Guide: Creating The Most Requested Content From Sellers

The most requested content is also the most important tool for sales enablement.

What sellers want is content that makes selling their SaaS solution easier. While this makes the most intuitive sense, not a lot of content planners have this goal in mind. Quite often the goal is to simply make sure they are keeping up with the plan and the volume of content that is required to keep the lead generation machine firing on all cylinders.

What Type Of Content Do Sellers Want?

So what is the most important form of content marketing that is also the most requested from sellers? Answer: Case Studies

73% of the most successful content marketers use case studies.
Nearly 50% of SaaS companies say case studies drive sales.
37% of buyers will send case studies to their fellow buying committee members.
When conducting research for a purchasing decision, B2B buyers selected case studies 40% of the time, second only to research or survey reports.

Recently, the Chief Business Officer of a well-funded SaaS requested two things for this year’s marketing plan. He said that the company’s success was first and foremost going to rest on its content marketing. Second, he wanted to create as many case studies as they could. Why?

Case studies always top the list of content marketing priorities, and at the same time, they are adopted and used by sales because they provide real-world use cases for specific personas, addressing real-world problems with tangible results.

Make Case Studies Highly Shareable

A staggering 49% of B2B buyers say that content must tell a strong story that resonates with the rest of their buying team and 41% said the content should be packed with shareable stats and quick-hitting insights.

Case study formats can vary quite dramatically, from typical PDFs, to web pages and videos. What needs to be created as a companion to case studies is a series of quotes from a client interview or correspondence that leads to the case study. For every quote that makes it into a case study, there are on average 4-5 more that never get used. These quotes should be documented and approved by the client right alongside the case study itself. The case study and quotes combination ensures that sales have not only a powerful piece of content with the case study itself but also a multitude of thought-provoking quotes. Quotes can be used to nurture or regain the attention of prospects as their own stand-alone messages to be used throughout the sales process in conversations, emails, sales collateral, presentations, and more.

And let’s not forget the simplest form of a case study, a prominent logo displayed on the home page of your site. Logos represent the vetting process and ongoing support for your company that builds trust and confidence with prospects.

What Content To Include

B2B buyers want data, stats, and hard numbers around performance in the case studies they read. When developing case studies, make sure you are asking questions that get you hard data around metrics like time saved, increased performance, and revenue lift. If it’s hard to get that kind of info directly from a client, then get specific performance data in another way.

One method of collecting hard data around results is the 1-10 scale. As an example, I’ve never met a B2B SaaS company that didn’t want to be perceived as a partner versus a vendor. Why not ask where you fit on that scale versus other competitors? Get a rating of your company versus all other SaaS competitors. What if you ranked as a 9 on the vendor-to-partner rating scale versus a 6 for a rating given for the industry overall? And some of the best learning comes from asking why the ratings are different.

Dig deeper into your learnings and your ability to get hard stats that differentiate your company.

Client Interview Questions

Here is a template for questions to ask in an interview with a client while developing your next case study. As you read through the questions, you’ll see how important it is to identify the top risk factors, what are the problems and thus priorities for the person being interviewed, and how you uniquely help resolve them. A lot of the questions are designed to bring out the top priorities at the beginning of the conversation in order to have the right conversation throughout the rest of the interview.

Ease of use and tracking are keys to sales enablement success.

Please tell me about your role, title, and how long you’ve been at the company.

Describe what you are most proud of in terms of making a positive impact on the success of the company.

Please explain what is at stake in attaining success and why those stakes are so high. What are some of the biggest risk factors?

How does (your company) play a role in helping to reduce or mitigate these risks?

On a scale of 1-10 with 1 being a “vendor” and 10 being a “partner,” how would you rate (your company) on impacting your success?

How would your rate (your company) individually? Why the difference?

Why did you choose (your company) over other industry choices?

If you were to prioritize, what are the top three most important benefits of using (your company)?

- What data, stats, or quotes support these benefits?

What would it mean to you and the business if you could no longer use (your company)?

What is the best success story that you can attribute to using (your company)?

- Dig deep for quantifiable or tangible results

Is there anything else we didn’t cover that you’d like to mention?

Conclusion

Case studies are succinct, shareable proof of your impact on your client’s business. Every prospect that reads your case studies needs to have the same takeaway, “I need the same results.” Be sure to associate problems with business risks, where the stakes are the highest, and how you uniquely address them. Tell a story that ties to a specific persona and use cases that are easy to relate to, and you’ll see sales rep adoption and use skyrocket — along with closing rates.

To learn more about our unique focus on case study interviews and how they can positively impact the core messaging and sales enablement for your company, please CLICK HERE to schedule a 20-minute strategy session.

ELEVATING CONTENT MARKETING STANDARDS RAISES A CRUCIAL QUESTION:
Why shouldn’t the very act of creating thought leadership content also spark new conversations with in-pipeline deals, top prospects, and high-priority customers for revenue expansion? Or serve as the cornerstone for learning and applying voice-of-customer strategies? That’s the power of ABM Podcasting—engaging B2B buyers and customers in meaningful conversations that uncover essential go-to-market insights, support long sales cycles, reinforce your market perspective, build peer-level trust, and dismantle objections that kill deals.

Steven MacDonald

Steven MacDonald is the founder of Content Strategies, CEO of a MarTech SaaS Company, fractional CMO consulting with leading B2B companies and former Director of Strategy and Client Service at top ten digital marketing agencies.

Follow Steve on LinkedIn.

Steven MacDonald

Follow Steve on LinkedIn.