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4 Tips for Packaging Sales Content to Increase Usage Rates

By Seismic — On March 23, 2016

As a B2B marketer, you understand how important content is to accelerating sales cycles and winning deals. But you also know there might be a disconnect between marketers’ content creation and sales reps’ content usage and feel there must be a better way to deliver that content to sales. An estimated that between 65% of collateral created by marketing goes unused by sales reps. This leaves a huge improvement in packaging and delivering sales content to the reps that use it.

B2B marketing teams put so much research, time, and effort into creating the best content for sales teams, but if that content isn’t presented to sales the way they need to consume it, it won’t get used. There are several ways that marketers can better package and deliver their content to sales to ensure optimal usage.

Create content for activation and empowerment

We recommend creating and packaging content for two specific use cases: empowerment and activation. Empowerment content is designed for internal use and helps sales reps prepare for buyer interactions. This sales enablement content includes product information, competitive differentiators, battle cards, and more. Activation content includes sales collateral that's customer-facing. Therefore, it should incorporate proper messaging and branding. These two types of content shouldn't be interchangeable, and reps should easily be able to tell the difference between the two.

Analyze and understand sales consumption patterns

Salespeople undoubtedly have individual and differing preferences when it comes to consuming content. These preferences depend on the sales cycle stage and the rep's specific role. For example, inside reps working with buyers in the early stages may be more likely to access content from a desktop, sales CRM, or other online portal, while outside reps meeting with buyers face-to-face may prefer content to be accessible from mobile devices or tablets. Marketing teams should take notice of these preferences and package content accordingly.

Serve content to reps when and where they need it

Today's buyers are in the driver's seat when it comes to making purchase decisions, so sales reps need more supporting content than ever to engage with these buyers. Activation content should be specific to the buyer's role, industry, and stage in the purchase process, and should be segmented by these buyer characteristics for reps to easily locate and share. If possible, content should be mapped and tagged to CRM opportunity characteristics and served up to reps within the CRM.

Get constant feedback from sales

To understand how specific reps or groups of reps prefer to receive content, marketing teams should receive constant feedback from sellers. Reps' preferences likely change over time, so their consumption patterns and usage rates will as well. Marketers should have full visibility into how content is used. Review which reps are using what content, what device(s) they are accessing content from, and how, when, and with whom the content is shared externally. The goal is to serve content to any rep wherever they are—directly within email, CRM, or a universally accessible portal—and have it be as relevant to their specific buyer interaction as possible. Constant content usage analytics can help gain these insights and adjust content offerings accordingly.

When arming sales reps for success, creating good content is only half the battle for marketing teams. It's important to understand how to package that content properly so sellers can easily access, consume, understand, and share that content with the appropriate audiences. Taking the tips above into consideration will help your marketing team increase usage rates of the content it creates, while making sales more effective in the process

Sales content FAQ

What are some practical strategies for effectively analyzing and understanding sales reps' consumption patterns?

We recommend focusing on sales CRM and sales content analytics. A sales CRM tracks which content is accessed by sellers, when they access it, and how frequently. This helps identify which types of content are most popular and useful during different stages of the sales cycle. Specialized sales content analytic tools can also offer more detailed insights by tracking when and how content is used. This data is crucial for identifying which formats and platforms are preferred by sellers.

What are the best methods for collecting and utilizing feedback from sales reps?

Conduct regular surveys with sales reps to understand their content preferences, including the format they prefer (PDF, video, slides, etc.) and the platforms they use (desktop, mobile, etc.). Feedback sessions and focus groups can also provide deeper insights into their needs.

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