Mastering Outbound Sales with Sales Documentation
You can’t send two emails, a one-pager, and an outdated video and call it outbound sales. Buying behaviors have changed, sales cycles are longer, and buyer expectations are at an all-time high.
Buyers consume 13 content pieces before they choose a vendor. They look for more information, and they want it fast. When closing the deal sales reps can’t look for content.
They must have quick access to all the resources. Solution? – Sales documentation. In this article, we will go through what is outbound sales and steps to create a documentation strategy.
What is Outbound Sales Documentation?
Outbound sales documentation are resources that help sales reps close deals faster. There are two types of sales documentation:
Internal: These are knowledge and frameworks shared by different teams or sales leaders for example objection handling strategies, sales playbooks, call scripts, and messaging guidelines.
External: These are informative content consumed by both sales reps and prospects for example battle cards, case studies, and demo videos.
Why Does An Organization Need Documentation For Outbound Sales?
Sales is not a one-man show. It involves multiple teams and processes. Each team contributes knowledge that’s unique to them. For example, marketers create battle cards. Product marketers write email templates. Customer Success folks compile case studies.
However, most sales reps can’t find the right resources at the right time. They either stall the prospect or create a substandard version themselves. As Kathleen Pierce, Principal Analyst at Hubspot says, “Poor finability is an issue”.
The solution is outbound sales documentation. A good 20% of top-performing sales teams agree to this. According to HubSpot’s 2024 Sales Trends Report, top sellers highly rank the importance of collaboration and knowledge sharing.
Key Benefits Of Having Outbound Sales Documentation
Sales reps deal with experienced decision-makers. They can sense a lack of preparation miles away. Arm your reps with insights they need to build rapport, address objections, and tailor their pitch.
Boosts the Sales Rep’s Confidence
A staggering 52% of outbound marketers feel their strategies are ineffective. You need to change this perception. Create sales documentation for outbound sales. It lays down everything sales reps need to know. From product use cases to common objections, it helps them prepare beforehand. They can target the right pain points and win prospect’s trust early on.
Consistent Messaging across Sales Efforts
Outbound sales involve many people: SDR, Account Manager, and Account Executive. Chances are everyone positions the product differently. What does this mean for prospects? 10 different pitches of the same product.
Now, they’re confused. They don’t know what the core offering is. The SDR’s outreach message can’t focus on affordability, and the AM’s demo can’t focus on scalability.
The solution? Sales templates and standardized messages. These outline key value propositions and ensure consistent messaging at all touchpoints.
Effective Knowledge Transfer
You need to document the training program and make it accessible to the reps at all times. This will also help new hires get started quickly. Even if a sales leader leaves the company, their knowledge will stay. As the product evolves, teams can add to this repository and ensure everyone stays informed.
Ensure the Frictionless Sales Process
What are the points of friction in your outbound sales process? Ask your reps and each of them will give you a different answer. You’ll notice a common pattern: reps pointing fingers at others. This happens because teams don’t document their sales process. Without proper SOPs, everyone works on assumptions. The internal lack of clarity on KPIs, roles, and responsibilities is reflected in your rep’s poor performance. Prospects see through your broken sales process.
Improves the Sales Conversion Rate
The best way to close a deal is to ask BANT questions till your product becomes the obvious solution. Do your sales reps know all the questions? What might seem obvious to you may not be as clear to others.
So write down the best practices. Create a repository of common objection-handling techniques. Equip your reps with all the resources to close the deal.
Eliminates the Risk of Miscommunication
Outbound sales documentation brings everyone on the same page. (Quite literally)
The Customer Success team records user feedback, product teams add new feature updates, and marketing folks create collateral.
Each team shares unique insights that are important for a sale. If one team fails to communicate its knowledge, the sales rep will not have enough information to engage with the prospect.
Steps to Create an Outbound Sales Documentation Strategy
Currently, information is trapped in different software, random notes, and saved drafts. How do you sew every resource together? The first step is to outline an outbound sales documentation strategy.
1. Know your Sales Journey
Sales is a multi-layered process. Start by mapping the stages of your sales cycle, from prospecting to closing deals. Analyze the rep’s goals, actions, and interactions with prospects at each stage. Ask the individual reps about the problems they face. You’ll hear a lot of “we didn’t know it existed”.
2. Decide what Information to document
Don’t decide, ask. Ask your sales rep where they need help. Typically, they point at these:
- Prospecting: Outreach templates, introductory brochures, ICP segmentation guidelines
- Engagement: Messaging frameworks, product sheets
- Qualification: Lead qualification criteria, discovery questionnaires
- Presentation and proposal: Demos, pricing guidelines
- Closing: Closing techniques, objection handling playbooks, contract templates
- Onboarding: Product documentation, guides, knowledge base
3. Choosing the Right Documentation Tool
What’s worse than not knowing? Not knowing where to find it. Don’t put your sales reps in this situation.
Choose a documentation tool where they can quickly search for and access all resources in one place. The tool should allow sales reps to customise the content, manage role-based permissions, and integrate with their tech stack. Our recommendation is Document360. It’s more than just a documentation tool. It is an AI knowledge management solution for creating sales documentation, technical documentation, customer service knowledge bases, internal knowledge bases, and more.
With this tool, you can achieve centralised sales documentation, organize your information, create workflows, and share restricted access based on roles and responsibilities. You can securely store and share your sales documentation, keeping playbooks handy for your teams.
You kill two birds with one stone. 28% of sales reps consider the knowledge base as the most effective tool to help buyers make purchase decisions. It’s a win-win for you, your sales rep, and your prospects.
4. Define the Content Structure
You’ll return to square one if the content isn’t structured properly. Start with the following:
- Segment resources by sales stages.
- Establish a clear hierarchy and organise content into categories and subcategories.
- Include keywords in the title and meta description.
- Provide an overview and table of contents in each article.
5. Provide Clear Instructions to Meet the Different Prospects
Every business has multiple ICPs. Your sales rep should cater to their specific pain points, requirements, and objections.
You can’t copy-paste the same old message. Personalised emails have an impressive open rate of 29%. Personalization is the key.
Equip your sales rep with templates and guidelines to personalise their messaging.
6. Address how to handle objections
This is the most important part of outbound sales documentation. If you nail this, your sales win rate will skyrocket.
Firstly, the most common objections prospects raise should be identified. Develop extensive rebuttals to address those. Play out different scenarios, record mock calls, and chip in case studies.
Ask your top performers to own this.
7. Leave out no Details in the Documentation
After a while, documentation feels like an administrative burden. Teams stop noting minor product updates or changes in processes.
It’s your responsibility to motivate team members. Educate on the importance of knowledge sharing. Gamify the experience and make it exciting. Play quizzes, shout out to teams, and take feedback regularly.
8. Integrate with the Sales Workflow
Integrate outbound sales documentation with existing tools that reps use, such as CRM platforms, collaboration software, or social media.
While CRMs log conversations, it’s not enough. For high-quality leads, you might have to take down notes manually. Do so on the documentation platform and map it to the CRM.
9. Provide Easy Accessibility for the Sales Reps
Sales reps are always in a hurry. The documentation should fit in their workflow, and they should be able to access it on any device.
Spare them the pain of going through 10 documents before finding the relevant one. Choose a documentation platform with advanced search and navigation capabilities.
10. Be Sure to Keep this Documentation Up-to-date
Allocate a slot biweekly to review and audit the documentation. Involve all team members and assign ownership for different sections.
Notice an outdated resource? Comment and tag the concerned team to make the changes. Integrate interactive features in each article and allow reps to give their feedback.
Wrapping Up
While it might seem like a lot of work, sales documentation is a necessity. Prospects often research on their own before speaking to a sales rep.
So when they do, they ask specific questions and want answers immediately. To cater to their evolving demands, buyers need a good hold over the product and understand how it addresses unique pain points.
Sales documentation is the tool that ensures sales reps are well-prepared to tackle such situations. Reps can instantly access all the information in one place.