Definition
What is transferable content?
Transferable content is a page or a document that a person can forward to colleagues without having to explain it. On its own it answers a specific objection, names its source and makes sense to someone who has never spoken to the vendor. In business-to-business sales, it is the format that circulates during the part of the decision when your salesperson is not in the room.
Why the salesperson is absent
On the customer side, a B2B purchase is decided by several people: the user, the technical lead, the finance department, procurement. Gartner measures that these buyers spend only 17% of their decision time meeting all the vendors in contention. The rest happens in independent research and internal discussion.
During those discussions, the person who defends your offer inside the company (the internal champion) has to convince colleagues you have never met. Whatever they can forward speaks for you.
The three criteria
- It answers a specific objection on its own. One question, one answer, with no pointer to a call.
- It names its source. A figure or a claim can be checked without asking the vendor.
- It makes sense without context. Someone who has never spoken to the salesperson grasps the point on first reading.
The test is concrete: can the champion forward the page to their finance department without attaching an email of explanation? If not, the page is still a brochure.
Producing by role rather than by service
Each member of the buying group has their own question. The user wants to know whether the offer solves their problem, the technical lead whether it integrates, the finance department what it costs over three years, procurement what the contractual risk is. Most B2B sites speak only to the first, the one who decides the least.
Transferable content targets one role and one objection at a time. A page on what an offer costs over three years gets forwarded to finance more easily than a service page that tries to say everything.
Take a fictional manufacturer of conveyor equipment. Its product page lists the benefits and ends with “Contact us to learn more.” The plant manager likes it, but cannot forward it to the finance department: nothing on it says what the equipment costs over three years.
The manufacturer adds a page that answers that one question: purchase cost, planned maintenance, service life and the source of each figure. The manager can forward it as is. The internal discussion can then move forward without the salesperson having to step in.
We use transferability as the production criterion for a B2B website. Before writing a page, we ask which role it addresses, which objection it answers and whether it stands on its own without us. A page that is attractive or complete but fails that test is still a brochure.
To find the objections, we start from real sales: who took part in the last five sales won or lost, and what question each of them wanted settled. That list comes from the company itself. A company that documents its real buying cycles gets a better site than a company that orders a visual redesign.
Not to be confused with
- Sales brochure
- A brochure presents the company and its offer to someone the salesperson is walking through it. Transferable content answers an objection for someone the salesperson may never meet.
- Feasibility content
- Feasibility content answers the questions a buyer asks before knowing whether they will buy at all. Transferable content comes later, when several people have to agree on a vendor.
Related concepts
- B2B buying group
- AI-assisted shortlisting
- Content marketing
- Web design
- Uncertainty reduction
- Price visibility
- Feasibility content
Further reading
- B2B websites in Quebec: three issues to plan for
- B2B marketing: how to reach the people behind a buying decision
- B2B suppliers: how to get recommended to buyers by AI
- B2B pricing online: should you display prices or require a quote?
- Product configurators: qualifying enquiries before the contact form
Related services
Frequently asked questions
How can we tell if our pages are transferable?
Pick a page and imagine a client forwarding it to their finance department without adding anything. If it answers a specific question on its own, names its sources and makes sense to someone who has never met you, it passes. If it ends with “contact us to learn more,” it probably does not.
What content should we send to a finance department?
A page that says what the offer costs over three years and where the figures come from. Finance is not looking for product benefits: it is looking for the cost, the risk and a way to compare. A short, sourced answer gets forwarded more easily than a full company presentation.
