If you were implementing a B2B Marketing and Sales Enablement program, what are the first 5 assets you would create?

Good question - to have to pick is tough but if I must, here are the main things I think every sales rep needs in their bag to be successful: 

(1) First Call Deck / Pitch Deck 

(2) Competitive Battlecard(s) (including how to place traps / how to arm against competitor's traps - shields/swords type of thing)

(3) Tough Q&A Log with really hard questions that a likely customer is to ask

(4) Value Map(s) 

(5) Customer Stories

First, divide your efforts into “sales plays” (or depending on your company’s terminology they might be “sales motions” or “use cases”). Sales plays should each have a revenue target attached to them, and collectively, the revenue across all your sales plays should total the entire new business revenue goal. Next, define your “bill of materials” (assets) for each sales play. For our business, we have a Conversation Starter (2-4pg PDF of key market problem and our solution), Discovery Questions/Answers, Customer Pitch Deck, Internal Enablement Deck, Competitive Positioning, and Customer Success Stories. These are the assets I would prioritize creating, but this can be a lot, so you should also prioritize against your sales plays in terms of respective revenue goals.

1) A (first call) pitch deck. This is a fantastic unifying asset that will help you hone your narrative and it can also serve as an educational tool for the sales team. You can use the pitch to walk through your logic and approach and then refine it based on specific feedback from your sales team.
2) A mid-funnel eBook. It might sound a little strange that this is on the line up so high, but now that we are all working from home, the selling cycle is a bit different. Leaving a prospect with something they can consume on their own time is critical to move the sales cycle along. The benefit for you as a PMM in building an asset like this is that you get to keep refining your narrative, while expanding on some of the specific benefits.
3) A two-page leave behind. This is an asset where you can focus on your value prop, customer benefits, and highlight the success of current customers.
4) A short and pithy internal asset that covers detailed discovery and objection handling. Starting the conversation can be the most challenging for a rep so giving them really solid evidence and empathetic discovery questions can give them confidence to ask the tough questions.
5) A high-level competitive landscape. Do you know the major companies you are competing against and why you are better positioned? It's never a good idea to get caught up in what your competitors are doing, you should always be focused on your customers. But it's good hygiene to know what gotchas to look out for from a competitive perspective.

If you have product marketing and sales enablement as separate functions, asset creation should be owned by product marketing for the most part. Anything sales enablement creates should be in support of helping sales consume the content that’s already built — such as talk tracks, discovery questions, conversation narratives, etc.

I tried limiting to 5, but I’ll share 7 basics (lucky you) I would ensure sales have in their hands to sell effectively:

1. Buyer personas - Can you really sell if you don’t thoroughly understand who you sell to?
2. Solution summary 1-sheet - send ahead or leave behind. This is essential in getting sales on the same page on the product benefit story, and also having a quick way to answer product questions for the prospect
3. Core pitch and product demo  - this is typically a deck with a narrative. But you don’t always need a deck. Some of the most effective salespeople I know never use a deck. They talk through discovery and use the company’s website and product demo to show and tell.
4. Discovery questions - Most deals break at discovery. Having a playbook to consistently understand the prospect is absolutely key.
5. Outbound sequences - I think everyone in sales should be prospecting, no matter their role. Providing consistent email templates and call scripts will be very helpful in driving consistent results.
6. Customer case study - you can toot your horn all you want. But buyers like me will want to see evidence of your claims. Providing a scrappy case study of a customer story that includes testimonials and proof of ROI is essential.
7. Competitive battlecards - you rarely sell in a vacuum. Helping your team prepare for the forces that influence the sale outside of your control is important.

My answer would change depending on what we're talking about (B2b Marketing program vs Sales enablement program).

For a sales enablement program:

1. Pitch Deck
2. Product use case glossary
3. Case study
4. Discovery question list or Demo video
5. (this isn't necessarily an asset) Prospecting lists / target account lists w/ enriched data

I don't think there is a magic list of items you must have for B2B sales enablement. Every product is different and likely has a different sales process - which will impact the assets you develop. But the most typical ones can be:

• A master pitch deck that can be customized by the sales team
• A ton of great case studies
• Competitive battle cards against your top 5 competitors
• Demo videos - videos are always high on every sales list
• one-pagers to summarize your value prop