Most agencies I speak with do not have their sales teams involved in content creation.
Instead, they just want them focuses on “selling,” while the marketing team or agency owners are the ones out there creating the content driving leads to them.
Here is the truth, marketing is selling.
No one knows your prospects better than your sales team. Every day they are the ones that hear the same questions and objections over and over. And guess what, they are pretty good at answering them.
So why is the sales team not more directly involved in the content creation process?
The Compensation Problem
A lot of agencies are offering 100% commission compensation plans to their sales people.
Guess what a 100% commission sales reps don’t want to do: write blog posts.
They don’t view it as a clear “sales action” helping lead to an immediate sale and paycheck.
This is why I would challenge you to reconsider the 100% commission model. It can be a short term focused compensation plan that doesn’t build up the long term assets for the agency.
If you have already committed to the 100% commission plan that’s alright. But you now need to have the conversation with your sales reps about the need for spending some time working with marketing to get the best content out to your prospects.
The best ideas for meaningful content comes from the front line of sales. We need to take those ideas and questions and have a process for turning them into kick butt content.
Practical Steps
There needs to be a process in place to exchange ideas and questions prospects have from sales to marketing. If the sales people are not able to actually write the content that’s OK, as long as a process exists.
The sales reps also need to see the value of taking the time to document these ideas. Have a one-on-one sit down with each rep to explain why you view them being involved in content creation is important. See what their initial thoughts are and if they are hesitant why.
The expectations you set with your reps is everything. For new hires, explain that assisting in cultivating content is a part of their job to help make their long term career easier.
To help you get started we created a free template you can use right away to help your sales team share content ideas with the marketing team. You can snag a copy of that here.
At the end of the day better content equals better leads. The time the reps put in helping create the best content will be returned to them when they stop wasting as much time on the phone with unqualified leads.
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