Is content the answer to your prospecting struggles? Here are just a few sales prospecting tips to help your reps secure more meetings.

For businesses, the value of quality content stretches far beyond inbound marketing and lead generation. It also serves as an invaluable sales enablement tool after contacts have been established.

Unfortunately, too many content strategies these days fail to make the proper connection between marketing and sales. This is partly due to ongoing debates and confusion over what content marketing is supposed to accomplish. For example, a lot of folks out there still equate content marketing with “non-promotional content,” often made up of helpful tips/advice in the form of blog posts and other resources that attract new audiences without trying to sell to them.

Now don’t get me wrong, that’s all great stuff, but – that’s it? Seriously? That’s all you’re going to use content for??

The truth is, if you’re going to develop a content strategy that only focuses on top-of-the-funnel interactions, you’re ignoring a bunch of other areas where content can help your business. For example, we recently posted an infographic on how video content specifically can be used in every phase of the B2B sales funnel, and prospecting certainly fits comfortably within that framework.

Here are just a couple of sales prospecting tips for using content to turn more leads into viable opportunities.

Audience engagement

The quality of your leads will depend on a lot of factors, but there’s no doubt that some will be colder than others by the time they reach your sales team. Of course, it’s still the rep’s job to warm them up, and quality content can be a huge help.

The good news is that audience interest has already been established, so now the reps need the RIGHT content to support their outreach. Market research on the audiences you are looking to sell to will help you develop content geared toward different types of leads and personas. For example, different content resources can:

  • Highlight the needs and uses cases for different company types and industries
  • Speak to the challenges of different roles and responsibilities within an organization
  • Identify unique value propositions for various company sizes
  • And so on and so forth – you get the idea

Of course, you can still create broad messages for general audiences. But by segmenting your audience and creating information specifically designed for them, you’ll arm your sales team will the tools to more effectively engage audiences on a more personal level.

Prospecting emails can include event invites, case studies, videos or even blog posts for contacts to review. This not only helps to engage audiences and advance more sales conversations, but also makes it easier for your reps to communicate effective, consistent messages.

Lead prioritization

Content can also tell you more about how your leads are engaging with your messages, enabling your team to prioritize follow-ups to secure more meetings and calls with prospects. This is especially true for video marketing content. While your marketing automation solution will usually tell you if a contact opened an email or clicked on a link, video analytics let you dig deeper into the interest level of your audience.

For example, if you included a Brainshark video presentation with your prospecting emails, you could track and report not only who’s viewed your content, but also:

  • How long they viewed for
  • Which specific slides they saw
  • How often they viewed
  • When and where they viewed

Information like this can be help with your lead scoring efforts so your reps can allocate their time following up with the most interested candidates in a more timely fashion. The result? Less time wasted and more time securing meetings.