In this Q&A segment, sales coach Ryan Dohrn answers a listener’s question about how sales materials will change after COVID. He cites a SparksIQ study showing that 70% of buyers research information themselves and 40% decide on a solution before contacting a seller, coining the term “self‑service sales.” Dohrn advises making sales content highly accessible online: create a dedicated sales‑materials website, use product and testimonial videos, format all materials in landscape for desktop viewing, and streamline the buying process so prospects can purchase without speaking to a salesperson. He emphasizes that while self‑service doesn’t replace salespeople, it supports the buyer’s journey and prevents sales teams from missing opportunities when buyers prefer to buy independently. The segment ends with a call‑to‑action for coaching services.
Questions this video answers
Buyers will increasingly research and define their needs before reaching out, so sales materials should be highly accessible online. Create a dedicated website for sales content, use product and testimonial videos, format materials in landscape for desktop viewing, and make it easy for prospects to purchase without speaking to a salesperson. This self‑service approach supports the buyer’s journey while still complementing the sales team.
Chapters
Hey friends, Ryan Dohrn here, your global sales coach. Hope things are going great for you. We're answering your listener questions, so thanks for sending them in over to ryan@ryandohrn.com. I like to feature a lot of these questions. Uh, the podcast is over on Spotify and on iTunes. Just search for Ryan Dohrn, D-O-H-R-N. All right, David from San Diego asked this question. Hey Ryan, how have sales materials or How will sales materials change in a post-COVID world? So David, first of all, be really careful about that whole post-COVID thing, 'cause I think COVID is still in play, but I get what you're saying. How will sales materials change? Well, David, it's important for me to share with you some information I received online from a company called SparksIQ. And they had a really great study that came out. And that is that 70% of buyers out there are gonna find information themselves before they reach out to you. They're gonna have a very definitive need. They're gonna find out a lot of information themselves. As a matter of fact, 40-some percent of buyers, they'll actually determine the best solution for them before they contact you. You can Google Sparks IQ and find out more about that study. So I feel like it's not as much about the sales materials you're creating as how available you're making them. People are becoming much better at research, David. They're becoming much better at determining their own needs. And 70-some percent of people, according to that study, they're going to wait until they have a fully defined need before they even reach out to you. I like to call it self-service sales. So from a sales materials perspective, I'm a big fan of videos. Hey, you're watching a video right now. I like to put product videos online, testimonial video line on testimonial videos online, videos about what it is that we're, uh, that we're selling, what we're doing, what people are saying about it. Self-service sales is not about replacing a salesperson. Self-service sales is really about helping customers on their journey to buy our particular product. So I think you should create a website just for your sales team, just for those sales materials. Now, another thing related to that, sales materials should all be formed in landscape format. So that's going to be a sideways format, not portrait up and down, landscape. Because that's how most people will read it on their computer. So be careful about that. And then the other thing is when you have your self-service sales environment, make it easy for people to buy from you. Make it easy for people to get in touch with you. Here's one of the problems that I've observed overall in the sales business for, oh, you know, quite some time. A lot of you, you feel like the sale can't be complete until somebody talks to a salesperson. Just recognize, friends, The vast majority of customers, they don't want to talk to us. It's a shame because I'm a nice guy. You're a nice guy too, aren't you? So recognize, friends, you've got to make sure that you're creating environments in your sales organization where it's easy for people to find the information they want, they need, and their desire. If the only way they can buy from you is to talk to a salesperson, you might just be selling yourself short. So, David, thanks so much for your question. Keep them coming in, friends, to Ryan at ryandohrn.com. If you'd like for me to train your sales team or coach you personally, head over to the website ryandohrn.com and reach out to me. Remember, friends, if sales was easy, everybody'd be doing it, and they're not. So we're either crazy or we found careers. That's true. Or we found careers that will feed our families for a lifetime. All right, friends, we'll see you next week with more listener questions.
