In today’s economy, sales is anything but easy.

As silly as it sounds, the first thing to go when money gets tight is the marketing budget. Often marketing’s agenda is to build brand awareness, and it takes time to turn that awareness into sales. So why don’t more companies spend their budget on building tools that make it easier for sales teams to sell?

Marketing and sales are often at odds over how to position the company. A good sales guide documents the how your customers buy and helps sales quickly identify the right prospects. It helps build confidence in your offerings so your team can concisely communicate what makes you different than your competitors in the language of your customers. A good sales guide motivates your sales force to sell.

Unfortunately, of the few companies that take the time to publish a sales guide, many fall prey to the following common mistakes:

Sales is not involved

Sales is your front line and often the first person your customers encounter. They actually speak with the prospects before they become customers. Doesn’t it follow that they have key insights into your customer’s language and actual needs? So why do so many sales guides get created without their input?

The war between sales and marketing is a long standing one that needs to be addressed head on by every company. A good sales guide is a great way to get the two teams to come together to better understand the other point of view. Sales people are tactical, with short term timelines and goals. Ideally, they are trying to understand the prospect’s problem, so they can help guide them to the best solution. Marketing people are strategic, with year-long or longer timelines and goals. Ideally, they are trying to figure out what the prospect’s problem is going to be in the next few years, so they can guide the company to help provide the best solution. One is dealing with today, the other tomorrow. Both are important, and neither should be ignored.

Not addressing competitors

It is all too easy to gloss over the competitive analysis section of the guide, or to focus only on the areas where your company is the clear winner. This approach is very unfair to your sales staff. It leaves them unprepared to truly address the questions and concerns of your prospects. It sets your team up for failure.

Take a good hard look at your competitors from your customer’s eyes. You need an unbiased summary of who you are competing against and how your company stacks up. Start by identifying real life customer problems, and then analyze how each of your competitor’s would address this problem. Where are their solutions better? Where are yours? This arms your sales staff with real life information that they can use to make the sale. Be honest about your own weaknesses and address how to handle these vulnerabilities when talking to prospects. Because positioning your product against your competition’s weak points is easy, but positioning against their strengths is much harder.

Too many details, not enough stories

It is easy to get bogged down in technical details. While your sales guide should summarize the the technical specifications of your products, odds are that your prospect doesn’t really care about that stuff. It’s too much too soon, and overwhelms them. Sales knows that people buy based on emotion, and stories allow you to showcase real client problems that have been addressed through your offerings.

Loading your sales guide up with talking points and success stories arms your sales staff with the information they need in the way they need it. They need to be able to paint the picture of what success looks like to the prospect without too much pressure. That is exactly what a good case study does. Well crafted client testamonials work here as well, especially if they address how your offerings addressed their problems.

Be brief

When do most sales people look over the sales guide? In the car, right before they walk into the sales call. They don’t have time to read a novel. I know I just told you to tell stories, but really you want to pull out the main talking points of the stories and leave the case studies behind with the prospect at the end of the call.

You need to drill down to the most essential messages, and bullet point as much information as possible. Use information graphics whenever possible to explain the situation. Use tables, charts, and flow diagrams to clearly organize the information. Because in the 10 minutes in the car when the sales guy is prepping, you need him to understand and remember as much as possible.

Generic messaging

General statements about your company or offering are often a sign you have not done an adequate competitive analysis. If you can’t clearly and quickly articulate what you do and who you do it for, your prospects will be left confused. And you are leaving your sales staff in an uncomfortable position holding the bag.

Now is not the time for general statements or overreaching brand messaging. This is a book dedicated to the specifics of your offerings and who they are designed for. You need to know exactly who you are selling to, what their problems are, and how your products help resolve these issues. What are the questions your prospects are asking? Which questions are a red flag that you are not a good fit? Who is a better provider for those type of issues?

It’s all about you

Ultimately, a sales guide should not merely document your selling process. It should document the prospect’s buying process. It can navigate sales to a better understanding of where the customer is in the buying process and what they need to overcome to reach the next levels. From a customer’s perspective–and in their language–talk about what they get out of buying from you. Because if you don’t, it’s all about you.

A good sales guide can’t guarantee sales will come pouring in the door, but it certainly helps arm your staff with information they need, in the manner they need it. However, if you make these mistakes, you are almost certainly sabotaging sales chances of success.