• by Peter Mollins , July 9, 2013

Today's enterprise buyers crave information. They want to understand the market space they are evaluating -- the trends, the vendors, and best practices. And they want to make intelligent, informed decisions.

Increasingly, buyers get that information via online searches, social media, and peer opinions. In fact, one survey by marketing automation vendor Pardot showed that 96% of B2B purchases start with a Google search.

For marketers, this hunger for information has spurred a new approach to marketing -- content marketing, which aims to provide buyers with engaging, relevant, and often entertaining information.

Content selling to keep buyers informed

As buyers enter into the sales funnel, how do you continue to keep them informed? Yes, drip programs help. But marketing is half of a healthy engagement with B2B prospects. Sales teams equally must engage with prospects and add value to the process. To do so, sales teams and sales operations can apply the same lessons discovered by content marketing on what content to use with prospects.

To address this need, a new twin to content marketing has emerged: content selling. Last month I explored content selling and what it consists of. This month, I will explore several categories of tools that address sales enablement in the content selling space.

Many tools that influence this emerging market, and I will highlight a few primary areas. With any emerging space, information is vital. So I will ask you to tweet solutions that you think support this need with the #contentselling hashtag.

Content discovery tools

Sales teams are under intense time pressure. They need to locate content that will advance a sale quickly. We believe this is a vital first step: to surface content that makes sense to use for specific sales situations. Discovery should be paired with your CRM tool -- with Salesforce.com an obvious first choice -- so you can map content to elements of your opportunities and leads.

Content delivery tools

Once you have discovered the content, you need to get it into the hands of your prospects. As with content marketing, timely delivery of engaging content is critical. Tools like Yesware’s email technology are an efficient way for sales teams to communicate the right messages to prospects.

Content presentation tools

Increasingly, content selling is a two-way street. Sales will present content to prospects quickly using Web seminar technology. And they’ll frequently interact with their champions to build out and refine their business cases. Interactivity is vital. We use join.me as an efficient way to present content to prospects, get feedback, and improve the business case.

Content feedback tools

Content marketing is not simply about pushing out content and waiting for leads to pour in. Similarly, content selling can’t be about delivering content to prospects and waiting for deals to close.

As salespeople use content, they learn what works, what doesn’t, and in which situations different content is most effective. That feedback is vital to help marketing and sales operations improve their content. Tools like Flowdock and Salesforce Chatter are useful in channeling feedback to content creators and curators.

Content analytics

In addition to the qualitative feedback that comes from sales teams, there is also a wealth of analytical information that can be collected. Content marketing took analytics to new levels for marketing teams, and content selling should be no different. Does a datasheet advance a sale? How does a best practice guide contribute to closing deals? Look to analytics tools like Good Data and dashboards from Geckoboard to simplify your analysis.

Just as content marketing has revolutionized B2B sales, content selling is becoming a standard practice for sales teams at organizations of all sizes. Sales teams are leveraging content as a powerful tool to help advance engagement and close deals. Content selling is not simply a concept or a hot buzzword. It is a sales enablement approach -- a way to buttress the trusted advisory status of salespeople. Measure and control which content is used throughout your sales process to make this possible.