Why Content is More Persuasive Than Salespeople

You can’t sell if you can’t persuade. We all know that.

But what many sales people haven’t figured out yet is that digital content is often the most persuasive tool in the salesperson’s toolbox.

In my 2014 Content Marketing World talk — Using Content as Your New Sales Force — I talked about this new sales & marketing dynamic. Since that time, I’ve had so many readers, keynote attendees and friends ask me to do a deeper dive into the part of social selling that they least understand.

Content Persuasion

Right now, the biggest challenge I hear about daily is the inability of sales and marketing teams to properly integrate and support each other’s role in effective social selling efforts.

The marketing teams don’t truly understand what kinds of content the sales teams need. And the sales teams don’t yet understand how to leverage content to nurture and close more deals faster.

But for today, let me focus on why content is more persuasive.

If during the course of a sales call the prospect mentions objections, hurdles or concerns and the salesperson immediately begins to respond… how does the prospect process the response?

That’s right… he feels like he’s being sold… because he is.

But what if instead, the salesperson responds that these are all good questions and concerns. But rather than respond off the cuff, the salesperson wants to send the prospect a few blog posts written by others in the organization that “answer those questions far better and in more detail than I could ever hope to…” and then follow up after the prospect has read them?

Now how does the prospect process that information? That’s right… he feels like he’s being educated.

You see, because the content existed BEFORE the question was posed, the prospect feels like the content is inherently less biased because it isn’t content produced as a result of his question.

As we all know, the opposite is actually the truth — the content, because it was written to specifically address a single concern or hurdle and help the prospect overcome that hurdle, is actually more biased. But because it pre-dated the question, the prospect doesn’t view it through the bias lens like they do a salesperson’s immediate response.

That’s Content Persuasion at work folks.

Why You Need This Webinar

As I always tell our social selling workshop clients, social selling isn’t just about getting your sales team to start using LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter.

Social Selling is teaching your sales teams how to network at scale and leverage the power of digital technology and communication channels to nurture more leads, more effectively than they can with traditional sales prospecting methodologies.

Content Persuasion is the heart and soul of our social selling methodology — the same methodology I’ve successfully used over the last five years to build Converse Digital without any outbound sales prospecting of any kind.

And in this webinar, I’m going to show you how to take that all important first step in truly integrating your sales & marketing teams.

As such, this webinar is best viewed with your sales & marketing folks sitting in the same room.

So order a few pizzas (or salads), spring for a few sodas and get your key players together for 18 minutes that just may change your life or at least the effectiveness of your social selling program.