It’s no secret that sales teams avoid much of the digital content that marketing teams are putting out. There are many reasons for this, but the bigger challenge is that sales reps are spending time creating content instead of focusing on selling, and time spent selling has been declining since 1998.
However, the content that sales teams do create is used more, liked more, and better meets the needs of sales reps in the field.
Today’s article will make a positive case for when sales reps should in fact be creating content, and how to make sure that content creation is done right for maximum impact across the sales process.
This article continues our previous discussions around digital sales and marketing content.
Click Here to learn about why sales doesn’t use digital content created for them.
Click Here to learn about what sales reps want from digital content sales material.
Click Here to see our previous post about why sales reps shouldn’t be creating content.
If you followed our previous article, we offered three arguments for why sales reps shouldn’t be creating content. Although it may seem contradictory to make a case for sales created content, the phenomenon is too wide spread to simply avoid and ignore as ‘wrong’.
To explore the issue, we’ll take some perspectives from leaders in sales and marketing.
Why are Sales Reps Creating Content,
Bob Apollo, a Fellow with the Association of Professional Sales and member of the Harvard Business Review Advisory Council says,
“… let’s face it, a common reason [that sales reps create content] is that the marketing department simply isn’t giving them what they need. So they rise to the occasion and fill the gap not because they have an ambition to be a content marketer, but because nature abhors a vacuum. It’s still (unfortunately) a far more common phenomenon that many “new age” marketers would like to think.”
As we’ve seen, sales reps have 4 common issues with content created by marketing, and these form the vacuum that Rob is referring to.
Why Should Sales Reps be Creating Content,
Andrew Rudin, Managing Principal at Contrary Domino, Inc. says,
“Are they any different from other professionals when it comes to personal and professional development? If finding an issue that matters to customers, researching it and writing about it cogently enhances a salesperson’s knowledge and self-esteem, then, in my view, it’s not a waste of time. Even if not one person reads it, the salesperson has gained knowledge, and honed communication skills.”
Creating digital content does codify knowledge. That document can be referred to in the future for valuable insight, and as we’ve explained before, sales people are very in tune with the needs of their buyers along the decision journey.
Sales reps do in fact share common desires from the content created by marketing. The issue is that few marketers include sales reps in the creation of customer facing content.
Why We should be Cautious about Sales Created Content,
Matt Heinz, President of Heinz Marketing explains,
“I completely agree that first-hand experience and reflection can be key to improving not just understanding and perception but also empathy and connection with your prospects… It’s just that the time and effort (and replacement cost) of doing this for all reps isn’t always a positive trade-off.”
Matt touches on the key challenge of having content that is created by the sales team. The sales department can consist of thousands of people. If each person is creating their own content, the cumulative result is hundreds of thousands of hours each year being consumed by content creation that lacks both coordination and integration with the other communication pieces of the company.
Marketing teams work diligently to craft an integrated marketing communications strategy for all customer facing touch points. When sales reps create content that they use to share with buyers, huge gaps are created in the experience, and it becomes increasingly difficult for multiple sales reps to coordinate a sales interaction with one buyer.
How can We do it Right,
Jim Burns, Founder and President of Avitage, a B2B Content Creation Agency for Marketing and Sales content reveals that,
“Sales VPs must take responsibility for making sales ready, customer relevant content a priority to the business… Sales VPs must get the organization to assign accountability for providing sales the content they need… Then, sales must define their requirements, with assistance from the right people, presumably in marketing.”
David Brock, President at Partners in EXCELLENCE builds on these thoughts by adding that,
“Naturally, they can’t do it in isolation, so they need to do these collaboratively, engaging product marketing/management, customer service, sales, even–dare [I] say the customer. If some of those organizations don’t feel the right approach is being taken, then it’s there responsibility to resolve the issue. If whoever develops content, thinks that sales isn’t leveraging it as effectively as possible, then they need to resolve it. That’s how organizations work.”
This is exactly the kind of the thing we champion here at Skura. If communication isn’t happening, the problems won’t go away. It’s too broad a statement to say that sales shouldn’t be creating any content whatsoever, but IMC that actually includes the sales team may never happen if a system isn’t put in place to enhance the content management protocol.
(Source for Commentary: Customer Think, 2015)
A Short Term Solution for Long Term Outcomes
Digital content is just that – digital. To solve these short term digital-based problems, a digital-based solution is required. Using the right sales stack is one way to solve these issues from day one.
Here’s how:
A complete sales stack includes a communication and content management tool like sales enablement.
Sales enablement software allows sales reps to upload created content to a shared digital content management platform for global dissemination. An effective content management platform automatically makes this content accessible on any device.
Tags and search keys can be added to make it searchable and usable. Finally, CRM and marketing automation integration informs sales reps and marketers about the content that is consumed most often, and the effectiveness of that content for the buyers who have been shown this content.
If the most used content also happens to be something marketing didn’t create, it’ll be obvious from the analytics. Marketers can review the content that sales teams actually did use, and then tailor their content for these applications.
A holistic sales stack that includes the right tools actually eliminates sales content challenges by empowering sales reps and marketing teams to carry on with their daily operations while also influencing incremental improvements.
On a long term, this kind of end-to-end information sharing becomes an efficient closed loop marketing system, and sales and marketing alignment begins to form out of appreciation for how both teams can support each other.
Concrete and long term improvements to sales and marketing operations are exactly why Skura’s SFX Sales Enablement suite has been named a top sales tool by Smart Selling Tools two years in a row. If your sales teams struggle with content, and marketing isn’t creating the right content to close the deal, request a demo and let us show you just how easy perfect end-to-end content creation can be.
