Why your biggest Sales Enablement problem isn't training, but content management
When I first meet with a client, they'll often describe a myriad of common challenges they're facing around behavior change, skill adoption, and process adherence. Frequently, they'll propose a solution around recreating or revamping a training program, implementing an expensive software they're considering buying, or introducing a new sales enablement content piece, like an updated pitch deck.
Sometimes, this is the solution to their problems. But, more than 75% of the time (when I dig in deeper), the issue is actually that they have plenty of updated content and process and simply need to make it more accessible for their sales teams to utilize it effectively.
This is what I call Sales Enablement content management. Now before we get too far into this article, I want to clarify I am NOT going to be talking about Sales Enablement Software. I am pro-Sales Enablement software for the right customers, but very few of the clients I work with necessarily need a tool that robust at the phase of growth they are in. In fact, this article will be talking about how to solve for this challenge without huge software or hiring investments.
First, let's define what "Sales Enablement content management" entails.
Process: Ensuring all process utilized by the sales team is documented in a simple to follow format: when to use, what to use, how to access, who to talk to if you have issues, and what to do (step-by-step, with screenshots). I highly recommend including written tutorials AND video demonstration for anything that requires more than 10 steps.
Conversation Aids: Ensuring all sales content that is supposed to inform a direct sales conversation is created in a format that is printable, digestible, glanceable and simple. This means all enablement content such as: talk tracks/scripts, buyer personas, battle cards, etc. Often times these things are pulled from training decks and hard to follow along with, in a live sales call. Don't throw out your training materials, but recognize the difference between a training deck and an enablement resource. It's the same core content, but different presentations of information, for different use cases (i.e. like a book vs a movie vs a TV show)
Value Building Content: Ensuring all customer-facing content used by the sales team to enable value building is up-to-date, aligned on messaging, and has a clearly defined use case for when and how Sales should utilize it. This includes all content such as: Pitch Decks, One-sheets, Customer Case Studies, eBooks, etc.
Organization and Accessibility: Ensuring all content listed above in 1-3 is organized in a single place, logically categorized, successfully managed, and easily accessible to the Sales team. This means using the current resources your team already has or by implementing a Sales Enablement Platform like Showpad or Seismic (if your team is mature enough to need those) to manage your content. On the free end, I see companies frequently utilize the following tools, already at their disposals, very successfully: Google Drive/Sites, Confluence, Sharepoint, etc.
So, how do you recognize if content management is your main issue to solve? Well, if any of this below resonates with you or sounds familiar, we should talk:
Your sales team struggles consistently to adopt new processes and behaviors that you've trained or shared information on, multiple times.
Your sales team consistently asks peers or managers the same "easy to answer" questions over and over.
Your management team is always sharing the same resources via slack or one-on-one's because the team can't seem to remember where to "self-serve answers".
Your sales team is using - or worse, sharing with customers - out of date enablement content.
Your sales team is only utilizing a small percentage of the marketing content created for them. Or, (not to make your marketing team cringe), your sales team consistently acts "surprised" by how much content exists when they "stumble upon it". Yes, please go hug your Product Marketing Manager now, they need it.
Finally, You have content stored in more than one system. It's totally fine to have content created in multiple places, but if it's not all navigable from ONE SINGLE place, it's like asking people to participate in a very frustrating scavenger hunt, with no set list of things to find, and with no prize at the end of every.single.day. Ooof.
If any of this sounds like you, we can get to the bottom of your content management issues together and help your team make better use of the process, content and training you've already invested so much into with out crazy financial investments. I PROMISE, this is fixable.