If you’re at a business so small that you handle sales and marketing, you’re in a unique position to know what support material the sales team really needs, because you’re the one doing the presentations. For everyone else, it’s a question of finding out – and that can be difficult, as (in my experience) sales people don’t really think very hard about what they want. Or, more likely, they’re so confident in their own abilities that ‘whatever’ will be just fine.
However, like anything else, it’s really more about what the customer wants, needs and expects. A bit of research into what the opposition provides is a good place to start, but we all need to be ahead of that. What’s appropriate to the products or services we’re selling? A brilliant website? A huge catalogue? Attractive brochures? Background White Papers? Really solid data sheets? Videos? Competitor comparisons? A slick ordering process? Testimonials and case studies? The list goes on. To me, getting this right is one of the most fundamental roles in business marketing, yet it’s an area where we can probably all be accused of just coasting along at times.