Sales Content Challenges #1

This is the first article in a series on the value and challenges of producing the type of sales content that motivates customers to buy, drives cross selling and provides sales people with the type of content they need to be more effective and productive.  I want to thank my good friend, Stephen Diorio of Profitable Channels, for this summary that was taken from his excellent white paper “Effective Sales Content: The Key to Sales Success”. (You will be given the ability to request a copy of this white paper at the end of this article.) Below is a diagram of what his research discovered about the impact of content in today’s B2B Sales and Marketing efforts.

There is so much quality information and content in this paper that I want to share some very important points and highlights that Stephen has identified. First, allow me to give you a brief background on Mr. Diorio. “Stephen Diorio is the Founder of Profitable Channels and an established authority in sales enablement and channel strategy. He has twenty five years of experience executing innovative go-to-market strategies for over 100 leading sales organizations – including Merrill Lynch, American Express, CBS, DuPont, UPS, and IBM”,  just to name a few. Mr. Diorio is an expert on how technology companies can improve sales effectiveness, and author of Beyond e: 12 Ways Technology Will Transform Sales & Marketing Strategy (McGraw-Hill).

So, Stephen writes: “Business-to-business leaders are searching for ways to improve sales productivity, battle rising selling costs, accelerate skills development and transition to solution selling. What most don’t realize is that the quality and effectiveness of their sales content are critical to addressing these issues.”  “Sales content has emerged as a top business issue, as it represents one quarter of sales and marketing spend, and determines the effectiveness of the rest of the sales and marketing mix – including sales training, marketing automation, sales productivity, sales enablement and social media.”

Stephen goes on to further identify: “The business consequences of low quality and poorly organized content are unproductive selling efforts, a poor client experience, higher selling costs and, in most cases, outright waste.

For example:

• Over 60% of the content created by B2B marketing departments is not used by sales (Sirius Decisions);
• Most organizations do not tailor content by the stage of the buying cycle (Content Marketing Institute);
• Most sales managers believe that content created by marketing fails to motivate customers to buy, drive cross sell or challenge the customer mindset (Richardson Survey 2013);
• 80% of training is not retained after 60 days (Accenture study)”

Needless to say, there is some great insight and research that Stephen has done that is disclosed in greater detail in his white paper. If you would like to receive a free copy of this outstanding white paper, then simply give your name and email address at the bottom of this page, and in the message box just state:  “requesting white paper” and we will email it back to you.

Because most sales and marketing organizations are not as aligned as they should or could be, this important aspect of effective sales content and the impact it has on the whole sales process is often overlooked. Compendian’s CollaboRate™ was created to solve that problem and more. So, check us out. If you’re not sure whether this is an issue in your organization, let us send you a short single page assessment to see whether or not this is an issue. What have you got to lose?

At least that’s the way I see it, what say you?