4 Ways Conventional Sales Content Management Doesn’t Make the Cut

Getting sales content right is job #1 for most enablement teams. When you empower your sellers with the right content, they can sell more confidently, effectively, and efficiently. They meet quota and quarterly revenue goals. Who doesn’t want that?

But conventional sales content management leaves teams facing a major issue: Most enablement teams create much more content than sellers use, yet sellers feel like they don’t always have the right content for their selling situation.

Recent research highlights two critical problems with traditional sales content management tools:

   1. Conventional technologies reinforce the divide between those who create and manage sales content (i.e. marketing and enablement) and those who use it (sales reps).

   2. Reinforcing this divide undermines reps’ willingness and ability to adopt new content.

As a result, marketing isn’t always able to supply the kind of content the sales team wants.

The solution? A modern sales enablement platform. There’s a new breed of sales enablement technology that provides an all-in-one integrated solution for organizing, managing, and distributing sales content.

These tools promote better alignment between marketing and sales, ensuring that reps will want to adopt new content and know how to use it properly. If you’ve been trapped in a legacy approach to content, there is a better way.

Here are four ways that traditional sales content management platforms fall short when it comes to meeting sales teams’ needs.

#1 Content Creators Lack Feedback

Conventional sales content management tools provide workflows for efficient content creation, but fall flat when it comes to content effectiveness. Why? They lack a robust feedback loop between marketing and sales during content creation—a mechanism for soliciting rich input from content users. Instead, content creators are limited to “thumbs ups” and other one-dimensional text-based feedback from sellers.

Modern sales enablement platforms empower creators to obtain rich, inline video feedback on what’s working and what’s not—virtually. Video collaboration enables creators to “road test” new content and actually watch salespeople presenting to gauge how prospects react. This helps creators sculpt the language and tone of their content so it reflects the realities on the ground throughout every stage of the sales process.

#2 Content Lacks Context

Traditionally, marketers rely on text-based notifications (email, messaging apps, and news centers) to inform the sales team about which content is available and where to find it. This impersonal approach reinforces silos.

Modern sales enablement platforms allow content creators to quickly capture videos of themselves discussing their intent—why they developed the content, when to use it, and how. It even empowers them to capture footage of successful sellers using the content or “signing off” on its usefulness.

Videos put marketers’ faces in front of the sales team, making communication more personal and easier to consume, driving greater engagement and alignment. Modern content management platforms even allow the marketing team to collaborate with sales enablement to create video-based certifications to ensure sellers know how to articulate the concepts embodied in the new content in prospect interactions.

#3 Content Isn’t Activated

Conventional sales content management systems focus on “guardrails”—who can access content (and who can’t), how content can be personalized (or not), and when older versions can be used.

Modern sales enablement platforms shift the focus from what can’t be done to what reps can do to improve their delivery. In addition to attaching robust explainer videos to new or updated content, marketers can recruit top reps to present the content via video.

One of the biggest challenges for content creators is convincing salespeople to try something new. What better way to overcome this reluctance than to have reps watch videos, from their peers, demonstrating the new messaging?

#4 Content Isn’t Effective

Traditional sales content management tools offer quantitative analytics for gauging the impact of sales collateral. By viewing reports and dashboards, marketers can determine which videos, white papers, or one-pagers are viewed and shared most often, based on how long viewers linger on the content.

The only problem with this approach is that it doesn’t provide qualitative assessments. Content creators are left to infer why a particular video or sales sheet is (or is not) resonating.

Modern sales enablement platforms include quantitative and qualitative data. A qualitative approach allows them to firmly identify the reasons content is contributing to sales success.

Using video collaboration with reps, marketers can watch and listen to actual sales presentations and meetings. For example, they can pinpoint why a certain phrase or tone works well at one stage of the sales cycle, but not another. This promotes iterations that are more effective on prospects and more engaging to the reps.

Mastering Sales Content Management Technology

Mastering sales content management means investing in the tools you need. You could cobble together multiple platforms with a range of capabilities, but the most efficient approach is having learning, content, collaboration, and insight all in one place.

Sales enablement has never been more important than it is today. Today’s competitive economy—and the new requirements of virtual selling—have increased demands on marketers and enablement leaders in every industry.

More than ever, you have to be flexible, responsive, and closely aligned with your sales teams. Are you using a conventional content system? It may be time to implement a modern sales enablement platform so you can deliver first-rate content that will move deals through the pipeline.

Learn More

Download The Complete Guide to Sales Content Management to find out how you can organize, manage, and activate content—that your sales team will love.