Perform a Sales Content Gut Check Before Launch
- Proactively inventorying, assessing and streamlining your content will have a direct impact on your sales asset management implementation
- Examine your content from both a buyer and seller perspective – and ensure both are well covered
- Great content aligns with the activities your sales reps are doing
Don’t sweat the disaster that is your sales content. You can sort it out as you go. The technology will solve your problem. While those words may get you closer to signing on the dotted line for a sales asset management (SAM) solution, the reality is that it is always wise to organize, streamline and tag content prior to launch.
Your sales team needs to be excited about the new capabilities you just invested in, and that means having viable content they’re going to love using on day one. First things first – do a sales content “gut check” for the following considerations:
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The buyer’s journey and sales process. Ideally, the sales team understands the steps buyers take when making a purchasing decision and how to align their engagements accordingly. This often becomes the basis for organizing sales content – what content should be leveraged in each buyer’s step in order to move the sale forward? It’s important to also consider what your best reps are leveraging during each stage. How can you better target the content by segment (e.g. industry, buyer persona)?
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Buyer and seller content. Reps need to leverage two types of content: external content that activates buyers and internal content that empowers sellers. Too often, organizations focus only on the buyer-facing content. Consider what resources (e.g. job aids, video examples, reference material) will assist reps with pursuing meaningful engagements at each stage and achieve guided selling through technology.
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Seller personas. Personas don’t stop with buyers; look at the roles within your own organization that are involved in the selling process – reps, managers, teleprospecting and specialists. Is there content tailored to each of these roles? Can existing content be modified or altered to better suit some of these roles? Does your content align with how the rep sells? If you sell face-to-face, you may have plenty of presentation resources, but if others sell over the phone, are effective call scripts readily available? Look at the most prevalent sales activities by role and make sure there is a volume of content to support those motions. Your inside sales team is unlikely to be excited about an incredible PowerPoint used for onsite visits.
It’s an exciting proposition to move your sales team from a clunky storage environment to a streamlined asset solution they can easily leverage in the field. When it’s done right, both buyers and sellers appreciate the better conversations they’re having. Fully audit your current content and gaps. Don’t completely rely on a vendor to assess only what you currently have available. Take charge of the content audit and if integration and implementation sound too easy and too good to be true, the SAM solution probably won’t net the results you’re looking for.