Watch a quick demo or schedule time with us.
Schedule a demo, or contact support.
Most businesses struggle with maintaining their content inventory because of the lack of a robust sales enablement content management system.
For sales teams, the goal is to meet their quota by any means necessary, but more often than not, the driver turns out to be content.
For example, prospects might ask sales reps how a specific product feature works or the ROI of purchasing the product. They’ll likely send a case study or product brochure addressing these points.
The idea is that sales reps need to offer prospects the right content at the right time to drive sales conversations. But that can only happen if they have an easy-to-use content hub that gives them access to relevant content.
This article will discuss the pitfalls of not having a sales content management system and how to create a robust one for your business.
As a marketer, we’re sure you have several challenges when managing a sales-focused content library. Here’s what a few experienced marketers have to say:
Sales teams have access to a limited number of assets they use repeatedly. However, over time, the assets may run out of their conversion potential because they’re outdated or irrelevant. For example, a research report from 2013 isn’t relevant anymore because so much has changed.
Also, content teams launch updated assets all the time. They could do this for several reasons:
Leonard Scheiner, CEO of Geek Haus, says, “One challenge that we face is, ‘What’s the latest version?’ We’re constantly updating things to be better, more relevant, and more specific. So we might update things multiple times a year, quarter, or even multiple times a month, but we want to be cognizant of providing the latest and best-updated version to our potential customers.”
So, if your sales teams have no idea that these assets have been updated, you’re wasting time and money.
Too often, sales teams are unaware that you’ve created new assets.
Nadine Leighton, Marketing Director at Metapraxis, says, “It’s not uncommon for some sales team members to go rogue and save documents on their desktops or similar. You usually find this out in conversations with the team or when they send you something they’ve been using that they may have created themselves that’s not using the correct branding or is just no longer aligned with updated positioning/messaging.”
There are two reasons for this: they either don’t know such an asset exists or don’t have an organized system.
Not every piece is evergreen. Trends come and go, and even minute details of your business can change rapidly—depending on the market. Eventually, it affects your content library as these assets become irrelevant.
Mia Comic, Content Marketer at Instrumentl, agrees, “We have a lot of materials, ranging from pitch decks to case studies, and it can be difficult to keep track of every single asset to ensure they’re accurate and relevant.”
Soon, you’ll have a stockpile of irrelevant assets and not enough of what you need.
Without an organized system, you won’t know what’s being used or collecting dust. You’ll also lack data on which part of the sales cycle needs more content—and sales reps default to reusing the same assets they have.
Another aspect that marketers need help with is monitoring the performance of their content. By that, we don’t mean the amount of traffic but indicators like customer engagement, leads, and revenue.
Most marketers use no-code tools like Notion, Airtable, etc., to catalog their assets. But these tools don’t give you data on the content’s engagement or conversion rate.
Alex Birkett, Co-founder of Omniscient Digital, says, “The biggest challenge has been cataloging, maintaining, and operationalizing this content at the right time. We currently use a Notion library to catalog everything, but it’s not the easiest system to use. I still have to remember that we have a given piece of content and surface it to the prospect at the right time.”
Plus, even if you know the engagement or conversion rate, you can’t tie it back to how sales teams use it without an upvoting system in place.
Creating a content management system that works for both marketing and sales teams can be tricky. Both these teams have different goals—leading to a disconnect between them.
Ajay Paghdal, Founder of Only Outreach, says, “Sales teams are often focused on generating short-term results, while marketing teams are more likely to focus on long-term brand building and relationship development. This can lead to tension between the two groups, as sales may feel that they’re not getting the quality or quantity of leads they need from marketing.”
To prevent this from happening, create a robust sales content management system that serves all internal teams. Here’s how you can do it:
Content library audits help you to identify what content works well and what doesn’t. You need to prioritize your current strategy.
Ideally, a good audit should focus on five things:
Based on this, you can either keep, modify, or discard the asset. There are a couple of other indicators as well. For example, how much conversion potential does this asset have? Or even how much revenue has it generated in the past? Is this being used a lot right now? If yes, why? It’ll tell you what to double down on when creating more content.
A library of resources is essential to any effective sales enablement strategy. It should include everything from product information and case studies to news, events, and industry insights relevant to your business. It’ll make it easier for your team members to find what they need while also helping them stay on top of changes in the industry or market.
At Content Camel, we have a solution to help you do just that. You can upload your assets in different file formats—whether a link, image, video, or PDF/DOCX file and categorize them using different tags.
Categorize assets and make them search-friendly
To organize your content library, you need to do two things: use a sales content management system and assign a dedicated individual to maintain it. Matthew Ramirez, Founder of Rephrasely, agrees, too, as it’s tedious to keep creating and maintaining a relevant sales-focused library.
“Have a central person or group of people who maintain the content inventory/library. This ensures that all new content is being added promptly and that it is being categorized appropriately so that we can search for it later. In addition, we make sure that we are constantly communicating with our internal audience about the existence of the content inventory/library and encourage them to submit their content for inclusion,” notes Matthew.
It’s vital that this person is familiar with the company’s brand guidelines and conducts regular audits after aligning with sales teams. This also means that they need to monitor old and new content while deleting outdated assets periodically. Even though continuous maintenance sounds tedious, it doesn’t have to be. Using Content Camel, you can organize the assets using categories like:
Plus, you can create dedicated microsites with all the supporting assets and hand them to the sales teams.
Bundle relevant assets together and share them with prospects using a single link
You don’t have to use different tools to monitor performance. Consolidate the data in a single platform like Content Camel instead. You can track the time visitors spend on each page and how often each article has been viewed, downloaded, or shared on social media platforms like Twitter or LinkedIn. This information lets you see which topics are more popular and adjust your marketing strategy accordingly.
Also, you can tap into which assets are in demand by your sales team by monitoring the number of views, shares, downloads, link clicks, and more. Here’s what our Analytics feature looks like:
You can track how sales teams or buyers are engaging with specific assets—and identify the most popular assets
Don’t give your sales reps access to the entire inventory without proper onboarding. First, you need to explain how different assets have been organized and how they can search for newer ones.
If there are specific microsites you’ve created, give them the links to all of those so that they can hit the ground running. Moreover, such a system allows you to curate specific bundles based on the buyer journey and pain points. This practice will enable sales reps to access what they need in one go—and nothing goes unused.
As they have access to reporting and wishlist features, they can immediately add the relevant notes without reaching out to you first. Within Content Camel’s system, sales reps can directly request new assets depending on customer demands. They can add information like the pain points, why they need it, the revenue potential, and more.
Sales reps can request content within the same system
Plus, you also need a system that has a strong search feature. Michael Alexis, CEO of Team Building, says “Our solution has been to leverage the search features in our content management and project management tools. We also use automation to update databases so actions within these platforms immediately appear within relevant spreadsheets. These methods help us stay organized, avoid duplicating content, and quickly locate resources.”
This streamlines the entire process, saves time in the long run, and helps your company get the most out of its investment.
In short, sales content management is about having a central place to receive and share your marketing and sales content. That’s it.
It doesn’t require any complex or sophisticated tools. It doesn’t have to be a headache-inducing process either. All it needs is re-organization and a willingness to try more robust tools to achieve it.
Also, companies are now looking for new ways to improve sales productivity. Automating the content workflow, improving their discoverability, speeding up the delivery of content to sales teams, and, most importantly, measuring ROI—all contribute to better sales productivity. This approach will eventually lead to better customer acquisition (and retention) for your company.
If you’re looking for a sales content management tool for your business, start a free trial of Content Camel today.
Personalize follow up. Easily share content. Track results.
Content Camel is a sales enablement tool used for sales content management. High-growth sales teams use our system to quickly find and share the right content for each specific sales situation and measure content use and effectiveness.