How to Bridge the Content Chasm Between Sales and Marketing
The GTM Newsletter
After three weeks, today is the day.
We finally have the whole team in the office together.
We’ve all been alternating being on the road, so it’s good to have the gang back together.
Anyway, let’s get into it.
This week is brought to you by Demandbase: Hit Your Revenue Goal. Use Fewer Resources.
Bridging the Content Chasm
Sales is increasingly using strategic content creation and distribution as part of the sales process - from outbound, to advancing pipeline along, to awareness and education on social platforms.
Sellers are responsible for educating their buyers digitally through multiple channels.
With that responsibility, often there is a need to create content to assist with the sales education process.
Here is how to think about ownership and process:
Ownership
Who should take ownership for the creation process and content that the sales team uses - marketing or sales?
Well… it’s a bit of a trick question.
Initiating the process could be either, as sales enablement is ideally an open and ongoing conversation.
As for who takes ownership, this is how it’s reported to be most effective:
Ownership of the assets: marketing.
Ownership of curating the assets and content into what will best resonate through sales channels: sales.
Marketing is the greenfield content creation engine, working with sales as they are pivotal to the content creation process.
Sales teams understand the pains and needs of the customer. Accordingly, it is best practice for marketing to seek out the sales teams input on content they should create when it relates to areas that sales interfaces with.
The process
Marketing content applied to sales use cases can fall flat and sound robotic. Russell Scherwin, Director, Facilitation at Force Management expresses that this is the worst thing you can do, as it dilutes brand value.
Knotch’s research findings support this, confirming the plot twist reality that not all content is good for your brand.
One way of combating this is that marketing creates messaging and visual content (where applicable) that provides guidance, while allowing sales to adapt it.
As Sam McKenna, Founder of #samsales, expresses: “while the marketing content is vital, what’s an important pair to that is how the seller presents it. They need to have relevance and a point of view.”
Simply sharing content without connecting the relevance alongside a point of view is, Sam states, “a missed opportunity to connect with the buyer and build rapport/show up as a consultant.”
It is extremely important to encourage sellers to post their own authentic spin on topics.
There are a multitude of ways to house the content once created, such as a shared Google Drive, Sharepoint, or softwares.
Scott Brown, Partner, Head of Platform at Cervin, notes that it’s important to ensure that a content silo doesn’t develop. This occurs when content is downloaded and eventually ends up on the desktop of a sales rep’s computer for usage, with the desktop being the source for pulling content. Despite sales enablement tools and processes, this inevitably does happen sometimes out of convenience.
The master recipe: content enablement with the empowerment of authenticity.
Provide the necessary resources, guidance and support to enable the sales team to leverage content, while empowering them to develop their authentic voice.
It’s a team effort.
👀 More for your eyeballs:
Enough hunch-based selling. At Demandbase, data wins every time. Their B2B sales intelligence platform delivers accurate company, contact, technographic, engagement, and intent data right in your CRM, browser, and more. Learn more about their Sales Intelligence platform today: https://www.demandbase.com/products/sales-intelligence/
👀👀 More for your eyeballs:
Cool visualization on the first 10 hires across 20 top B2B startups. Full link included below👇
👂 More for your eardrums:
Check out this weeks GTM Podcast on Hiring Ethereal Talent with Chuck Brotman & David Teichner. Chuck is the Co-Founder of Blueprint Expansion and David has 25 years under his belt as a serial entrepreneur, currently the Co-Founder of AccelerateHC.
If you’re looking for any help with your hiring process, fill out This 3 Question Typeform and we will connect you directly with Chuck and David.
🚀 Start-ups to watch:
Vanta announced a collection of new capabilities that improves the audit experience for Vanta customers and their auditors. Check out their full new feature below 👀👇
🔥Hottest GTM job of the week:
Head of Demand Generation at Clarisights, more details here.
See more top GTM jobs here.
That’s all this week.
Appreciate you rocking with us until the end.
We’re always up for topic suggestions for future newsletters so let us know what you’re currently wrestling with in the comments and we’ll try to cover it in one of our next editions.
Have a great weekend.
Barker ✌️