Fastly's Senior Director of Enablement reveals the Sales Advisory Council framework that ensures 90%+ content adoption by involving top performers early.
Sixty-five to 90% of sales content goes unused by sellers. If you’re spending a large amount of money on content creation, just imagine how much you’re unknowingly wasting.
It’s easy to point fingers or assume the issue is quality, but the real problem is that content is typically created in a vacuum. Enablement teams are making decisions about what to prioritize without a steady process or consistent, structured input from the people who actually take those materials into the field.
And when content doesn’t reflect the real conversations sellers are having with buyers, it misses the mark. Reps won’t use it. Leaders don’t trust it. And enablement teams are left scratching their heads, wondering why adoption never sticks.
But here’s the thing: the highest-performing organizations do things differently. Rather than pushing content at sellers that they don’t want or need, they bring sellers into the process from the get go.
They co-create. And the results speak for themselves. With structured feedback loops from Sales Content Advisory boards, every asset is field tested before launch, and shaped by real objections, real deal patterns, and real customer conversations.
In this article, we’ll walk you through why building a Sales Content Advisory Council is essential to your organization, and outline the actionable steps you can take to start building yours today.
Here’s a question: If you were researching anything — a new platform, a competitor, a business problem — and the content that surfaced in your search or was emailed to you by a rep was irrelevant, outdated, or clearly written without a real buyer in mind, would you go back for more information? Probably not. And the unfortunate truth is that this is exactly how a lot of enablement content gets created . . . based on what GTM teams think sellers need, rather than what they would actually use in a real conversation.
And yes, it's done with the best of intentions. Everyone involved genuinely wants to help sellers win. But do intentions really matter when the content doesn’t convert, doesn’t land with buyers, and doesn’t reflect the actual objections coming up in deals? No. And when content consistently misses the mark, teams fall into the “one-time training” trap (which is just a fancy way of saying that once you lose your audience, it’s almost impossible to get them back).
The bottom line? “Don't make decisions in a box. I think sales advisory councils are huge to make sure that we are hitting the mark,” says Andrew Zinger, Senior Director of Global Sales Enablement at Fastly.
Andrew’s point gets to the heart of the problem. The only way to break the cycle is to build systematic feedback loops with the people who will actually use the content. Sales Content Advisory Boards give sellers a consistent voice in the process and ensure every asset is grounded in real objections, real deal patterns, and the actual conversations happening in the field.
By now, you may be wondering: What is a Sales Advisory Council? Put simply, it’s a cross-functional group of top-performing sellers who provide structured, ongoing feedback on enablement initiatives before those materials ever reach the broader team. It functions as a built-in quality control system that’s grounded in real-time conversations happening across the field.
A well-balanced sales advisory council includes:
Rather than relying on volunteers or pulling names at random, your council should be made up of top performers from each audience you support. These are the people who actually know what resonates with buyers, and won’t sugarcoat it when something doesn’t.
As Andrew puts it, “We pick individuals that are top performers from each of the roles under the audiences that we support. We meet on a monthly basis live, but we also have a Slack channel where we can do some async back and forth and get feedback on content so we can make sure we’re talking the right language and creating materials and assets our reps would actually use.”
Building a Sales Advisory Council isn’t complicated, but it does require intention. The quality of the council determines the quality of the content, so the structure matters.
Here’s a 4-part framework that works:
Part 1: Strategic Selection
The foundation of any effective council starts with who you bring into the room. You’re not looking for volunteers, nor are you pulling random names from a list. You want top performers from every audience you support.
This can include one or more of the following:
These are the sellers who know what lands with buyers and can articulate why something works. They’re able to evangelize internally and externally.
Part 2: Regular Touchpoints
Once you’ve assembled the right group, regular touchpoints are essential. These include:
Together, these touchpoints build momentum and create the consistency and trust needed for sellers to engage meaningfully with content, and for the council to actually influence what gets built.
Part 3: Feedback Loops That Matter
This is where the content gets real. Every asset goes through three quick checks to make sure it’s seller-approved prior to creation.
This feedback loop is how you cut through the noise and produce assets that matter to both buyers and sellers. “Are we talking the right language and are we presenting you with materials and assets you would actually use? So we’re not mis-utilizing resources across the organization,” stresses Andrew.
Part 4: Recognition and Influence
A Sales Advisory Council isn’t just about feedback; it’s also about influence. Members get real perks: early visibility into company strategy, a first look at what’s coming, and direct input into what actually gets built. That level of access turns them into internal champions who can advocate for new initiatives and help drive adoption across the field. It’s recognition, and it’s strategic alignment.
When sellers validate what you’re creating, you protect your time, protect your resources, and dramatically increase the odds that your content actually gets used.
“Nothing great I’ve ever done has ever been done alone. Cross-functional partnerships are vital to success. They help teams buy into the big vision,” explains Andrew.
He’s right. Cross-functional partnerships matter because they create alignment around what actually drives revenue. When product marketing, sales ops, and leadership are aligned, content stops living in silos and starts reinforcing a unified GTM motion.
Each team plays a critical role. Product marketing brings messaging and positioning. Sales ops brings field data on what’s working and what’s not. Leadership sets priorities and removes roadblocks. Together, their inputs shape content that’s both accurate and actionable.
But alignment doesn’t happen automatically. Sometimes it requires uncomfortable conversations about why the current content isn’t working. Maybe product marketing is producing messaging that’s too high-level for enterprise buyers. Maybe sales ops is optimizing for activities that don’t reflect how reps actually sell. Maybe leadership is pushing decks that don’t match market reality. When you involve stakeholders early, show them the gaps, and offer a clearer path forward, they stop defending old habits and start pivoting with you.
And that’s when the shift happens. Teams understand why changes are being made. They support the process because they helped build it.
If an advisory council isn’t delivering value, it’s usually because of avoidable mistakes. Here are the ones that hurt teams most and how to avoid them.
Mistake #1: Selecting volunteers instead of top performers
If an enterprise rep who struggles to hit quota volunteers and gets a seat on the council, their feedback won’t carry weight with high-performing peers. But if your top enterprise AE (who regularly closes multi-threaded, six-figure deals) says a discovery guide isn’t usable, the rest of the field pays attention.
The bottom line is that a volunteer-based council, while nice in theory, lacks the credibility to influence the field. Reps follow sellers who win.
To avoid this mistake, select members based on performance data, peer influence, and field impact as your criteria.
Mistake #2: Turning meetings into presentationsCouldn’t this have been an email?”
If your council members are walking into meetings with that mindset, they’ve already checked out—and you’re not getting anything worth acting on. Sellers are busy, and if the session feels like another enablement update, the feedback will be surface-level at best.
A council is not an audience. It’s a working group.
To make the time count, show up with drafts, message tests, early outlines, and rough ideas. Let sellers react in real time, poke holes in your assumptions, and tell you what won’t land with a CIO, a VP of Ops, or a skeptical champion.
Mistake #3: Relying only on monthly meetings
Monthly cadence can’t keep up with shifting product updates, market moves, or competitive pressures. By the time you meet again, the window for meaningful input has passed.
To avoid this mistake, use async channels (think: Slack, Teams, etc.) to collect quick reactions and keep feedback flowing between meetings.
Mistake #4: Not acting on the feedback you receive
If your sellers give you valuable feedback — listen, and act on it. Nothing is more discouraging than taking the time to give honest input and watching it vanish into a black hole. Top performers won’t keep participating if their feedback goes nowhere. Silence kills engagement faster than anything else.
To avoid this mistake, close the loop every time. Show what changed, what didn’t, and why. Share updated drafts, revised slides, or before-and-after examples. This is how you build trust and keep your best sellers invested.
A well-run Sales Advisory Council will drive measurable improvements. To prove the impact, track both leading and lagging indicators, along with qualitative signals that show how the council is influencing the field.
Leading indicators such as content adoption rates and time-to-adoption for new methodologies show early traction around how your Sales Advisory Council’s work is performing. When you see assets being used more consistently, frameworks getting picked up faster, and seller satisfaction scores rising, it’s a clear sign the council is making your content more relevant and usable.
Here are three leading indicators to pay attention to:
When sellers help shape the narrative, they’re far more likely to put it into play. For example, if an enterprise deck jumps from 18% usage to 62% after the council rewrites the story to reflect real deal patterns, this is the kind of movement that shows the process is working.
Lagging Indicators
Lagging indicators take longer to surface, but they show whether the advisory council is influencing real business outcomes.
Examples of lagging indicators include:
Qualitative Measures
Some of the strongest indicators of council impact don’t show up in a dashboard, but they reveal exactly how deeply the work is taking hold across the organization.
Our most important takeaways? Implement these five strategies to build and launch a Sales Advisory Council that actually works:
In conclusion, remember: sellers want to use content they believe will help them win. And they believe in the content they helped build. A Sales Advisory Council makes that possible. It turns enablement into a team sport — one where the people closest to the deals help drive what gets created, tested, and launched.
