Marketing documents helpful for a sales team

A little background.

We are a small company developing our own product in the market. And we are quickly approaching the release deadline. We have a few weeks to finish up some testing and work on some bug issues.

However straight after that we are spending 2-3 weeks in creating marketing documents and packs for the sales team to then go and present to the client. The sales team is outsourced and ready to sell our products. In simple terms they asked us to provide them with a un-technical version of our product for them to then understand and present to their clients.

A little bit of the unknown

I'm sure there are many companies out there, that use the same procedure in selling their products, and I'm sure that these companies have a sales-team-marketing-pack that they provide to every one.

My question is whats in it? Or what is the information that should be provided. A little idea

Many of us have different ideas of what and how marketing should be done. However to be quite frank we are all developers and we maybe shooting in the dark. Here are some of the ideas so far.

• Creating a Web Emailer for the sales team to send out
• Providing a 1 page product description (Features and Benefits) vs a 4 Page Brochure
• A powerpoint presentation for the sales team to present to clients
• A demo Box for clients to play around with (Personally not my favourite)
• You tube video of a screen cast
• Flash Demonstration
• Pricing, with their commission clearly laid out

What marketing materials you will need really depend on what your marketing strategy is.

Unless you have really thought through how the marketing will work, you will have no idea what to prepare and your outsourced sales team will produce less than stellar results. You can outsource the footwork, but you can't outsource the strategy.

Some questions that may help you:

• Who is your target market?
• how do they like to be communicated to?
• How do sales work in your industry? Do customers expect a high pressure, bells and whistles sales presentation or is it more low-key?
• How will you reach your customers?
• How can you build your credibility with customers?
• What materials do you need to communicate to them in their preferred style?