Sales Collateral is a material that both reps and prospects interact with. It helps your potential customer to move forward in the sales funnel.
Sales representatives need 17 sales collaterals throughout the buyer journey making it crucial for a winning sales strategy.
81% of buyers research brands online, so create sales collaterals that can influence your prospects for your goods.
Produce helpful content to generate sales-ready leads as 42% of clients consume 2 to 5 pieces of content daily.
Customers want to learn the ins and outs of the product/services, but practically, it is difficult for a salesperson to explain everything alone.
Here comes the role of sales collateral, which plays a crucial role in sales conversion. On average, sales reps take the help of 17 sales collaterals throughout the sales pipeline.
The above stat indicates the importance of sales collateral in the buyer’s journey.
Let’s dive deep to learn what sales collateral is, its importance, best examples, and how to build sales collateral to boost sales conversion rate.
What is sales collateral?
Sales collateral is any content that enables sales professionals to convert prospects into paying customers by showing them the brand’s efficiency and effectiveness.
It includes both; digital and traditional content resources such as landing pages, eBooks, videos, infographics, social media posts, etc.
This collateral helps your sales team to close more deals and is a part of sales enablement.
4 reasons why your business must create sales collateral
With sales collateral, you can encourage the prospects to become your paying customers. Check out these 4 reasons to know why your business must create sales collateral.
1. Helps to generate leads
You can nudge your potential web visitors to take a demo of the product and service or contact the sales reps.
By leveraging the right sales collateral at the right place, you can push your prospects ahead in your sales pipeline.
For example, if your prospect is looking for a better alternative to their current Keap CRM software. Then, a sales page titled; “Best Keap CRM alternative” would be sales collateral to get you a qualified lead.
2. Lets you show your expertise
You can express why you are the best in the industry through sales collateral. Blogs, videos, case studies, checklists, and white papers help you express your expertise as a brand.
It helps you gain your prospect’s trust and build brand awareness.
3. Keep customer interaction up to date
Sales collateral keeps the conversation fresh and live for long sales processes like in B2B. Instead of dull and forceful follow-ups, sales collateral keeps the interaction more prosperous for prospects and sales teams.
New updates and information in the sales collateral entice the prospects to contact you.
4. Boost brand authority
Sales collateral is solid evidence to rely on in a hierarchical business model. An organization with high brand authority gains customer trust and higher sales conversion.
What are the types of sales collateral?
There are majorly two types of sales collateral; traditional and digital based on media.
Your company’s website is a true example of digital sales collateral as it contains your product and services, offers, features and benefits, customer reviews, pricing, etc.
Some businesses solely rely on digital sales collateral, while many require both types. The nature of the business and prospects decides the usage of the kind of sales collateral.
Leverage the right sales collateral at the right stage!
Sales collateral lets you or your team prompt your deal further in the sales pipeline. Let’s understand how you must leverage the right sales collateral at the right stage of the buyer’s journey.
1. Awareness stage: For sales prospecting
About 42% of B2B clients consume 2 to 5 content resources before interacting with any salesperson. Therefore, sales collateral is critical to get sales-ready prospects in your sales pipeline.
Examples of best sales collateral that works at the awareness stage:
2. Consideration stage: To facilitate sales conversation
At this stage, your sales team begins interacting with the prospects to understand their pain points better.
Prospects are exploring similar options, so your sales collateral must have everything to fulfill their intent.
It must have expressed your product or service value, features, and, most importantly, how it can benefit them. Provide solutions through sales collateral; the right prospect will fall your way.
Examples of best sales collateral that works at the consideration stage:
Prospects at this stage are well-versed about your brand, so now your sales collateral must have something useful to serve to nudge to pay you at this final stage.
Your sales collateral should enable you to outshine your competitors and present you as the most reliable brand for the product or services.
Examples of best sales collateral that works at the decision stage:
Since we serve a CRM product, we linked our winning sales collaterals to help you learn and close more deals.
Sales collateral is built once you’ve had a strong understanding of your buyer persona.
Research well, and once you have the answers, you and your team can start with the formation of sales collateral.
Now, let’s find the most effective sales collateral that drives revenue to the business.
9 best examples of sales collateral to win more sales conversion
As 81 % of consumers research brands online before reaching sales reps, businesses must harbor abundant content resources to feed prospects and convince them to purchase from you.
Check out these 9 effective sales collateral examples that you must create to close more deals.
1. Sales pages
The content/copy on the landing and sales pages count as collateral. You can showcase compelling offers on landing pages to push the prospects further on the sales pipeline.
If created well, landing can help to maximize conversions for sales teams. To create impactful landing pages, you can consider the following frameworks for landing page copywriting.
AIDA framework
SLAP framework
FAB framework
PAS framework
The 4 P’s
Using these frameworks, you can highlight prospects’ challenges and their solutions mindfully that encouraging them to move one step ahead in the sales cycle.
2. Blogs
Blogs led to drive new potential leads and are great for every stage from awareness to decision. They boost brand awareness and are a great platform to demonstrate your thought leadership.
You can build blogs based on your industry and the buyer’s persona. An insightful blog helps your prospects to understand your product or services in a better manner.
This can include customer success stories with your company to help prospects understand the benefits of your product and services.
To attract B2B clients, you can illustrate how other companies gain tremendous revenue growth with the support of your product/services. Here is an interesting example.
4. Corporate brochures
Brochures are the traditional sales collateral that has made its own version and place in a digital world. You can create your company’s brochure and upload it on your site.
You can leverage your brochures to generate new potential leads by attaching a simple form asking only prospects’ names and emails to download it.
Sapphire Systems is using this strategy to get sales-worthy leads; check out its brochure to create an awesome one for your business.
5. Sales battle cards (competitor’s comparison)
Battle cards are a one-pager sales document representing a comparative analysis of your company and its competitors. The focus areas include the products or services offered, the market, existing customer features, and pricing.
Like we have offered a comprehensive feature comparison table, Salesmate vs. Pipedrive, for our prospects.
Sales battle cards help prospects understand which company’s product can solve their problem better.
6. Customer success stories videos
These videos will work as impactful social proofs and help prospects learn how the brand is helping their customers.
The datasheet is used to illustrate your brand specification, and it is excellent for commercial communication.
These are made by manufacturers enabling people to identify the ins and outs of product potential.
It comprises an inventory of your product’s features (both technical and non-technical). To understand better, see the example of a product sales datasheet below.
8. Product-oriented newsletters
Newsletters help to keep the marketing and sales conversation fresh with potential clients. Plus, it lets you send product or service updates like new feature add-ons to new and existing clients.
You can send product updates to your expired or canceled users to keep them updated about your product, as shown in the above example by Salesmate. This keeps the chances of conversion alive.
You can set email automation with a condition like “send product updates newsletters to the unsubscribers list weekly” and automate your email campaign using Marketing Automation to entice them to make a repurchase.
Building a top-notch newsletter that your prospects engage with or want to read demands strategic efforts. Make sure your newsletter has all elements; compelling copy, images, design, CTA, clarity, and conciseness in perfect balance.
9. Sales decks (product presentations & demos)
This sales collateral gives a deep-dive understanding of what your company sells, how the product benefits your target customers, their problems, and the critical challenges for your company.
For instance, we have created a comparison of Salesmate CRM with the industry’s best other CRM software, highlighting all the features to help our prospects make better decisions.
8 best tips & tricks to boost business revenue with sales collateral
To gain maximum output from your sales collateral, you must consistently check its quality, update it, and follow many such practices.
Look at the image to learn the best practices to create sales collateral and boost efficiency.
Tip 1: Identify your prospect’s stress points
When creating your sales collateral, the team responsible must thoroughly understand the customer pain points; emotions can influence the decision of prospects.
Tip 2: Create customer-centric sales collateral
Your target audience only cares about how your product can benefit them. So, make the sales collateral customer-centric, indicating how your product can help them.
Tip 3: Collaborate with other business development departments
The best is that the sales, marketing, and product development team must contribute their expertise to build powerful sales collateral.
Tip 4: Offer easy access to your sales collateral
Ensure your sales collateral is easy to access and highly visible on all social interaction platforms and customer engagement. Attractively showcase them on your sites like CTA button by Salesmate for free trial.
Tip 5: Recycle your sales collateral
It is essential to keep updating your sales collateral with every change and advancement in the product feature, customer persona, company’s sales strategy, or anything related to it.
Tip 6: Repurpose your sales collaterals
You must repurpose your content to utilize it to the fullest. Creating a content inventory to implement the repurposing strategy efficiently is better.
Tip 7: Your sales collateral must be on-brand
Focus on a few things to create collateral that gives a better on-brand experience, like; its design should be the same throughout, color, font style, spacing, etc.
Tip 8: Combine your sales collateral with the right tools
To drain the maximum result with your sales collateral, you must combine it with CRM and sales productivity tools like Salesmate.
Today’s buyers affirm purchasing decisions based on their learning and research. Sales collateral is a true asset to gain customers’ trust and boost sales conversation for profitable business growth.
However, sales collateral is not sufficient alone for successful sales enablement. It would help if you had the effective tools (platforms like CRM and sales enablement) to analyze the success of your sales collaterals.
FAQs on sales collateral
What is the difference between sales and marketing collateral?
Sales Collateral is a material that both the sales team and prospect interact with. And such material helps prospects move forward in the funnel.
Marketing collateral is a company’s brand assets to promote its product and services. And such material helps marketing teams to build a good relationship between the company and its prospects.
What is sales enablement collateral?
Sales enablement collateral is any content that helps your sales teams communicate, sell to clients, and close more deals. Sales enablement collateral examples are playbooks, battle cards, internal training videos, call scripts, etc.
Who creates sales collateral?
In some companies, the marketing people are responsible for building sales collateral. But, without the knowledge and experience of your sales team, building relevant sales collateral is impossible.
Salespeople precisely understand customer persona, stress points, and sales challenges. So, to move progressively, your sales and marketing teams must work collaboratively to produce powerful sales collaterals.
What collateral would be most valuable to sales teams?
Sales collateral is the best content resource to boost your sales conversion. Some top sales collateral include;
Sales pitch deck
Sales battle cards
Reviews and testimonials
Case studies
Email templates
Product sell sheets
Customer fact sheets
Product demo video
Also, the right sales enablement tool will help to scale your business.
Sonali Negi
Sonali is a writer born out of her utmost passion for writing. She is working with a passionate team of content creators at Salesmate. She enjoys learning about new ideas in marketing and sales. She is an optimistic girl and endeavors to bring the best out of every situation. In her free time, she loves to introspect and observe people.
Share this article
Close deals faster with the CRM designed for sales success.Try Salesmate FREE
What do you do when a manager provides negative feedback about your sales performance?Do you give excuses, stay mum, and ignore their feedback or promise to work harder?Well, if you decide to work har
“Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm.”Winston Churchill said this amazing line a long time ago, yet it can be perfectly related to sales today. Salespeo
The only way to consistently grow in B2B is to be better than very good- Seth GodinDid you know that 74% of B2B buyers conduct more than half of their research online before making an offline purchase
Key Takeaways
Customers want to learn the ins and outs of the product/services, but practically, it is difficult for a salesperson to explain everything alone.
Here comes the role of sales collateral, which plays a crucial role in sales conversion. On average, sales reps take the help of 17 sales collaterals throughout the sales pipeline.
The above stat indicates the importance of sales collateral in the buyer’s journey.
Let’s dive deep to learn what sales collateral is, its importance, best examples, and how to build sales collateral to boost sales conversion rate.
What is sales collateral?
Sales collateral is any content that enables sales professionals to convert prospects into paying customers by showing them the brand’s efficiency and effectiveness.
It includes both; digital and traditional content resources such as landing pages, eBooks, videos, infographics, social media posts, etc.
This collateral helps your sales team to close more deals and is a part of sales enablement.
4 reasons why your business must create sales collateral
With sales collateral, you can encourage the prospects to become your paying customers. Check out these 4 reasons to know why your business must create sales collateral.
1. Helps to generate leads
You can nudge your potential web visitors to take a demo of the product and service or contact the sales reps.
By leveraging the right sales collateral at the right place, you can push your prospects ahead in your sales pipeline.
For example, if your prospect is looking for a better alternative to their current Keap CRM software. Then, a sales page titled; “Best Keap CRM alternative” would be sales collateral to get you a qualified lead.
2. Lets you show your expertise
You can express why you are the best in the industry through sales collateral. Blogs, videos, case studies, checklists, and white papers help you express your expertise as a brand.
It helps you gain your prospect’s trust and build brand awareness.
3. Keep customer interaction up to date
Sales collateral keeps the conversation fresh and live for long sales processes like in B2B. Instead of dull and forceful follow-ups, sales collateral keeps the interaction more prosperous for prospects and sales teams.
New updates and information in the sales collateral entice the prospects to contact you.
4. Boost brand authority
Sales collateral is solid evidence to rely on in a hierarchical business model. An organization with high brand authority gains customer trust and higher sales conversion.
What are the types of sales collateral?
There are majorly two types of sales collateral; traditional and digital based on media.
Your company’s website is a true example of digital sales collateral as it contains your product and services, offers, features and benefits, customer reviews, pricing, etc.
Some businesses solely rely on digital sales collateral, while many require both types. The nature of the business and prospects decides the usage of the kind of sales collateral.
Leverage the right sales collateral at the right stage!
Sales collateral lets you or your team prompt your deal further in the sales pipeline. Let’s understand how you must leverage the right sales collateral at the right stage of the buyer’s journey.
1. Awareness stage: For sales prospecting
About 42% of B2B clients consume 2 to 5 content resources before interacting with any salesperson. Therefore, sales collateral is critical to get sales-ready prospects in your sales pipeline.
Examples of best sales collateral that works at the awareness stage:
2. Consideration stage: To facilitate sales conversation
At this stage, your sales team begins interacting with the prospects to understand their pain points better.
Prospects are exploring similar options, so your sales collateral must have everything to fulfill their intent.
It must have expressed your product or service value, features, and, most importantly, how it can benefit them. Provide solutions through sales collateral; the right prospect will fall your way.
Examples of best sales collateral that works at the consideration stage:
3. Decision stage: To encourage deal closing
Prospects at this stage are well-versed about your brand, so now your sales collateral must have something useful to serve to nudge to pay you at this final stage.
Your sales collateral should enable you to outshine your competitors and present you as the most reliable brand for the product or services.
Examples of best sales collateral that works at the decision stage:
Since we serve a CRM product, we linked our winning sales collaterals to help you learn and close more deals.
Sales collateral is built once you’ve had a strong understanding of your buyer persona.
Research well, and once you have the answers, you and your team can start with the formation of sales collateral.
Now, let’s find the most effective sales collateral that drives revenue to the business.
9 best examples of sales collateral to win more sales conversion
As 81 % of consumers research brands online before reaching sales reps, businesses must harbor abundant content resources to feed prospects and convince them to purchase from you.
Check out these 9 effective sales collateral examples that you must create to close more deals.
1. Sales pages
The content/copy on the landing and sales pages count as collateral. You can showcase compelling offers on landing pages to push the prospects further on the sales pipeline.
If created well, landing can help to maximize conversions for sales teams. To create impactful landing pages, you can consider the following frameworks for landing page copywriting.
Using these frameworks, you can highlight prospects’ challenges and their solutions mindfully that encouraging them to move one step ahead in the sales cycle.
2. Blogs
Blogs led to drive new potential leads and are great for every stage from awareness to decision. They boost brand awareness and are a great platform to demonstrate your thought leadership.
You can build blogs based on your industry and the buyer’s persona. An insightful blog helps your prospects to understand your product or services in a better manner.
See the example of a blog for a different stage.
TOFU blog for awareness stage: Top reasons why SaaS business owners must invest in a sales CRM
MOFU blog for consideration stage: 11 Best automotive lead generation ideas to boost your business
BOFU blog for decision stage: 7 best shared inbox software [Comparison table for quick decision]
3. Case studies
This can include customer success stories with your company to help prospects understand the benefits of your product and services.
To attract B2B clients, you can illustrate how other companies gain tremendous revenue growth with the support of your product/services. Here is an interesting example.
4. Corporate brochures
Brochures are the traditional sales collateral that has made its own version and place in a digital world. You can create your company’s brochure and upload it on your site.
You can leverage your brochures to generate new potential leads by attaching a simple form asking only prospects’ names and emails to download it.
Sapphire Systems is using this strategy to get sales-worthy leads; check out its brochure to create an awesome one for your business.
5. Sales battle cards (competitor’s comparison)
Battle cards are a one-pager sales document representing a comparative analysis of your company and its competitors. The focus areas include the products or services offered, the market, existing customer features, and pricing.
Like we have offered a comprehensive feature comparison table, Salesmate vs. Pipedrive, for our prospects.
Sales battle cards help prospects understand which company’s product can solve their problem better.
6. Customer success stories videos
These videos will work as impactful social proofs and help prospects learn how the brand is helping their customers.
Learn how Salesmate helped EDS Strategy close deals 3x faster in the case study.
7. Datasheets
The datasheet is used to illustrate your brand specification, and it is excellent for commercial communication.
These are made by manufacturers enabling people to identify the ins and outs of product potential.
It comprises an inventory of your product’s features (both technical and non-technical). To understand better, see the example of a product sales datasheet below.
8. Product-oriented newsletters
Newsletters help to keep the marketing and sales conversation fresh with potential clients. Plus, it lets you send product or service updates like new feature add-ons to new and existing clients.
You can send product updates to your expired or canceled users to keep them updated about your product, as shown in the above example by Salesmate. This keeps the chances of conversion alive.
You can set email automation with a condition like “send product updates newsletters to the unsubscribers list weekly” and automate your email campaign using Marketing Automation to entice them to make a repurchase.
Building a top-notch newsletter that your prospects engage with or want to read demands strategic efforts. Make sure your newsletter has all elements; compelling copy, images, design, CTA, clarity, and conciseness in perfect balance.
9. Sales decks (product presentations & demos)
This sales collateral gives a deep-dive understanding of what your company sells, how the product benefits your target customers, their problems, and the critical challenges for your company.
For instance, we have created a comparison of Salesmate CRM with the industry’s best other CRM software, highlighting all the features to help our prospects make better decisions.
8 best tips & tricks to boost business revenue with sales collateral
To gain maximum output from your sales collateral, you must consistently check its quality, update it, and follow many such practices.
Look at the image to learn the best practices to create sales collateral and boost efficiency.
Tip 1: Identify your prospect’s stress points
When creating your sales collateral, the team responsible must thoroughly understand the customer pain points; emotions can influence the decision of prospects.
Tip 2: Create customer-centric sales collateral
Your target audience only cares about how your product can benefit them. So, make the sales collateral customer-centric, indicating how your product can help them.
Tip 3: Collaborate with other business development departments
The best is that the sales, marketing, and product development team must contribute their expertise to build powerful sales collateral.
Tip 4: Offer easy access to your sales collateral
Ensure your sales collateral is easy to access and highly visible on all social interaction platforms and customer engagement. Attractively showcase them on your sites like CTA button by Salesmate for free trial.
Tip 5: Recycle your sales collateral
It is essential to keep updating your sales collateral with every change and advancement in the product feature, customer persona, company’s sales strategy, or anything related to it.
Tip 6: Repurpose your sales collaterals
You must repurpose your content to utilize it to the fullest. Creating a content inventory to implement the repurposing strategy efficiently is better.
Tip 7: Your sales collateral must be on-brand
Focus on a few things to create collateral that gives a better on-brand experience, like; its design should be the same throughout, color, font style, spacing, etc.
Tip 8: Combine your sales collateral with the right tools
To drain the maximum result with your sales collateral, you must combine it with CRM and sales productivity tools like Salesmate.
Helpful resource: 15+ sales productivity tools to increase sales effectiveness
Bottomline
Today’s buyers affirm purchasing decisions based on their learning and research. Sales collateral is a true asset to gain customers’ trust and boost sales conversation for profitable business growth.
However, sales collateral is not sufficient alone for successful sales enablement. It would help if you had the effective tools (platforms like CRM and sales enablement) to analyze the success of your sales collaterals.
FAQs on sales collateral
What is the difference between sales and marketing collateral?
Sales Collateral is a material that both the sales team and prospect interact with. And such material helps prospects move forward in the funnel.
Marketing collateral is a company’s brand assets to promote its product and services. And such material helps marketing teams to build a good relationship between the company and its prospects.
What is sales enablement collateral?
Sales enablement collateral is any content that helps your sales teams communicate, sell to clients, and close more deals. Sales enablement collateral examples are playbooks, battle cards, internal training videos, call scripts, etc.
Who creates sales collateral?
In some companies, the marketing people are responsible for building sales collateral. But, without the knowledge and experience of your sales team, building relevant sales collateral is impossible.
Salespeople precisely understand customer persona, stress points, and sales challenges. So, to move progressively, your sales and marketing teams must work collaboratively to produce powerful sales collaterals.
What collateral would be most valuable to sales teams?
Sales collateral is the best content resource to boost your sales conversion. Some top sales collateral include;
Also, the right sales enablement tool will help to scale your business.
Sonali Negi
Sonali is a writer born out of her utmost passion for writing. She is working with a passionate team of content creators at Salesmate. She enjoys learning about new ideas in marketing and sales. She is an optimistic girl and endeavors to bring the best out of every situation. In her free time, she loves to introspect and observe people.