No matter how cheerful the tone, the greeting “Hey, we’re here for the audit!” is guaranteed to induce excruciating terror in any poor soul within earshot.
Audits get their reputation from the dour tax men and women who march in to the office, order everyone to freeze, and proceed to seize paperwork, hard drives, and cockroach baits. Twitching nostrils on Doris from accounts is treated as an admission of guilt. Forgetting to carry the 1 on the tax form gets you 7 to 10 in a SuperMax.
Surprisingly though, there’s another kind of audit that’s somewhat less traumatic. Imagine the IRS crossed with a golden retriever: thorough, persistent, and irresistible.
A technical sales enablement audit.
A what?
Over time, a business in the advanced materials industry can accumulate vast arrays of sales and marketing materials. With the best of intentions, some stray from the style guide. The website reads like everyone else’s. Brochures leave out key benefits, or hide them in tech-speak that misses the mark with buyers. Case studies describe products without demonstrating how they solved customers’ problems. Salespeople make up their own email prospecting templates. And so on.
In Stage 1, somebody important at the company invites a nerdy, balding guy in to review the sales enablement materials—think
- website
- product and application pages
- brochures
- datasheets
- sales decks
- case studies
- email materials
- distributor materials, and
- existing sales tools
and interview selected sales, marketing, product, and technical personnel to identify
- generic value claims
- proof gaps
- buried differentiators
- message inconsistencies
- recurring objections,
- and missing tools.
What you’ll get is a prioritised diagnosis of where the sales system is losing clarity, credibility, consistency, or persuasive force rather than just a list of superficial copy edits. The point is to find where your company’s technical expertise doesn’t translate into clear, credible reasons for buyers to act.
No goons bursting through the office door unannounced. No decade of prison food for failing to comply.
Nothing to hate.Stay tuned for Stage 2, where the nerdy, balding guy puts on his hardhat and starts rebuilding the messaging around what buyers need to understand, believe, and act on.
If your advanced materials company has had an audit on its sales and marketing assets, or if you’re interested in getting one, why not leave a comment below? I’ll respond to each one.
Why not leave a reply with your thoughts?