Client Onboarding Checklist: Steps, Templates & Best Practices
The customer journey towards purchase isn’t linear.
According to Forrester's research, the average buyer goes through 27 buying interactions when making a purchase decision. They scour every nook and cranny for information, including what your competitors offer.
To win customers over, it's important to provide sales materials to guide prospects along each stage of the buyer’s journey.
In this article, we’ll examine 15 timeless sales materials that can empower your reps and help you convert more sales.
Let’s dive in!
Sales materials are tools and resources used by sales teams to support their sales efforts and engage with potential customers. They convey information about products or services, highlight their features and benefits and persuade prospects to make a purchase.
Similar to sales enablement content, they equip your sales team with the resources to excel in their roles and produce expected results.
Sales materials lie at the heart of satisfying the growing demand for customer self-education. According to TrustRadius 2022 B2B Buying Disconnect Report, nearly 100% of buyers express a preference to self-serve in part or all of their buying journey.
Investing in sales material that directly empowers your audience reduces their reliance on sales reps for every piece of information they need.
In addition, creating customized sales materials for every funnel stage helps with lead nurturing. When prospects can progress from one stage of the funnel to another without friction, conversion becomes easier.
For instance, at the awareness stage, blog posts can be used to introduce your audience to a problem or need they may have and the solutions. Then, case studies that showcase how clients have benefited from your product or service can help convert those at the decision stage.
This infographic shares the types of content you can create at different stages of the marketing and sales funnel.
Build relationships with customers and drive sales growth
A landing page differs from other web pages by focusing solely on one objective: driving action. It leverages compelling offers to convert warm leads from ad campaigns or capture cold leads for future nurturing.
For instance, you could create a landing page for free ebook downloads or webinar signups to capture leads and subsequently nurture them through email campaigns.
Your landing page should include the following:
Here's an example of Visme's webinar landing page.
Landing pages are mostly used in online marketing campaigns. However, you can also drive prospects to your landing pages through offline marketing channels.
One way to drive people to a specific landing page using print is to include quick response (QR) codes on promotional materials, like business cards or postcards. To generate your QR codes, you can utilize Visme’s QR code generator. The tool will help you create your QR codes in minutes.
Don’t just publish your landing page and go to sleep. Use A/B testing to test multiple variations of your landing page until you arrive at a page that converts.
Webinars are live online presentations that allow you to educate your audience while promoting your product or offer. They are among the most useful sales materials for interacting with prospects, showcasing expertise, and driving sales.
Improving audience engagement requires tackling disorganized presentations and boring slides head-on. Do this by preparing your content well in advance and crafting visually appealing slides using Visme webinar templates.
Here's another template you can customize right away.
These templates allow you to visualize data with customizable charts and widgets and incorporate animations, audio and videos to enhance slide interactivity.
Claudia, one of Visme’s users, was able to save more than 100 hours of work by creating her webinars using Visme's presentation decks.
If you’d also like to promote your webinars on social media, check out our library for a stunning social graphic template you can easily customize.
At Visme, we host free educational webinars where you can learn from top industry experts in marketing and design. Join the next event or catch up on past impactful episodes right here. Check out this post to learn more about creating successful webinars.
Sales one-pagers are concise and versatile documents that provide high-level information about a product, service, project or business. They can serve as fliers to educate customers, announce product launches or initiate conversations with potential clients.
The focus of your sales one-pager should be to make an impact on the reader as quickly as possible.
To optimize the effectiveness of your sales one-pager, use a headline that captures the essence of the product, integrate testimonials to show credibility, highlight the product's value proposition and provide instructions on how to make a purchase.
We have an extensive library of sales one-pager templates you can tap into.
Here’s another sales one-pagers you can customize:
Your sales one-pager should be consistent with your brand identity to showcase professionalism.
You can manually add your brand's colors, logo and fonts to your one-pager or use our AI-powered Brand Wizard to automate the process. Simply input your website’s URL and the wizard will generate a brand kit. It will also recommend templates that are a good fit for your brand.
A whitepaper is a comprehensive report designed to establish a company as a thought leader and generate leads. It targets expert audiences, gives them an in-depth understanding of a problem and recommends relevant solutions.
Compared to blogs and the majority of other sales documents, a whitepaper is usually longer and more in-depth.
Sales teams can use whitepapers at the consideration stage of the funnel to demonstrate why their product or service is the best option.
The success of your whitepaper hinges on factors like understanding the target audience, the topic's relevance and the solution's uniqueness and viability. Therefore, it's crucial to gather your information from subject matter experts and reputable sources to ensure your content is valuable and authoritative.
To capture and retain the attention of the readers, your white paper should be visually appealing. Include graphics, charts and other visual elements to break up the text and make the content engaging and digestible.
Creating a whitepaper usually requires extensive research and can be quite time-consuming. Below are some whitepaper templates you can edit and use:
Here's another whitepaper template from another niche.
Blog posts are effective marketing enablement content for attracting and nurturing prospects across every sales funnel stage, from awareness to conversion, which interns empowers your sales enablement strategies.
According to a HubSpot study, the average blog reader reads between one and four posts each month and has made a purchase based on what they read on a company's blog.
Focusing on creating valuable blog posts will help you show off your thought leadership and position you as an authority in your niche. Some examples of blog post formats are: Guides, comparison posts, product showcases, listicles, best-ofs and more.
Blog posts can also help you provide in-depth knowledge about your offerings.
For instance, let’s say a prospect makes an inquiry about a product feature but isn't quite ready for a call. You can provide the feature-specific demo and link to relevant blog content to educate them.
Including eye-catching featured images in your blog posts is a great way to capture a reader’s attention and invite them to read the content.
Visme's AI image generator comes in handy here. With the wizard, you can create images, icons, paintings, abstracts and more for your blog posts. Just input your prompt and it will create your image in no time.
A product catalog is a marketing collateral that compiles all your product details in one place.
You can utilize it to provide potential customers with a detailed look at your product line. This is especially useful when clients are in the consideration phase of their journey and want to make a decision.
Another benefit of product catalogs is the convenience they provide to sales reps by centralizing your product information in one place.
When interacting with prospects, your reps can quickly refer to them to access product specifics like available colors, sizes, prices, reviews, discounts, etc. It can also be helpful to cross-sell or upsell existing customers by suggesting related or complementary products to the ones they’ve been using.
Use high-quality images to showcase your products for an impressive product catalog. Adding an order form to your product catalog will also make it easier for customers to transition from browsing to making a purchase.
Your product catalog can be in a digital or print format, but digital catalogs are more shareable and easier to update.
Plus, when you share your catalog with your client using Visme’s analytics, you can gain valuable insights into how long they spent on a specific page, whether they completed viewing the catalog, and more.
Create your next catalog with this template below:
Here's another template you can customize right away:
Sales brochures are important to consider as they are one of the oldest and most trusted marketing materials around.
These visually appealing materials provide potential customers with essential information about a company and its products or services.
With a sales brochure, you can highlight product features, offer various use cases, address pain points and sales barriers and guide prospects to contact you.
Sales brochures are commonly distributed at trade shows, conferences and sales meetings through direct mail or in-store displays.
They come in various sizes and fold formats, with common options including letter-size bi-fold and tri-fold designs.
Here’s a bi-fold brochure template to get you started:
And if you would like to use a tri-fold brochure template, here’s one:
You can add additional details to your brochure without crowding your design by making it interactive. When you customize your templates, add hotspots, pop-ups and hover effects to reveal additional information and create an immersive experience for your audience.
A sales playbook is a document that lists and describes best practices for sales situations. It provides sales reps with strategies to employ at different stages of the sales process.
A sales playbook contributes to efficiency in the sales process as the salespersons know exactly what to do at the right time. This results in easier onboarding for sales reps, increased productivity and improved conversion rates.
A sales playbook should include your company overview and unique value proposition, buyer personas, links to email scripts, lead qualification criteria, objection handling and closing tactics.
Make your sales playbook as effective as it can be by getting your team members involved in the creation process.
Visme's collaboration features enable your marketing and sales teams to collaborate, manage and share projects within a single workspace. You can also build workflows to assign tasks, establish due dates and monitor progress in real time.
Jumpstart your sales playbook design with the template below.
Or use this template below.
Emails are great sales collaterals for nurturing relationships with prospects and existing customers.
When it comes to marketing ROI, email marketing consistently ranks among the top options.
In a Litmus State of Email study, email marketing outperformed all other marketing tactics. In fact, 79% of marketers ranked email marketing as one of their three most used strategies.
Email newsletters are valuable sales tools because of their immediate and long-term benefits. When well written, they strengthen the relationship between you and your audience, promote trust and facilitate conversion.
But achieving such results hinges on increasing your open rate and read time. To increase your open rate,
Using email templates helps you save time and ensure consistency in branding and formatting across all your emails. With the variety of email templates and branding elements available on Visme, you can easily A/B test to discover what resonates best with your audience.
Here are some templates you can easily customize:
Below is another template you can customize:
Looking to improve your newsletter email form collector conversion rate? Use Visme’s form builder to create an interactive form. The tool allows you to improve engagement and conversions on your forms with animated characters that captivate your audience. And they’ve been proven to double conversion rates.
Even if you have no coding skills, this tool will allow you to create professionally designed forms in no time. Choose from a variety of our professionally designed form and survey templates. Then, customize your animations and designs to suit your needs.
Video content has surged in recent years, as 93% of businesses use it as an important part of their marketing strategy.
According to Word Stream, businesses that incorporate video generate revenue 49% faster than those that don't. This shows you're leaving money on the table without video content in your sales toolkit.
Video content is a great way to engage both visual and auditory senses, leading to better information retention compared to text-based content. Consequently, viewers are more likely to recall your brand when exposed to video content.
Video content is also one of the best ways to humanize your brand while demonstrating your expertise or showcasing your products. Your sales team can utilize a wide range of video formats, including:
Product walk-through videos provide solutions to consumer issues so customers get a better idea of your product's capabilities before they contact your sales reps. You could also create a personalized sales video for potential clients. This is a way to show that you made an effort to develop personalized content rather than a generic pitch.
In addition, videos can be used to train your sales reps about the latest product features, sales techniques, competitive analysis and more.
You don’t need a designer or expensive software to create a high-quality video, Visme's video templates offer a user-friendly and time-efficient solution to kickstart your efforts.
You’ll find lots of customizable templates, animations, audio and more inside the editor.
Here's an explainer video template you can use right away:
And if you would like to create a product video, check out this template:
Ebooks serve as a great sales magnet to draw prospective clients and leads. It can also fill a knowledge gap or provide a fresh perspective to solve a pain point for your target audience.
Examples of valuable resources that can be created as eBooks include original industry research and market analysis, interviews with subject-matter experts, detailed how-to guides, planners and more.
Infobrand's lead magnet report indicates that 55.9% of marketers regard eBooks as their highest-converting content. This shows they're effective when done well. To create a winning ebook for your business:
If you're unsure where to begin, consider using a captivating ebook template like this one
Here’s another one from Visme’s ebook library
You can also use Visme’s flipbook effect feature to let your readers engage with your eBook as though they are flipping through a physical book.
Need help coming up with ideas for your eBook? Utilize Visme's AI writer for your topic ideation. This tool can also help edit and proofread your content.
Sales presentations are great tools for clearly articulating your value proposition and addressing potential objections or concerns that prospects may have.
An impactful, customer-centric and well-designed sales presentation will convince your prospect to buy from you. Therefore, you should tailor your presentation to address their needs, concerns and interests.
There’s no need to overwhelm your readers with information. Keep your sales pitch presentation concise and to the point, adding only information that will benefit your audience.
Remember to include rich visuals such as images, charts, graphs, videos and more to engage your audience and make your presentation more valuable.
You can add visuals or charts to your projects from Visme's extensive selection of high-quality stock photos and 50+ types of charts and graphs, as well as interactive maps and widgets. Browse through the library to find what suits your needs.
Presentations are also very valuable for training your sales teams. For instance, if you frequently release new features, you should put together training presentations to teach your reps about them, how they function and their specific use cases.
In addition, you can create presentations to train your sales reps on how to market your product to different buyer personas and audience segments.
Visme has a wide range of presentation templates to help you create your captivating presentations. Here’s an example:
This is also a great example of a sales presentation
You've captured the attention of your target audience—what's next? Sell to them immediately? Not quite. Instead, solidify their interest and build trust by illustrating their current situation and where they aspire to be. This is where case studies come into play.
Case studies offer tangible examples of how your product or service has helped real customers overcome challenges and reach their objectives. This real-world evidence builds credibility and trust with potential customers who can relate to the experiences of others.
A powerful case study embraces a storytelling approach, casting your customer as the protagonist. It delves into their challenges, past unsuccessful attempts at finding solutions, their journey with your offering, the steps you took to help them and ultimately, the outcomes.
Ensure your case studies are tailored for specific audiences and presented in a digestible format with visual evidence.
You can easily create your case study with Visme’s case study templates.
Here’s another case study template you can customize right away:
Once you’ve finished customizing the template, download or share it in a variety of formats, such as PDF, PPTX, JPG and more!
Crayon's state of competitive intelligence report shows that 71% of businesses record more sales using battle cards. This means they are must-haves in your sales toolkit.
To help your sales team close more competitive deals, they need to know what your competitors are doing and how you have an edge over them.
Picture how stumbling over pricing objections during sales calls can impact your sales reps compared to your competitors. Sales battle cards are designed to bridge knowledge gaps.
Sales battle cards are concise visual documents used by sales teams to gain quick and easy access to key information about competitors, products or services.
These sales one pagers help sales teams stay informed, confident and competitive during customer interactions and win sales.
There are different kinds of battle cards, including marketing battle cards, competitive battle cards, objection handling battle cards and product battle cards.
Visme’s sales battle card templates are created with sales teams in mind.
Here's a sample of a product battle card you can customize for your sales team:
And here’s a sample of an objection handling sales battle card:
Note that battle cards are not "create once, use forever" materials—they require regular updates.
One of our customers, Michelle Brammer, streamlined this process by empowering her sales team with Visme. This enabled them to update battle cards and more without relying on the design team. Hear what she said:
Director of Marketing, GaggleAMP
You too can optimize your sales team's efficiency with Visme. Its user-friendly interface and short learning curve ensure that your sales team will have no trouble adapting to the platform.
When making a purchase, do you trust the product advertised or the one recommended in a news section? If you choose the latter, you've experienced the power of press coverage. However, press coverage doesn't happen naturally—it's influenced by creating and distributing press releases.
Press releases are written communications sent to the media to announce noteworthy events, milestones, products or developments within a company. This coverage not only endorses your business but also boosts visibility and reputation.
Even though press releases shouldn't come across as salesy, they can drive direct sales by sharing intriguing news that offers clear benefits to the reader.
For example, imagine you're releasing an AI fitness tracker. Crafting a product press release that highlights how this innovation enhances heart rate and sleep subtly encourages readers to consider purchasing the product for improved fitness and overall well-being. Such strategic messaging can prompt readers to sign up for a product waitlist.
Ready to put your business into the limelight? Create your own with these press release templates.
Providing prospects with high-quality and sales materials improves their experience with your brand and makes it easier for your representatives to close deals.
With Visme, creating effective sales materials doesn't have to be daunting. Our library offers a wide range of templates for creating professionally designed sales materials.
The collaboration tool, analytics tool, interactive elements, extensive collection of stock photos, icons, videos, AI designer tools and other robust features will help you create visually captivating and impactful content.
Plus, Visme forms can help your lead generation campaigns yield better conversions.
Sign up now and equip your sales team to secure more deals.
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