Sales Documentation

Today’s customers are not like the past ones. Customers nowadays are intelligent and outspoken. They know everything about you as there are various sources of information for them other than your sales representatives. Before making any decision, customers listen, compare, and analyze other products. One bad experience and you will be left with fewer or no customers.

To align with your customer’s expectations, you need to create a better, smarter, and more knowledgeable sales team that can boost your sales conversions. This could be possible if you start with sales documentation.

Sales documentation provides the best and easiest ways for your sales team to achieve their target and win customer trust in just a few meetings.

If you too want to improve your sales conversions, learn about sales documentation and start doing it for your company. So here is your complete guide on sales documentation. Stay here till the end to not miss any information.

Topics to be discussed here:

• Overview: Sales Documentation
• Reasons: Need for Sales Documentation
• Types of sales processes to document
• Types of sales collateral to document
• Process: 7 step process of Sales Documentation
• Build Your Sales Documentation With Olvy
• Final words

Let’s move ahead.

Overview: Sales Documentation

Sales documentation is a process of documenting or writing down processes, scripts, or anything that can help your sales team close deals smoothly and easily.

The documented information acts as a resourceful document that educates sales representatives on the ways to deal with prospects and convert them to valuable customers.

It offers sales representatives the right knowledge that can help them interact better with prospects, convert leads, and bring revenue to your company.

Powerful sales documentation comprises every single piece of information that is required to successfully engage with customers, from starting a conversation to closing the deals.

Sales documentation is a content library comprising high-quality content that can be used to pitch your products and convert leads.

Reasons: Need for Sales Documentation

People used to think sales documentation turns reps into robots who speak what’s written in front of them without any sense of connection or emotion. But that’s not true. Sales documentation helps sales reps prepare for the sales call and communicate with the customers smartly.

There are various other key benefits of sales documentation that will surely convince you to start sales documentation. Let’s have a look at them.

1. Helps to deliver precise and quality pitches

Closing sales requires precise and quality pitches that are only possible if the sales reps have deep knowledge about your products, customers, current market conditions, and ongoing trends. Sales documentation can help sales reps in creating effective, clear, and structured sales pitches that customers cannot deny.

2. Helps develop results-driven conversations

Sales documentation helps in keeping conversations on the right track. Sales reps deliver value to customers through the information on sales documents which drives results.

3. Helps to quickly convert leads into customers

Lack of knowledge and convincing powers can delay the conversions. With sales documentation, sales reps get the necessary information at the right time which fastens the conversions. This helps sales reps to quickly convert leads into customers.

4. Helps to build strong and lasting relationships with customers

Knowing about customers gives an advantage to sales representatives in building meaningful relations with customers. Sales documentation provides information about customers that help in building those meaningful relations that can boost the chances of sales conversions.

These are just a few of the many advantages that sales documentation provides.

What to write and which procedures to mention in a sales document is a frequently asked question. You will get your answer in the next section.

Types of sales processes to document

Here are a few sales processes that you should document for your sales representatives. Let’s have a look at them.

1. Onboarding

The onboarding document acts as the information source at the beginning of the sales process. So, a company needs to create onboarding documents that will provide precise and relevant product knowledge to customers as well as sales reps.

2. Sales methodology

Sales methodology involves ways to get desired results. It could contain things like how to prepare for a sales call, how to lead sales calls, how to follow up, how to prepare for a new customer, how to use crucial ready-made templates, how to handle CRM when a prospect calls, and so on. Also, be careful while documenting sales methodology as it acts as a guide to closing deals.

3. Ways to collaborate with other departments

Collaboration is essential for closing deals as a salesperson. However, collaborating with other team members is insufficient. To genuinely thrive, you must collaborate with other teams across your company. For instance, the sales team can ask the product team questions about any product features that they might not fully understand.

However, before you set up any means of collaboration with other departments, don’t forget to document it so that everyone knows about it and how to use them.

Types of sales collateral to document

After documenting sales processes, it’s time to document complementary materials that can help sales reps in closing customers faster by providing the right information. Such complementary materials are known as sales collateral. Here is some sales collateral that you should document for effective conversion.

1. Product Demo Videos

Demo videos are a great way to teach your sales team about your products' anatomy, features, design, and benefits. When salespeople require a quick answer to a customer's question, watching short videos is always better. These videos can also be shared with customers to clarify their doubts and help them make better decisions.

2. Sales Scripts

It's essential to have ready-made sales scripts that the sales teams and reps can use and modify for different customers. Scripts can be written for both emails and phone calls.

Sales scripts are great sales collateral as it helps the team to prepare them for sales calls. It's easier for your sales team to start, continue, and end the conversation on a positive note when they have a handy and ready-made script.

3. FAQs

Ensure that optimal FAQ sections are added to your sales document to help your salespeople anticipate customer queries and be well-prepared to address them. An FAQ section answers all of your customers' most common queries about your business, products, and services. This simple yet significant thing can improve the value of your documentation.

Process: 7 step process of Sales Documentation

For flawless documentation, it's crucial to begin sales documentation carefully from the beginning. So, here is the step-by-step process for you to help you with sales documentation.

Let’s get started.

1. Select an Effective Documentation Tool

The first step is to choose the right sales documentation tool to start your documentation. Half of your job is done when you pick your documentation tool as it will make everything hassle-free, from writing and designing to collaborating and finally publishing the document.

The sales documentation tool that you will pick for yourself should have some essential features such as documentation templates, a powerful online editor, lightning-fast search, complete customization, intelligent reports, roles, permissions, user management, multiple device support, etc.

A user-friendly documentation tool with these amazing features will deliver a brilliant performance. Go for a tool that offers decent features at a reasonable price.

2. Choose a Template for Sales Documentation

Now the tool is chosen. It's time to start sales documentation by choosing a template for the document. Templates give you a ready-made framework comprising a table of contents with some dummy content. The benefit of these templates is that you don't need to make everything from scratch.  It gives most of the things handy, so the process becomes much easier.

3. Note down essential information for the sales team

The next is to note down things related to the sales function, such as sales processes, collaterals, etc.

Write detailed articles or informational notes on each of the topics you want to discuss. Give your salespeople the tools they need to make great pitches and close deals swiftly.

4. Ask for support from other departments

Sales Documentation needs collaboration of all the departments as every department in the organization adds value to the customers directly or indirectly.

Sales documentation can fulfill its purpose only when all departments – marketing, support, product, and so on – share their knowledge with everyone.

Your sales staff may take advantage of these insights and turn them into productive activities that result in increased sales.

5. Use visuals for quick information

Salespeople do not have time to examine closely, scroll through each item, and spend hours looking for information during conversations with customers. So, sales documents must be compelling enough for salespeople to make the most out of them. Using visuals such as photos, videos, and examples rightly catches readers' attention and allows them to get the needed information quickly.

6. Say no to errors

Putting out wrong information can lead to losing customers. Wrong facts can result in lost leads. Adding updated and error-free information to sales documentation for the sales team can help them in closing the deals and selling effectively from anywhere.

7. Don’t forget to Measure, Improve and Update

Measure how beneficial your sales documents are for your sales team, then update and improve your documents based on these metrics.

As your company expands and develops new products, services, and processes, improve your documentation as well.

Build Your Sales Documentation With Olvy

Using Olvy to document your sales process can be really beneficial. It is an easy-to-use tool that offers excellent features at reasonable prices. Olvy has various benefits but some of the incredible benefits of using this tool for sales documentation are as follows:

1. It is a simple and user-friendly tool with distinct features. It makes your sales documentation process quite effortless.
2. It takes away your hectic task of coding by offering easy readymade ways for sales documentation.
3. It has unique and beautiful sales documentation templates that reduce the required efforts to build documentation.
4. It allows users to track changes by showing history that allows you to check the previous edits.
5. It offers various customization options such as custom domain, customized colors, themes, fonts, etc.

Final Words

Sales documentation seems ordinary but it can add so much value to a company’s sales conversion. Offering constant support to your sales team through sales documentation can help your team in bringing great results. All this can help in creating positive experiences that bring new customers and retain the existing ones.

So, begin your documentation today with Olvy to take your business to the next level.