Introduction

When it comes to closing a deal, having the right sales content can make the difference between signing up a new customer or losing them to a competitor. By providing reps with relevant materials such as case studies, white papers, email templates, scripts, and eBooks, they can address concerns, showcase return on investment (ROI), and build trust. 

Although this sounds simple in theory, it’s a lot harder in practice. Approximately 65% of B2B assets go unused. This means the majority of sales content isn’t being leveraged to its full potential, despite 95% of sales reps saying they don’t have enough valuable content. 

This begs the question: How can organizations effectively manage and utilize their sales content to ensure that it reaches its intended audience and increases conversions? We’ll address this question as we work through this article, and we’ll also guide you through how to build a winning content management strategy your team will love. 

What is Sales Content Management?

The role of sales content management is to ensure that all sales materials are organized, accessible, and up to date. Reps should always be informed about new content available, know where to access it, and how to use it. This is key to maintaining a consistent and efficient sales process that will ultimately drive higher conversion rates. 

Sales content influences the buyer journey throughout each stage by providing relevant, timely resources that speak to where the prospect is in their buyer journey. Here’s how it helps buyers as they move through each stage:

• Awareness: In the awareness stage when your prospects are exploring their options, blog articles, infographics, and product explainer videos can give them a warm introduction to your solution. These assets help educate buyers about their challenges and how your product or service can address them, which lays the groundwork for deeper engagement. 

• Consideration: During the consideration stage, more hyper-relevant content such as case studies and product comparisons that demonstrate ROI can help prospects make a more informed decision as they weigh their options. 

• Decision: In the decision stage, personalized sales pitches, customer testimonials, and product demos can reinforce trust and persuade buyers to choose your solution. 

Why is Sales Content Management Important?

Sales content management is important because it gives reps the tools they need to speed up the sales process, provide buyers with relevant, valuable information, and close more deals. And since a whopping 95% of buying decisions are directly influenced by content, organizations literally can’t afford to not have a solid content management system in place. 

Building a Winning Sales Content Management Strategy

Now that you know what content management is and why it’s important, let’s discuss how to build a winning strategy that works. We’ll explore the five key steps in more detail below. At a glance, they are:

1. Identify buyer personas and their needs 
2. Develop a sales-aligned content calendar 
3. Create high-quality, engaging content
4. Implement a Content Management System (CMS)
5. Track content usage and optimize for better results 

Identify Buyer Personas & Their Needs

Before you dive headfirst into building your content management strategy, you need to take a step back and identify your buyer personas and their needs. Understanding your target audience is paramount to creating sales content that is effective and turns prospects into customers. 

As you map out your buyer personas, make sure to include information about their demographics, job roles, buying behaviors, and pain points. This includes everything from industry and company size to annual revenue, job titles, preferred communication channels, and the problems your buyers face the most. 

A good place to start is with your current customers. Use the data and insights you have to analyze customer trends, preferences, and common themes. You can do this by conducting surveys, interviewing customers, examining your CRM data, reviewing feedback, and by regularly checking in with your sales team. This data can provide invaluable insights into customer behavior, common objections, and what elements of your product or service your customers appreciate the most.

Develop a Sales-Aligned Content Calendar

Change is the only constant in life, and this is especially true in B2B industries. With new technologies emerging, shifting preferences, and evolving trends, it’s crucial to stay on top of what’s relevant to your customers. This is why creating and maintaining a content calendar is so important. Not only does it keep your team organized, but it also ensures your reps have the right support at the right times.

Map out your sales cycle and identify the stages where different types of content will be most effective. Schedule content releases to align with key phases of the buyer journey, such as awareness, consideration, and decision. This will help your organization maintain consistency, and it also ensures your team always has the most updated, relevant content at each stage. 

Create High-Quality, Engaging Sales Content

The average person who visits your website will leave within 20 seconds. But if you can get a visitor to stay on your website for 30 seconds, you significantly increase your chances of capturing their interest. The bottom line: when it comes to content, you don’t have the luxury of time. You need to get to the point quickly and lead with value. 

Rather than fluff, focus on producing content that is informative, visually appealing, and easy to consume. The vast majority of people — 79% — scan content rather than read it in full. Use bullet points, infographics, and visuals in your blog posts, white papers, and case studies. Also, make sure your content is well-researched and aligned with the needs and preferences of your target audience. 

Implement a Sales Content Management System

Remember the earlier statistic that 65% of B2B assets go unused, while 95% of reps say they don’t have enough valuable content? Much of this miscommunication can be attributed to not having a sales content management system (CMS) in place. 

A CMS allows teams to create, organize, update, track, and access sales content in one place. It acts as a single source of truth that improves productivity, ensures accurate messaging, and streamlines the sales process. In essence, it bridges the gap and ensures that the valuable content being created is also being used!

Track Content Usage & Optimize for Better Results

The only way to know what content resonates the most with your buyers is to monitor the performance of your sales assets. Use analytics tools to track metrics such as content views, downloads, and engagement rates. Gather feedback from your sales team on the usefulness and impact of the content. Analyze this data to identify what’s working and what’s not. Then you can make informed decisions about how to optimize your content strategy for better results. 

How to Effectively Use a Sales Content Management System

Implementing a CMS is just the first step. Once your CMS is ready to go, there are several key factors to consider to ensure it’s used effectively. These include:

1. User adoption and training
2. Content organization and tagging
3. Content version control and approval workflow
4. Content analytics and reporting

Let’s explore each one in more detail! 

User Adoption and Training

There’s nothing worse than implementing a new system with the potential to transform your organization, only to have no one know how to use it. Don’t make this mistake with your CMS. Provide comprehensive training on the CMS and its functionalities so your reps can navigate it with ease. Your goal is to ensure your team knows how to use the system effectively, enabling them to easily create, find, and manage content. Host regular training sessions to keep everyone on the same page, and update the assets regularly to reflect new features, industry trends, and new case studies. 

Content Organization and Tagging

In sales, efficiency is key. You want your reps to have access to the content they need, when they need it. To achieve this with your CMS, implement a clear and consistent structure for categorizing content. Use tags and categories to make it easy for users to quickly find what they need. 

Content tagging examples: 

• Content type: Product explainer, blog post, eBook, case study, testimonial, infographic 
• Funnel stage: Awareness, consideration, decision 
• Industry type: Technology, finance, healthcare, etc. 

A well-organized CMS reduces time spent searching for materials and ensures that your sales reps always have the most relevant content at their fingertips.

Content Version Control and Approval Workflow

Your CMS will offer version control features that you can leverage to ensure all changes are tracked. This allows you to manage different versions of your content, see who made changes, and know exactly what was altered. Alongside version control, implement an approval workflow to make sure all content is reviewed and approved before it’s published — this way your team can only share accurate, pre-approved content. 

Content Analytics and Reporting

Schedule time on a weekly basis to review content usage and engagement metrics. This will help you keep a pulse on what content is frequently used, as well as the content that drives conversions. Identify top-performing assets and share the results with your team so they can leverage the pieces that work. If you find certain assets aren’t resonating, perhaps because they’re outdated or no longer relevant, take the opportunity to update or replace them with fresh, relevant content.

Benefits of using a Sales Content Management System 

Rather than operating from disparate sources, or worse — not knowing valuable content exists — a CMS system helps sales teams keep content assets organized, updated, and readily accessible. 

In addition to this, a CMS offers several key benefits, including optimized, data-driven sales collateral, a single source of truth, and enhanced sales and marketing alignment. We’ll cover each of these in more detail below.

Optimizing Sales Collateral 

There’s nothing more ineffective than outdated, irrelevant content. But with a CMS, you can keep your content fresh and optimized. Regular updates and version control features ensure that your sales team always has access to the most current and accurate information. 

Plus, you’ll be able to use the CMS data to understand customer behavior, feedback, and engagement metrics, which allows you to optimize content specifically for your audience. This way, you won’t end up with a bunch of content that doesn’t resonate or get used. 

Sales Enablement Single Source of Truth

Here’s a wild stat: the average rep spends 440 hours a year trying to find the right sales enablement content to share with prospects. That’s equivalent to 11 work weeks, assuming your reps work 40 hours per week. 

Think about all of the missed opportunities and revenue your reps are losing out on (not to mention your company) because of this inefficiency. But with a CMS, your team operates from a single source of truth meaning:

• Increased productivity
• Consistent messaging
• Better collaboration
• Data-driven, optimized content
• Efficient onboarding 

Additionally, a CMS will help your sales and marketing teams stay aligned, addressing a common challenge for many companies. When these teams aren’t on the same page, it can lead to several issues, including missed opportunities, wasted resources, delayed responses to customers and prospects, and strategic misalignment.

Conclusion

Here’s the bottom line: implementing a CMS to manage your content, keep it organized and updated, and continuously optimize it will save your organization time, money, and valuable resources. With a centralized system, your sales team can easily access the most relevant, updated assets, which means they’ll spend less time searching for content and more time engaging with prospects. 

Ultimately, investing in a CMS is not just about improving content organization; it’s about empowering your team to perform at their best and driving the growth and success of your business.