Whether you’re:
- the marketer creating it
- the enablement practitioner circulating it to your sellers
- the seller sharing it with buyers
- or the buyer reviewing it to make an educated purchase decision
...content is frustrating! And personal!
Producing and publishing good content that gets results requires a bunch of people to complete a ton of tiny, specific tasks that accumulate in the larger process that in the end is essential to the business.
We got into the weeds during an open conversation about content-related enablement frustrations between enablement, sales, and marketing leaders at our company who also polled and fielded questions from our audience of professionals in similar roles.
Here’s a quick snippet:
Below are the key quotes and main takeaways from that conversation in skimmable form.
The poll: Top content-related frustrations
At the top of the discussion we asked our audience of sellers, marketers, and enablement practitioners what frustrates them most about their content processes. They selected from the following:
I get most frustrated when:
- I can't find the marketing materials.
- I don't know if the marketing materials I have are the most up to date.
- I have to create presentations from scratch or cobble them together.
- I don't know if a customer interacted with the materials I've sent them.
- When salespeople can't find the materials.
- Old versions are being used because salespeople use what they have saved on their desktops.
- There are presentations being used that are off brand or have outdated content.
- I don’t know if sales teams are using the marketing materials at all.
Not knowing how/whether content is used by sellers and customers were the top two answers, which jump-started a meaty conversation about content usage, visibility, management, and more.
Here’s how our speakers (led by our host and Senior Sales Enablement Manager Jared Hibbs) hashed it out.
The conversation: How to improve content processes
The marketing perspective - SVP of Marketing Pam Dearen
On measuring content usage: “All of the precious marketing resources that are often limited go into creating what we believe is going to be the most effective material for the sellers throughout the buyer's journey. But how do we know? Are they using it? Is it working?
Without any kind of tooling and insights, we're guessing, or we're just not sure if we're making an impact in all the right places. So it is a very difficult challenge.”
On helping sellers find content: “When I worked at Hewlett Packard, I was on the enterprise side and literally had a portfolio of hundreds of offerings.
So how do you make that information available to sales? And how do they know that what they're finding can be trusted? Because we needed to put forward not just the marketing information, but also content generated by sales and put those side by side, then let them know what has been approved, what's trusted, and how to find it.
When you get into a large portfolio and really any size, if your company is large or small it doesn't matter, but findability is so important.
And every seller is different. Some people want to browse and find. Some people want to search and find. So your solution for managing all of that content really has to serve all types of users.”
On buyer engagement with content: “As a marketer, I don't only want that feedback from the seller. I really want visibility to the buyer. What's resonating all the way with the buyer?
You know, sellers might have their go-to assets because they're comfortable with them and they like to use what's worked before, but is it really resonating with that buyer? That's the insight I want to have as a marketer.”
On getting sellers to use up-to-date, on brand, and approved content: “As the buyer, you want to know that you're being understood, that your seller knows your current brand and uses your name and your logo correctly. So it’s very, very important as a marketer that we enable sales to do that effectively and get it right the first time.”
The sales perspective - EMEA Sales Lead Adam Weekes
On sales/marketing alignment around content: “It has never been harder to sell than right now. So we all need to really understand we have to collaborate better together.
And if there's one place that we can all go to get what we need, we should start seeing success quite quickly or at least get momentum going and keep people engaged with us because everyone's fighting for the same dollar.
How do you work together as a sales and marketing team? Well, you can get data now to allow you to work effectively together.”
On combining learning and customer-facing content in one central location: “I think one of the latest case studies for us is that one of our customers is now saving four hours a week per rep just because they can see what is going on, which is a lot of time when you consider that they have over fifty reps using the platform.
That's a lot of time saved not just for us on the front line, but because now marketing can see what is going on. Then the learning team can see what's going on. And as they onboard new reps, they can use that data to onboard them quicker than they've ever been able to before.
So these platforms are starting to reach multiple departments and it's not just sales and marketing anymore. It could be partners, third party vendors, all the way through customer service using the same tool and getting the same data.”
On slide/page based buyer engagement data: “I think that also helps the customer facing rep too knowing what slide is resonating. So when you speak to another person at another company in the same job role, it might be something that you start with first. It keeps you engaging as a rep, but also lets them feel that you're a trusted advisor because you know what their interests are.”
The enablement perspective - Director of Sales Enablement Beverlie Heyman
On buyer engagement data: “I think one of the challenges today is we're all tied and spread so thin. So you want to make sure that people are focused on the content that you're going to get the best results from.
It does become critical at times like this that you have the insights to say, ‘Here's the content that's being produced, here's the content that's being used, and therefore, as we're moving forward, this is the type of content that is resonating more with my customer base’ that would then allow us to put the resources into that area.”
On increasing productivity through content management: “You need to be proactive enough to expire things. I think sometimes we don't expire different assets because we're like, ‘Oh, wait, this worked for us.’ But at some point, that piece of collateral isn’t up to date or needs to be updated. So even if you just look at the dates as to when your collateral was built and, you know, sort of put a line in the sand from here on in, you know, we're gonna expire certain assets.
Because we all know salespeople, right? The more you give them, the more overwhelmed they become.
And so all they end up doing rather than even researching is contacting marketing or contacting sales enablement or their managers to say, ‘I need X.’ So not only do you have that productivity hit at the rep level, but you have it across the organization because your content isn't in a place that's scalable or easy to find.”
On saving seller time searching for content: “If you look at a lot of the thought leadership out there, I think they're saying today that sales reps are spending only twenty eight percent of their time on sales activities.
When you think about all of the time that they're spending trying to locate content and trying to build content, you see there's a lot of wasted time. Plus, if you could scale those presentations that are best and have other reps leveraging that, you would see this huge uptick in people's productivity, and that will eventually lead to greater revenue opportunities for each company.”
Audience Q&A
Q: Sales might want one thing out of a content tool while marketing wants something a little bit different. How do you bridge the gap for what sales wants and what marketing wants?
A (Beverlie): “Well, I think part of that is right through the data that you get from the content tool. So if you have insights into what's working, it provides marketing the feedback that they need in order to see what content is resonating.
And in turn, from a sales perspective, it allows us to have better visibility into what message is resonating across our prospect and customer base. So I would say that by having like one common repository where you're able to see what's available and see the results of that, those learning assets, you know, it just helps in both sides of the fence being more productive.”
Q: I have content in multiple places. Where do I start for a cleanup?
A (Adam): “Go and speak to your top ten percent of your sales team to understand what they are doing and do audits on the content.
One person I’m speaking to now has even gone as far as removing specific case studies and waiting for a request to come in and see how many requests are getting for x, y, and z. So there's obviously different ways that you can go around it. It's just whatever you feel comfortable doing first.
But definitely speaking with the people who are in front of customers and understanding what their top three assets are, and then and then taking it from there.”
A (Pam): “With large sets of data or many asset types, one of the things that you can do is really look to standardize so sales knows what to expect. So for each thing you offer, have a standard set of assets that they use in each stage of the journey and make that consistent so there’s not a hodgepodge of things every time.
Then they know that they'll always have an offering brief, they'll always have a data sheet, they'll always have a case study, and make that a package, and then you can grow from there.”
Q: As a marketer, what's one thing I can do for my sales team to help them find the newest content?
A (Adam): “I think the best way to do it is by recommending content and featuring content.
Well, take our example here at Bigtincan. It is essentially a feature that recommends the right type of content for the right rep. And what I mean by that is, for example, if I'm a manufacturing sales rep, when I log into find materials, I don't need to see content that's resonating with people in the telecommunications space. So all I have is a laser-focused place where all my content lives.
But at the same time, if there's a piece of content that's trending that a lot of people are using, that needs to appear in front of me to help me know that that is there. And then after six months if a piece of content is not being used or not working, let go of it.”
Takeaways
- Sellers, marketers, and enablement professionals agree that having visibility into usage helps resolve many of the frustrations that come with content production and distribution.
- Less is more when it comes to content. Most enterprises have too much content and need to make more efforts to regularly update or delete it to keep repositories a manageable size.
- Companies generally have too many different tools for managing content and it makes finding it overwhelming and time-consuming.
- While it helps marketing and enablement to know if/how sales is using content, it is generally more helpful for everyone to know how/if customers are interacting with it.
- Content performance data needs to inform what marketing creates and what sales uses — it doesn’t matter if it’s an old favorite if it doesn't resonate with buyers.
- Content data is most helpful when teams are spread thin and need to prioritize how they spend their time.
- Selling has gotten more difficult in recent years and a shared understanding and repository for content usage helps different teams align and collaborate to reduce efforts across the board.
- Usage data helps professionals justify budgets and processes to their executive leadership.
Did this resonate with you?
Get into more of the day-to-day, nitty gritty with us as we break down common problems sales, marketing, and enablement teams face to understand how they impact everyone — especially your buyers and your overall business performance — in our new resource Enablement Just Got Personal: How to resolve the personal frustrations holding your business back.
