by Brandon Vasciannie

Marketing teams devote endless time, money, and effort to churn out sales content that they can’t wait to hand off to their sales team. The reality is that their sales team is unlikely to use the content, and might not even know where to find it. SiriusDecisions has found that 65% of sales content goes unused, and according to Kapost, 65% of sales reps can’t find the content they need to send to prospects.

Why does this happen?

The Sales Content Silo Effect

Today, companies use various cloud-based content repositories such as Google Drive, Dropbox, Box, and Egnyte to store their sales collateral. Though these repositories are great for storing a lot of content (especially large files), there are some caveats:

  • Companies often use multiple different repositories to store their sales collateral, sending salespeople on a digital scavenger hunt every time they need a piece of content.
  • Once in the appropriate repository, complex folder structures, poor naming conventions, and lackluster search functionality further the nightmare of finding the content the salesperson is looking for.
  • These repositories require internet connectivity to use, limiting access for salespeople who are on the go, in an area with poor or no network connection.

Sales and Marketing Misalignment

In theory, sales and marketing should go hand-in-hand. However, most companies that don’t use sales enablement experience misalignment between their sales and marketing teams, resulting in:

  • Difficulty for marketing to notify their sales team about new or updated content and where it can be found. When marketers do notify their sales team, it is usually via email, which can be easily overlooked or ignored.
  • Lack of communication and collaboration around the sales content that marketing is creating. Salespeople know the type of content they need, but rarely consult marketing with recommendations or feedback on how marketing can make the content more useful. Instead, salespeople tend to take matters into their own hands, making edits or creating their own content from scratch, which can lead to inconsistent branding and messaging.

Operating Blindfolded

Most marketing teams without a sales enablement solution like Bigtincan operate like they are blindfolded. They create a bunch of sales content, but have no visibility into how it’s being used, or if it’s being used at all. They also have no way to tie their content marketing efforts to ROI. No wonder why they have such a hard time determining the overall effectiveness of their content strategy.

Stay tuned for Part 2 of this series where I will share the secret to establishing the ROI of sales content.