, all members of the sales force must be trained on how to produce and share content, which sources are authorized to publish curated content, and what corporate limits are in place if they take the initiative to produce and publish their own content. This training goes beyond providing guidelines on what they can and cannot publish, since a sales force motivated by a content culture is a wealth of inspiration on topics that interest customers.

The second objective is to ensure that the content for the sales team is aligned with the corporate voice and tone, reinforcing the personality of each member of the sales team.

The third objective is to ensure that the content plan used by the sales force is consistent with the sales strategy and momentum.

The fourth objective is for the sales force to increase its position as industry professionals through the content it publishes. Developing this objective is the most complicated because, as we indicated in the previous point, the publication of this content must reinforce the individual’s professional perception. To achieve this, it is necessary to share content with in-depth knowledge, content from industry-leading sources, and content, as much as possible, from success stories or client relationships.

The fifth objective, and one of the most important, is that, when publishing content by the sales force, the communications and marketing departments do not turn the sales force into a driving force for their Brand Awareness campaigns. Although it may seem obvious, content published by the sales force must provide value to customers, not advertising.

In developing a #CorporateSocialSelling strategy, content plays a very important role that must be planned in detail.