The sales process · Lead generation
The same question comes on the phone every week and nobody has written the answer.
Educational content is the honest answer to a question buyers ask before they spend, written down once and published where they can find it. This step gathers the real questions from your own calls, settles what you are willing to say in public, and turns each into one piece.
Scope, fee, reporting and term are agreed in writing after we have read your brief and spoken to you.
In one paragraph
Educational content is the honest answer to a question buyers ask before they spend, written down once and published where they can find it. This step gathers the real questions from your own calls, settles what you are willing to say in public, and turns each into one piece.
Every trade has a handful of questions that come before anybody buys. What does it cost if this is done badly. How long will my place be shut. What happens if it fails in the second year. You answer these on the phone several times a week, in detail, for free, and it lives nowhere except in your head.
Writing it down is the whole step. Not a publishing schedule, not thought leadership. The question as the heading, the answer in the first paragraph, and the conditions after it. A buyer who has read it arrives at the call already past the first ten minutes, which changes the conversation you get to have.
This is next to search engine optimisation and it is not the same job. Search decides which phrases to chase and clears the way for a page to be found. This decides what is true and how much of it you will say. Social media marketing, the step before, is about being seen. This one is about being useful enough to keep.
Where this sits
Stage 4 of 10, lead generation. The routes an enquiry can arrive by, and what each one costs in money or in time.
- The stage before
- Prospecting
- The stage after
- Sales enablement
If you want this done for you
Keep publishing the answers your buyers search for, month after month.
The work
What this step is actually like.
“Collect for a fortnight before writing a word”
Keep a notebook by the phone. One line for every question asked, in the caller's words, with who asked it. Two weeks of that beats any brainstorming session, and it hands you the phrasing people use, which matters because it is also what they type into a search box.
“The uncomfortable answers are the useful ones”
What a job actually costs to do properly. When the cheaper option is perfectly fine. What you will not take on and why. A piece that dodges all three reads like a brochure and gets forwarded to nobody. Owners worry that honesty loses work, and it does lose the work you did not want.
“Somebody senior has to sign it off”
Publishing an answer commits the firm to it. Your technical head has to agree it is right. Whoever prepares quotations has to know what range has been published, because a page contradicted on a call costs more than no page.
“When to skip this”
If your product is an impulse buy with no research in front of it, there is nothing to answer. If your work comes through rate contracts, the buyer has a specification rather than a question. And if nobody in the firm will give a straight answer on paper, do not start, because hedged content is worse than silence.
What we do
What you end up with.
The artefacts this step produces, what each one is for, and how you know it is finished.
The question list
Every question collected over two weeks, in the buyer's words, with a count beside the ones that repeat. Sorted by how close the question sits to the decision, so the pre-purchase questions get written first.
Result: The order of writing is decided by callers rather than by whoever has an idea.
The agreed answer
For each question, what you will say publicly, what you will only say on a call, and where the line is. Prices in ranges with the conditions attached, or a plain statement that the range depends on a site visit.
Result: Two people in your firm give the same answer to the same question.
The piece itself
The question as the heading, the answer in the first two sentences, one example from work you have actually done, then the conditions and exceptions. Long enough to be complete, and nothing added to reach a word count.
Result: Hand it to the last customer who asked, and they do not have to ring you back.
The reuse note
Where each piece goes after publication. To the next caller on WhatsApp, into the quotation email, printed for the counter, read aloud by a new salesperson.
Result: One afternoon of writing saves the same explanation being improvised twenty times.
Where this fits
Three pieces of sales work, in this order.
This work sits inside sales process design, at stage 1, prospecting and lead generation. The audit comes before it, and sales management keeps it running.
Step 1
Sales audit
Find where deals are being lost and what to fix first.
Start here if you cannot say where orders are lost.
Step 2 · you are here
Sales process design
One written way to sell, from first enquiry to repeat order.
Start here if every salesperson sells differently.
Step 3
Sales management
A target, a review routine and someone who owns the number.
Start here if the team has targets and no routine.
FAQ
Questions owners ask before they call.
Not here? More answers, or ask on WhatsApp.
How is this different from having a blog?
Should we publish our prices?
Nobody here has time to write. Can we record instead?
How do we know whether a piece is working?
How long is the contract?
How soon will we see results?
Who will actually do the work?
What do you need from us?
What if we are not happy with the work?
Where to go next
The work that carries this step further.
The rest of lead generation
Or read the whole sales process in order.
Your next practical step
Tell us what you are trying to grow, and we will read it before we call.
Eight short steps, mostly taps. Skip anything you would rather answer on the call.