Unfortunately for sales people, it seems that they are flat out of excuses when it comes to expecting Marketing to push leads towards closing through content. I was just re-reading this excellent piece of research about Thought Leadership by LinkedIn and Edelman and the statistic below caught my eye. It seems that nearly all decision makers and C-level executives rate having content forwarded by someone they know as the single most important characteristic of successful Thought Leadership (84% and 86% of respondents)

What this means for closing B2B sales is that the best thing that a Sales person can do to enable content to influence the key decision makers at their clients and prospects is for them to send it on themselves. 

At an emotional level, this is an entirely different process to sending round a newsletter or posting to social media. If someone forwards a piece of relevant, timely content to you with a cover note directed at you alone, that shows a level of care and thought that cannot be replicated by any automated process. 

In B2B sales, we are dealing with a very small number of people, it really doesn't need to take long and it clearly makes all the difference in the world.