The role of the sales VP may seem obvious: To land big sales.

But what do tech purchasers want from sellers, whomever is doing the selling, and when do they want it? We can answer the second question right away:  They want it now.

To inspire you, we’ve pictured a few buyer personas above (guess which two are real executives responsible millions in revenues at large newspaper chains) .

Here’s what the overall data on tech purchasing tells us about what buyers want from sellers:

First of all, in the pre-search phase, cold calls and emails from sales reps have virtually no impact. Only 5% (Walker Sands) of executives said they wanted to talk to a sales rep to discover new options.

No worries, this just means that your content marketing plan should ´warm up’ the prospect audience, so that they already understand the value proposition, and, hopefully, have heard of your company.

Some of them will have already started some non-human engagement, clicking around articles and websites. These leads are even warmer (fill out the form below and we’ll tell you how we find  and send them to your sales reps).

The good news is that once engaged in research, purchasers are heavily reliant on the sales representative. In fact, they can be quite demanding!

IDG’s 2016 survey of IT Purchasers (both hardware and software)  shows that purchasers are very involved in using sales reps to help them research.  Here is what they want:

• Speedy answers(67%).
• Free trials and test drives  (64%).
• Advice and best practices (52%).
• Case studies (50%)
• Educational assets and references (46%).
• Ask them questions and show ROI (30%).

Another preference is to be in the driver seat, asking for the information. They dislike direct sales pitches.

A great way for marketing to empower sales is have the materials customers are asking for – such as ROI and best practices – at the ready to be speedily delivered by email.

Client case studies are a great start, they serve as a reference for your company,  can be incorporated into demo, sent on demand, and distributed by email to your prospect list.

Incidentally, by  the time the decision is being made, the role of the rep drops off again, as the customer company turns inward, checking references and talking to each other about key concerns.

While the customer  ‘goes dark,’  the data shows case studies are one of the  two top influences, along with the demo,  on the  final decision  (IDG, 2017).

We can help your company create a  content marketing plan that incorporates this data: Develops steady stream of warm leads –  executives who know your premise, your company and have started to research – for your sales reps,  and produces client case studies sales reps will use to close more deals.