Christian Pieper, Author at Mindtickle

How Sales Content Analytics Helps Revenue Teams Close More Deals, Faster

Christian Pieper on April 10, 2024

When it comes to B2B sales, content is still king. According to the Demand Gen Report, more than half of B2B buyers rely on sales content to guide their purchase decisions more now than in the past.

Revenue organizations have heard the message loud and clear, and most invest time and effort in producing content for their sellers to use throughout the sales cycle. According to the recently released State of Revenue Productivity Report, organizations published an average of 642 new assets in 2023.

Average number of new assets orgs published in 2023

But simply producing a large volume of sales content doesn’t mean it’ll be used – or that it’ll make a difference in deal outcomes. Instead, you must understand how sales reps and prospects are (or aren’t) using sales content. In other words, you need sales content analytics.

In fact, without sales content analytics, you’re likely sinking time and money into content that has little to no impact on sales performance.

In this post, we’ll explore sales content analytics, why they’re important for driving B2B sales performance, and which analytics you need to start tracking immediately.

What is sales content analytics?

The harsh reality is that most B2B sales content ends up on the shelf. According to Forrester, an estimated 65% of B2B content isn’t used. For those keeping track, that means 417 pieces of content each year go completely unused by the sales team.

According to Forrester

of B2B content isn't used

0 %

With sales content management analytics, you can spend your time and effort creating content that will be used and improve sales outcomes. But what is sales content analytics?

Sales content analytics is the practice of analyzing the performance of the different types of sales content your revenue team uses. These include sales presentations, sales collateral, whitepapers, case studies, videos, or any other type of content used throughout the sales cycle.

Sales content analytics can help you understand:

How often a piece of content is used by sales reps
How and when sellers share a piece of content with buyers
How buyers consume the content
How (and whether) the content influences revenue
Which teams and sellers get the most customer engagement from the content they share

Revenue organizations can leverage content analytics to optimize their sales content strategy. For example, teams can use these insights to understand when there are opportunities to:

Update existing content to improve performance
Eliminate unused or underperforming content
Create new content

Content analytics can also help organizations determine where additional sales training and sales enablement are needed. For example, let’s say an organization finds that its best sellers frequently use a specific piece of sales content to close deals. However, this piece of content isn’t used widely across the sales team. The revenue organization can use this intel to deliver sales training or sales enablement to help all sellers understand when and how to use this piece of content in the sales cycle.

Sales content analytics are also hugely beneficial to sales reps – which we’ll cover in more detail next.

How does sales content analytics help your B2B sales team?

Today, businesses tap into analytics to make better decisions and improve performance. Their efforts are paying off. A survey from PwC found that highly data-driven organizations are three times more likely to report significant improvements in decision-making.

Data-driven orgs are

more likely to report significant improvements in decision-making

0 x

Revenue organizations are no exception to this rule. With the right sales analytics, revenue teams can make better decisions – and improve outcomes.

Sales content analytics, which is a type of sales analytics, enable sellers to be more effective and efficient in their roles. Let’s take a closer look at some of the key ways sales content analytics can improve sales rep performance.

Content analytics inform more effective training and enablement

On every B2B sales team, there’s a subset of top performers. Content analytics helps you understand what your top sellers are doing with content so your entire team can adopt these winning behaviors.

For example, you may find that one of your top sellers uses a specific piece of sales content every time they close a deal in a specific industry. However, the entire sales team hasn’t widely adopted this content. You can use these insights to deliver training and sales enablement focused on helping all sellers understand how to use this particular piece of content.

Sales content analytics help reps determine the next best action

Chances are, your sellers follow an established sales process for every deal. However, the sales process must be flexible enough to allow sellers to deliver personalized experiences that resonate with each buyer.

Content analytics provide valuable information that B2B sales reps can use to determine what action to take next. For example, a sales rep can examine content analytics to see how (or whether) different buying committee members are engaging with the content they’ve shared. These insights can help the sales rep determine the next best action.

Sales content analytics helps drive deal acceleration

Sales content helps reps close more deals. But not just any content will do. Instead, reps need relevant, proven content for each customer – no matter where they are on the sales journey.

With sales content analytics, revenue teams can understand how content is being used and whether it’s impacting deals. Then, they can use these insights to invest in content that’s proven to accelerate deals.

For example, content analytics may reveal that certain pieces of content are never used. This content can be eliminated altogether.

Content analytics can also illuminate opportunities to freshen up existing content and boost its effectiveness. According to the recently released State of Revenue Productivity Report, the top 10% of revenue organizations update their content at least every 3.25 months.

The right sales content analytics can also help organizations understand where new content is needed. For example, you may find that deals frequently drop off at a certain point in the sales cycle, and the existing assets for that stage aren’t as effective as you’d hoped. You can use data—as well as feedback from your sales team—to develop new content for sellers to use.

The bottom line is that sales content analytics enables organizations to improve the effectiveness of their sales content. That means sellers are equipped with proven-to-work sales content. When sellers use this content, they’re more likely to close deals faster.

Sales content analytics help create a culture of data-driven decision-making
Making decisions based on hunches or gut feelings isn’t an effective approach. Instead, business decisions must be rooted in data.

Revenue organizations should strive to build a culture where data-driven decision-making is the norm. Equipping the right people with the right sales content analytics is a key way to make this a reality.

What sales content metrics do you need to track?

Now you know what sales content analytics is and why it’s important to revenue organizations. But what content metrics do you need to track to understand how your content is being used and what kind of impact it has on deals?

Let’s take a closer look at some of the top sales content metrics. Ideally, you should be able to access these metrics via your sales content management solution.

Searches

Track what keywords your reps are using when searching for the right content. You can leverage this information to categorize better or tag your existing sales content assets.

In addition, look for trends in reps’ searches. If sellers’ searches turned up no results, there may be an opportunity to develop new sales content.

Finally, be sure to monitor whether the content reps find during their searches is effective. In other words, ask yourself if buyers are engaging with this content and whether it’s creating opportunities for sellers.

Sales content usage

You may have spent a lot of time creating great content. But if your sellers aren’t using it, your prospects will never see it.

Content usage metrics help you understand how (or if) sales reps use a particular piece of content. Key metrics include things like:

Sales content views
Sales content downloads
Sales content edits
Sales content shares

You can track sales content usage metrics across the whole revenue team, as well as by region, territory, or individual rep.

Sales content engagement

The right content helps accelerate B2B deals. However, content must be relevant and engaging to be effective.

As such, it’s important to track sales content engagement, which measures how your buyers consume your sales content. There are several metrics you need to track to understand sales content engagement, including:

Clickthrough rate
Average amount of time buyers spend engaging with a specific piece of content
How often buyers engage with a piece of content
How many pages or sections the buyer engage with, and which pages or sections get the most engagement
How often buyers are sharing a piece of content with others
Which sales reps have the highest engagement on sales content

Sales content production timeline

Producing content requires time and effort. Be sure to track the amount of time it takes to create sales content. This metric will be important when determining whether the results are worth the time and effort spent on it.

Sales content performance and ROI

You want to invest in content that improves sales outcomes. As such, it’s important to measure sales content performance and ROI.

You can use these insights to invest more in content that’s proven to work.

Be sure to track which content buyers are engaging with at each stage of the sales cycle and how it’s impacting whether or not they continue through the funnel. You should also track which content is used in both closed-won and closed-lost opportunities – and the impact the content had on each deal.

Feedback from the sales team

When it comes to sales content optimization, hard data is key. However, it’s also important to ask for feedback from your sales teams, as they meet with customers daily. Your sales reps – especially your top performers – have unique insight into which content works, which doesn’t, and where there are opportunities to develop new assets to accelerate the sales cycle and improve sales outcomes.

Leverage sales content metrics to optimize your sales content with Mindtickle

Sales content is a key component of the B2B purchase journey. But without sales content analytics, it’s impossible to know how content is being used by buyers and sellers, and how it’s impacting the outcome of deals.

If you’re not using sales content analytics, you spend time, money, and effort on content with little to no impact. So, while your sellers have plenty of content, it’s ineffective, and they may lose deals because of it.

It’s time to start leveraging sales content analytics to understand how buyers and sellers are engaging with content today and how you can optimize for greater engagement and impact.

Mindtickle’s integrated revenue productivity platform incorporates sales content management tools, which ensures your sales reps can easily surface the right content for the right selling scenario.

Mindtickle’s sales content management platform also features robust analytics to help you understand how sales reps and prospects engage with content and how various assets influence sales outcomes. Revenue organizations can use these insights to improve the effectiveness of their content and deliver sales training and sales enablement to ensure reps know how and when to use content that’s proven to drive revenue.

Sales Content Analytics in Mindtickle

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How Alkami Drives Revenue Impact with Digital Sales Rooms

Christian Pieper on March 14, 2024

B2B buyer expectations are higher than ever, and how they want to interact with sellers is changing.

Enablement teams are under pressure to ensure sellers are always ready to deliver outstanding experiences and provide value throughout the sales cycle.

Alkami Technologies, a digital baking solutions provider for financial institutions in the U.S., understands these challenges well. The team at Alkami had built a large repository of content for sellers to use throughout the sales cycle. However sellers struggled to leverage this content to engage buyers effectively. That all changed when they started using digital sales rooms.

At this year’s Sales Enablement Summit in Austin, Stephanie Massey, Senior Sales Enablement Manager at Alkami Technology, joined Teri Long, VP of Revenue Enablement at Mindtickle, to discuss how Alkami has leveraged Digital Sales Rooms from Mindtickle to deliver personalized, engaging experiences that enable sellers to close more deals.

Connecting with buyers – digitally

Alkami invests significant time and resources into developing content for sellers to use in any sales scenario. But they didn’t want sellers spending their time hunting down the right content. “We needed a place for sellers to have access and discoverability into all of that content,” said Massey. “Mindtickle provided that.”

Alkami’s sales teams have the content they need to engage with buyers. But today, many buyers don’t want to engage with sellers. In fact, according to the Gartner B2B Marketing Report, 75% of B2B buyers prefer a rep-free sales experience.

According to Gartner Research,

of B2B buyers prefer a rep-free sales experience

0 %

Today, Alkami uses digital sales rooms to meet their customers where they are. Digital sales rooms enable buyers to share the right sales content at the right time and engage with sellers throughout the sales cycle – without needing in-person visits.

“We needed a digital vehicle to get this content in front of buyers,” explained Massey. “That’s the next place where Mindtickle came in.

Stephanie Massey

Senior Sales Enablement Manager, Alkami Technology

Delivering personalized, on-brand experiences

The team at Alkami understood the need to transition to digital experiences. However, they also knew one-size-fits-all experiences wouldn’t cut it. Digital experiences need to be personalized to each customer and reflect the branding and culture of both the buying and selling organizations.

Digital sales rooms from Mindtickle enable the Alkami team to easily develop and deliver tailored digital experiences that resonate with each buyer. Alkami provides sellers with pre-built templates focused on specific industries or challenges. Sellers can then customize those templates with the company’s branding.

Of course, digital sales rooms aren’t static. Instead, they evolve throughout the sales cycle as sales reps better understand a prospect’s needs and challenges. For example, reps can look for buying signals, find key, relevant content, and then add and share that content with prospects through the digital sales room.

These personalized experiences go a long way for Alkami’s sales team. “Our sellers need to build relationships with buyers,” Massey explained. “We have massive deals, and some can span across two years. It’s such a long journey, and buyers really value that personalization and feeling like reps are really speaking to their unique needs.”

Engaging large buying committees

It’s no secret that the number of people involved in a B2B purchase decision is growing. Recent research shows that every deal has between 11 and 22 unique decision-makers.

Alkami has seen even larger buying committees, with 20 to 26 unique digital sales room visitors for every deal. With deals this complex, it can be challenging to manage content and communication effectively. Massey says it’s easy for things to get “lost in a sea of emails.”

Number of unique DSR visitors for every deal

Digital sales rooms provide Alkami sales reps with a centralized location for managing content and interactions across the buying committee. “With digital sales rooms, teams can not only see content, but also engage with each other,” said Massey. “Everything is centralized so you’re not having to sort through all the clutter.”

In addition, digital sales rooms provide insights into how prospects are engaging. Sellers can use these insights to determine the best way to follow up to move deals forward.

“At Alkami, reps are closing deals 50% more often when using digital sales rooms."

Stephanie Massey

Senior Sales Enablement Manager, Alkami Technology

Increasing buy-in and seller adoption

Change is hard for everyone. The team at Alkami knew they’d have to have a plan in place to gain buy-in and adoption of digital sales rooms. Simply telling sellers to start using digital sales rooms “because I said so” wouldn’t be an effective approach.

Instead, the enablement team worked to understand the pain points of sellers – specifically related to finding and sharing content and collaborating with large buying committees. Then, they focused on conveying how Mindtickle’s digital sales rooms would help sellers overcome these challenges to close more deals.

Alkami’s Chief Revenue Officer was a big champion of this initiative, which was key to gaining seller buy-in. “We’re a digital-first company. We need a digital-first experience for our prospects,” said Massey.

Massey’s team knew a one-off training wouldn’t be enough to get the entire sales team on board and ready to use digital sales rooms. After all, 70% of what reps learn is lost within the first 24 hours. Furthermore, the team recognizes that sellers all learn differently. That’s why the team created various learning and reinforcement formats to get sellers up to speed.

Alkami has also tapped into the power of recognition and friendly competition to increase adoption. The enablement team recognizes top performers in their bi-weekly digest and during all-hands meetings. “We share how many rooms they’ve created and how many room visitors they’ve had,” said Massey. “Now that they know how to use the digital sales rooms, the key is to make sure they keep caring.”

See Digital Sales Rooms in Action

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Simplifying Sales Content Management

Christian Pieper on March 7, 2024

As a sales enablement leader, sales content is a big part of your job. Whether it’s creating it, training reps on it, monitoring its performance, or updating it, simplifying sales content management lets sales enablement leaders focus on other programs that help sellers actually sell.

When sales content hits the mark with both sellers and buyers, it can be a powerful tool for advancing deals forward. Our 2023 State of Sales Productivity Report found that interactions with content per rep per week doubled last year. It went from 3.5 interactions per week in 2021 to 7.5 in 2022.

But when sales content doesn’t hit the mark, it can disengage your audiences and stall deals. According to Sales Enablement Collective’s 2022 Sales Enablement Landscape Report, 63.1% of respondents said sales content wasn’t as good as needed.

According to the Sales Enablement Collective

of orgs say sales content wasn't as good as needed

0 %

So how do you create a sales content management strategy that’s simple, personalized, and scalable? In this blog post, we’ll walk you through:

What is sales content management?
The importance of sales content management
What are the benefits of sales content management?
Improves sales and revenue productivity
Reducing sales’ search time for content and collateral
Increasing win rates
Improving sales and marketing alignment
Improving the ability to track content usage
Reducing new sales team members’ ramp times
Reducing competitive losses
How to improve sales content management with technology solutions

What is sales content management?

Sales content management refers to the process of creating, organizing, distributing, and analyzing sales-related content, such as product information, case studies, and customer testimonials, with the goal of supporting the sales team and improving their performance.

Effective sales content management involves developing a content strategy that aligns with the organization’s overall sales goals and targets specific stages of the sales cycle. It also involves selecting the right tools and technologies to manage the content, such as a content management system (CMS) or a customer relationship management (CRM) system.

Sales content management can help sales teams to:

Access the right content

Customize content

Track peformance

Access the right content at the right time: By organizing and centralizing sales content, sales reps can easily find the information they need to educate prospects and move them through the sales funnel.
Customize content for different audiences: Sales teams can tailor content to meet the specific needs of their target audiences and increase their chances of closing a deal.
Track content performance: By analyzing the performance of sales content, sales managers can identify what’s working and what’s not, and adjust their strategies accordingly.

Overall, sales content management is a critical part of any sales strategy, helping organizations to improve their sales performance and grow their business.

The importance of sales content management

Sales content management is essential for organizations that want to improve their sales performance and drive revenue growth. Here are some key reasons why sales content management is important:

Consistency

Sales content management helps to ensure that sales reps have access to the most up-to-date and accurate content. This helps to ensure consistency in messaging across the organization, which can build trust with prospects and customers.

Efficiency

Sales reps spend a lot of time searching for content, and this can be a drain on productivity. By using sales content management tools, sales reps can easily find the content they need and focus on selling, rather than on administrative tasks.

Personalization

Sales content management tools enable sales reps to customize content for individual prospects or customers, based on their specific needs and interests. This can help to build stronger relationships and increase the likelihood of closing a sale.

Analytics

Sales content management tools provide insights into which content is resonating with prospects and customers, and which is not. This can help sales managers to make data-driven decisions about which content to prioritize, and to identify areas where sales reps may need additional sales training or support.

Scalability

As organizations grow, it becomes increasingly difficult to manage sales content manually. Sales content management tools can help to scale content creation and distribution, enabling organizations to reach more prospects and customers without sacrificing quality.

Sales content management is critical for organizations that want to improve their sales performance, build stronger customer relationships, and drive revenue growth. By using the right tools and strategies, organizations can streamline content management and make their sales teams more effective and efficient.

What are the benefits of sales content management?

CSO Insights asked 16.5% of participants who actually use a sales enablement platform to share the top three benefits they received from such a system. Below is a chart that summarizes the results:

Let’s take a look at some of the improvements in sales performance experienced by these companies.

Improves sales and revenue productivity

Sales content can be crucial in improving sales and revenue productivity in several ways. Here are some examples:

Educating prospects

Well-crafted sales content, such as case studies, product information sheets, and customer testimonials, can help educate prospects about the benefits of a product or service, and help them make more informed purchasing decisions. By providing relevant information that addresses their needs and pain points, sales content can help to build trust and credibility, which can ultimately lead to more sales.

Personalization

Sales content can be customized to meet the specific needs of individual prospects or customers. This can be achieved by segmenting the audience based on factors such as industry, company size, or job title, and tailoring content accordingly. Personalized sales content can help to build stronger relationships with prospects and customers, and increase the likelihood of closing a sale.

Consistency

Consistent messaging across all sales content can help to build brand awareness and recognition. By using a consistent voice and tone, and conveying a clear value proposition, sales content can help to differentiate a company from its competitors and position it as a thought leader in its industry.

Efficiency

Sales content can help to streamline the sales process, enabling sales reps to more efficiently move prospects through the sales funnel. By providing sales reps with the right content at the right time, sales content can help to reduce the amount of time spent searching for information and enable sales reps to focus on selling.

Analytics

Sales content can be analyzed to gain insights into what content is resonating with prospects and customers, and what is not. This information can be used to optimize sales content, and to identify areas where sales reps may need additional training or support. By using data to drive decisions about sales content, organizations can increase the effectiveness of their sales teams and drive revenue growth.

Sales content improves sales and revenue productivity by educating prospects, personalizing content, providing consistent messaging, streamlining the sales process, and using data to optimize content and identify areas for improvement. By investing in sales content management and creating high-quality sales content, organizations can increase their sales effectiveness and achieve their revenue goals.

Reducing sales’ search time for content and collateral

These two improvements are closely related. When your salesforce has easy access to sales content and tools, their search time is reduced. These two outcomes alone increase the amount of selling time that your reps have and increase their overall productivity. Here’s how.

Increasing win rates

Good sales content can help you close more deals in several ways:

Aligns with the buyer's journey

Good sales content is created with the buyer’s journey in mind. It should provide information that is relevant to the prospect’s specific stage in the buying process. By providing the right information at the right time, sales reps can build trust and credibility with the prospect, and move them closer to making a purchasing decision.

Addresses objections

Sales content should address common objections that prospects may have, and provide persuasive arguments to overcome these objections. By anticipating objections and providing solutions, sales reps can reduce the likelihood that a prospect will back out of a deal.

Differentiates your offering

Good sales content should highlight the unique benefits of your offering and differentiate it from your competitors. By providing clear and compelling reasons why your product or service is the best choice, sales reps can increase the likelihood that a prospect will choose to do business with you

Facilitates conversations

Good sales content can facilitate conversations between the sales rep and the prospect. It can provide a starting point for discussions, and help the sales rep to better understand the prospect’s needs and pain points. By having more productive conversations, sales reps can build stronger relationships with prospects and increase the likelihood of closing a deal.

Provides value beyond the sale

Good sales content should provide value beyond the sale. It should help the prospect to better understand the product or service, and provide guidance on how to get the most out of it. By providing ongoing value, sales reps can build stronger relationships with customers, increase customer satisfaction, and drive repeat business.

By investing in sales content management and creating high-quality sales content, organizations can increase their sales effectiveness and achieve their revenue goals.

Improving sales and marketing alignment

Sales and marketing departments worked separately for many years. More recently, they’ve made more efforts to communicate more consistently. Doing so allows Marketing to continually deepen their understanding of your prospects. This makes it easier for them to create content that encourages prospects to move through their buying cycle. In fact, according to a DemandGen study, over half of the participants estimated a revenue increase of 20% if they had the right content available at the right time in the sales cycle.

Reducing new sales team members’ ramp times

New rep ramp time varies from company to company. Average sales cycle length and training effectiveness influence the amount of time it takes for a new salesperson to become fully productive. Reducing this time increases your bottom line more quickly as well. Having content more easily distributed and accessible means that new reps are able to learn more in a shorter period of time. Having content at their fingertips helps reps sell more effectively without needing to memorize every proof point. All they have to do is find it, consume it, and/or share it with their prospect. Their questions are answered without slowing down in the learning and sales processes.

Improving the ability to track content usage

Tracking content usage provides valuable insights into marketing’s effectiveness. It enables them to know which content is being used more frequently and which content isn’t being used at all. This information allows them to quickly and easily identify content gaps so they’re able to stay current with new content requirements. This results in sales always having the content they need throughout the sales cycle for the exact persona in the specific industry.

Reducing competitive losses

Good sales content can be a powerful tool in winning over your competition. Here are some ways it can help:

Differentiation: Good sales content can help you differentiate your product or service from your competitors. By highlighting your unique value proposition and explaining why your offering is better than your competitors, you can give potential customers a reason to choose you over your competition.
Education: By providing informative and educational content, you can position yourself as an expert in your field. This can help build trust with potential customers and give them confidence that you have the knowledge and expertise to meet their needs.
Persuasion: Effective sales content can persuade potential customers to take action. By addressing their pain points and showing them how your product or service can solve their problems, you can motivate them to choose your offering over your competitors.
Credibility: Good sales content can also help establish your credibility and reputation in the marketplace. By providing case studies, testimonials, and other social proof, you can show potential customers that you have a track record of delivering results and providing value.

Overall, good sales content can help you stand out from your competition, educate and persuade potential customers, and build your credibility and reputation in the marketplace.

How to improve sales content management with technology

There’s no shortage of ways to organize, distribute, and measure sales content. Scaling and simplifying sales content efforts gets its power when it’s embedded into other enablement efforts.

At Mindtickle, we know that content needs to be aligned with skills, processes, and customer needs.

Here’s how we’re doing it.

Mindtickle’s Digital Sales Rooms are much more than simple content microsites and elevate the digital sales experience. They are collaborative portals where the entire selling team and all buyer stakeholders can align, communicate, share content, and drive the deal to its optimal resolution.

Automatic content sync allows you to use more content more easily, by automatically syncing content and metadata from your cloud-based content storage directly into Mindtickle.

Enablement engagement metrics provide granular engagement analytics that expose how learners engage with content. Dashboards and reports give visibility into the impact of your efforts and inform your strategy with smarter data.

Customized, quick content sharing protects your brand and ensures the right messaging reaches the market. At the same time, sellers have the agility and flexibility they need to build smart, custom presentations. Sellers can tailor the buying experience to each buyer’s needs.

Smart content attribution & revenue impact data help you identify the content that actually wins deals. In Mindtickle you can see which content drives revenue impact, and leverage those insights to create better content in the future.

Sales Content Management in Mindtickle

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This post was originally published in May 2018, was updated in April 2023, and again in March 2024.

What is Sales Collateral and How Does it Help Reps Close More Deals?

Christian Pieper on January 25, 2024

Any organization aiming to grow revenue must make sales engagement a priority. When buyers are engaged, they’re more likely to advance through the sales funnel – and make a purchase.

In order to engage buyers, sales reps must deliver the right information at the right time.

The right sales collateral is essential.

In this post, we’ll explore what sales collateral is, why it’s important, and what the different types are. We’ll also share some tips and best practices for creating more effective sales content that’ll help your reps close more deals.

What is sales collateral and why is it important?

First things first: what is sales collateral?

It’s any type of asset that enables sales reps to engage prospects and guide them through the sales funnel. It takes many forms, which we’ll explore in detail a little later on.

Print

Digital

Internal

External

Print vs. digital sales collateral

Today, some organizations continue to use printed sales assets. However, the vast majority of sales organizations are transitioning to digital collateral. This is especially true in today’s world, when many sales are conducted without a buyer and seller ever meeting face-to-face.

A best practice is to leverage a sales content management solution to centralize your digital collateral.

Internal vs. external sales collateral

Some sales collateral is used externally. In other words, this collateral is shared with customers and prospects. Some examples include case studies and data sheets.

Other collateral is for internal use only. This collateral (often referred to as sales enablement collateral) is developed only for use by the sales team. Some examples of internal collateral include sales playbooks and sales battlecards.

The importance of sales collateral

Now, we’re clear on what sales collateral is. But why is it important?

Sales collateral drives sales effectiveness and sales efficiency. When it’s done well, it engages buyers with the right information at the right time in the right format. Outstanding collateral can accelerate the sales cycle, which means sales reps can close deals faster. When reps can close more deals, your revenue will grow.

What are the different types of sales collateral?

There are many different types of sales and marketing collateral. Each type is especially effective in certain parts of the purchase journey. For example, a case study may be impactful for a prospect who is close to making a decision – but first wants to get a better idea of how other businesses have leveraged a similar solution to achieve their goals. However, the same case study may not resonate with prospects who are higher up in the funnel and just starting to research their options.

With that in mind, let’s take a look at the different stages of the sales journey – and some of the best collateral for each stage.

Sales and marketing collateral for the awareness stage

During the awareness stage, prospective customers are aware that they have a challenge (or multiple challenges), and they’ve started to look for solutions to address it. B2B collateral is an important tool that helps ensure prospects become aware of your company and its solutions.

The purpose of collateral at this stage is to make your brand known – and demonstrate that your business is a thought leader. Some common types of collateral that resonate during the awareness stage include:

Blogs

Blogs are a great way to demonstrate your thought leadership during the awareness phase.

Videos

Videos can convey key information in a format that’s easy to digest.

Press releases

Enables prospects to see what’s new at your organization.

Infographics

These are a great way to quickly convey a lot of information in an easy-to-digest format.

Social media posts

Regularly posting on key social media channels can increase prospects’ awareness of your brand.

Sales and marketing collateral for the consideration stage

During the consideration stage, prospects start weighing their options. They know about your organization and may have some knowledge about your products and services. But they’re not ready to sign on the dotted line just yet.

Collateral can help sellers build relationships and deliver value during the consideration phase with assets including:

Whitepapers

These can be an effective way to present a large amount of information.

eBooks + guides

eBooks and guides are popular ways to add value during the consideration stage.

Research + reports

Conducting surveys – and then summarizing your findings in a research report – is a powerful way to earn prospects’ trust.

Webinars

Webinars are an interactive way to share a variety of information and data with prospects.

At this stage, sellers should be sure to use B2B sales content that is industry-specific and speaks to the buyer’s specific challenges.

Sales and marketing collateral for the decision-making stage

At this stage, prospects are getting ready to buy. They’re likely considering your business – as well as a few competitors. The right collateral can build their confidence about your solution being the best option. Collateral that’s effective during the decision-making stage includes:

Product information

You can put together fact sheets to concisely convey key product information.

Case studies

Tells the story of how a company has leveraged your solution to solve their challenges.

Testimonials

These customer quotes give prospects an idea of what it’s like to work with your company.

Product reviews

Provides prospects with concise feedback from your current customers.

ROI business cases

Tools like ROI calculators can help prospects understand what they can expect from investing in your products or services.

Product demos

Demos enable buyers to see your solution in action.

Sales and marketing collateral for retention stage

After you’ve closed a deal, the goal is to keep that customer around long-term. After all, retaining an existing customer is a whole lot easier (and less expensive) than acquiring a new one.

Workshops

This can be a great way to share best practices to ensure customers are getting the most value from your solution.

Product updates

Let customers know what’s new with your product and how it benefits them.

Customer newsletters

Newsletters are a great way to share what’s new at your company. They can also include links to other resources that’ll build customers’ knowledge and ensure they’re getting the most from your solutions.

Activity-triggered emails

You can engage customers by sending automated emails when they complete certain activities.

How do you create sales collateral for your business?

The right sales collateral can help you grow revenue. But creating collateral for the sake of creating collateral isn’t effective. After all, research suggests that up to 70% of B2B sales collateral sits unused.

Asking key questions for sales content development

It’s important to create collateral that resonates with buyers throughout the purchase journey – and is proven to move deals forward. It’s also imperative to ensure sellers know where to find the collateral they need – as well as how to use it.

So, how can you start creating more effective collateral for your team? The first, foundational step is to answer these five questions:

Question #1: Who is your customer?

Before developing any type of asset, you must have a clear understanding of who you are talking to. Today, many sales organizations develop buyer personas. Buyer personas are detailed descriptions of fictitious prospects who are a good fit for your organization’s products or services.

Question #2: What are your customers’ pain points?

Generic B2B sales content isn’t effective. Instead, it must speak to a customer’s specific pain points.

When developing your buyer personas, it’s important to understand their challenges. That way, you can develop sales content that specifically addresses those pain points.

Question #3: How can prospects trust your solution?

To close deals, you must articulate why your solution is the best option for solving your customers’ challenges.

Of course, it’s important to establish your brand messaging. However, incorporating the voices of your existing customers into your sales content can be a powerful way to earn prospects’ trust.

A recent Gartner study found that “third-party interactions, such as reading customer references or reviews and consulting directly with third-party experts, are better suited to provide customers with value affirmation.”

Question #4: What types of content will help in the buyer journey?

You know who your customers are and you understand their pain points. You also understand how your solution is ideal to address those pain points. Next, you have to determine what types of content are right for delivering your message throughout the purchase journey.

There’s no right answer here. As we discussed earlier, different types of sales collateral resonate with buyers at different points in the purchase journey. It’s important to determine the right mix of sales assets, measure regularly, and optimize accordingly.

Question #5: How can you retain your existing customers?

Often, sales content is focused on acquiring new customers. However, it’s also important to develop collateral that aids in customer retention.

It’s important to ask yourself what you need to keep your customers around long-term. Then, develop the right content to engage them.

You can use the answers to these key questions to develop the right sales collateral.

Streamlining management

You’ve answered the key questions above and used the answers to develop sales collateral. What now?

It’s important to ensure your sellers know how to find and use your newly created sales content.

At some sales organizations, collateral is stored in multiple repositories or distributed by email. This makes it difficult for sellers to find the sales assets they need in a specific situation. In addition, it’s common for sellers to use outdated content.

A best practice is to store and organize your sales collateral in a single platform. Many revenue enablement solutions include content management functionality so you can store all content in one place. That way, sales reps can easily find the best content for any selling scenario.

In addition, sales enablement teams must provide training to ensure sellers know when and how to use the sales collateral that’s available to them.

Measuring and optimizing

Sometimes, organizations develop a piece of sales collateral, upload it to a repository, and then never think about it again. This isn’t an effective approach.

Instead, it’s important to consistently measure usage of sales collateral. In other words, how often are sellers using a specific piece of sales collateral? And how are buyers engaging with it?

It’s also important to measure how (or whether) sales collateral is impacting sales outcomes. That way, you can understand which collateral has the biggest impact – and focus your efforts on those assets.

Increase the impact of your sales collateral with Mindtickle

Sales collateral – when it’s done well – can be a powerful tool for engaging buyers throughout the sales cycle. When sales reps are able to engage a buyer, they’re more likely to close a deal.

But generic collateral won’t cut it. Instead, organizations must equip sellers with content that resonates with buyers and is proven to improve sales outcomes. In addition, organizations must ensure this sales content is easy to find and that sales reps know how to use it.

Mindtickle’s revenue productivity platform incorporates sales content management, which enables organizations to centralize their collateral. That means sales reps can easily find the right sales content for any selling scenario. In addition, sales leadership can easily measure how collateral is being used and whether it’s improving sales outcomes.

Of course, it’s important to ensure sellers know how to use sales collateral. Mindtickle also enables organizations to deliver sales training and sales enablement to ensure sellers know how and when to use the sales assets that are available to them.

Sales Content Management in Mindtickle

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How Digital Sales Rooms Help Reps Win More Deals

Christian Pieper on January 25, 2024

On average, there are 27 interactions in the buyer journey before a decision is reached. These interactions range from phone conversations to email chains to instant messaging. Each step is an instance where information can be misplaced or forgotten, and sales momentum lost.

# of interactions in the buyer journey before a decision is made

The good news is that this type of back-and-forth communication can be replaced with a digital sales room — a single and permanent location for potential buyers to find all your sales information instantly.

Digital sales rooms (DSRs) give prospects a personalized buying journey with content that is tailored to their business needs and goals. As well, they help sales reps understand which content leads to closed deals and improved close rates.

What you’ll learn:

How digital sales rooms streamline the buying journey
Why empowering buyers can improve your close rates
How to create compelling buying experiences using DSRs

What are digital sales rooms and how do they work?

Digital sales rooms work through a client-seller portal. Here, sales reps create a DSR or virtual sales platform, which essentially serves as a resource and storage location for all the content a buyer needs to make an informed purchase decision.

Similar to a showroom, digital sales rooms are created specifically for each customer, where they can view product demos, have their questions answered, and keep track of all the conversations and information they have with your reps. Depending on the needs of the buyer, content can include product proposals, testimonies, order forms, or service proposals. Once the portal is created, buyers are given access through a unique link.

Digital sales rooms are also connected to sales enablement platforms. This is an added benefit for sales reps, as they can gather insights on how prospects interact with content and where further content needs to be included for future negotiations.

Digital sales rooms empower your buyers

Digital sales rooms improve close rates by empowering buyers with all the information they need to confidently finalize a purchase. Thanks to the personalized sales cycles and customized content management DSRs offer, Gartner predicts that by 2026, 30% of B2B sales cycles will be managed through their use.

Digital sales rooms improve the digital sales experience by:

Offering a platform to answer any questions or concerns with instant two-way communication
Improving engagement with customers through an interactive portal
Improving understanding of buyer behavior and the buyer journey by capturing data on client interactions and patterns
Providing access to the newest product features and offerings
Building relationships, providing content to address questions, and helping clients feel supported and valued

Amount of time during the sales cycle spent with a rep

0 %

These days, only 17% of the B2B buying cycle is spent with a sales rep. With digital sales rooms, buyers can drive the sales cycle but the content they interact with is still controlled and delivered by sellers.

How to create compelling custom buying experiences using DSRs

If you’re thinking about introducing a DSR into your selling process, follow these tips to close more deals.

Personalize the digital sales room experience to your buyer

Your digital sales room should help your prospect through their buyer journey, aiding in their research without overwhelming them with irrelevant content.

Upload content that is meaningful and relevant to your buyer. For example, if your prospect is at the start of their journey, they’ll be interested in content that explains product features and articles on comparisons with competitors. However, if they’re closer to signing off on the purchase, content for next steps, like payment options and implementation processes, will be more relevant.

To know which content to include, ask yourself:

What are your prospects searching for on the internet?
At what stage are they in their buyer journey?
What solutions does your product provide for their business?
What roadblocks are preventing them from buying?
Do they need to share this content with other stakeholders?

To drive high buyer engagement, Include content that has already proved itself based on data from your sales enablement platform or past experience.

Where possible, personalize the content to include the prospect’s name, position, and company. So content is being received in the most persuasive way possible, you can even use terminology that is specific to their industry.

Have support accessible at all times

If your buyer doesn’t find the information they need immediately, you risk them getting frustrated and looking for answers elsewhere, potentially with a competitor.

In your digital sales room, it’s a good practice to include a support channel that is accessible at all times. Or, have an in-room chat option to ask and answer any buyer questions in a centralized platform where no information will be lost.

Make your content unique with purposeful interaction

Your content needs to meet your buyer at their stage of the journey. Answer the questions they have at that stage and guide them through the digital sales experience to the next. But that certainly doesn’t mean that your content should be monotonous.

On the contrary, your potential buyers should feel curious to learn about your product through content that is interactive and engaging.

You want prospects to remember your content, and that means forgoing long Word documents and instead leaning into videos, infographics, product demos, slide shows, and fun visual documents.

Always make the next steps clear

Guide the buyer down the sales funnel with clear next steps and actions. Not only does this direct prospects to the final closure, but it also gives insight into prospective roadblocks in the process and indicates where content is missing. Some things to keep in mind:

Create and embed customized CTAs into each content piece to drive the buyer through their learning journey.
Create a checklist or an action plan built from past successful seller experiences outlining what the next steps or content to consume should be.

With clear next steps, you make sure that the buyer is staying on track and making progress toward their final purchase.

Keep the content on brand to elevate purchase desire

You want buyers to feel the brand throughout the buying process so that they establish a connection with your product. Here are things to keep in mind:

Deliver your brand’s value and purpose to your buyer with every content interaction
Customize your digital sales rooms to reinforce the look and feel of your company
Position your content as an enhancement of your business values and tone

By keeping your content on brand, you avoid creating false expectations. Instead, your content clearly communicates the benefits and objectives the product can fulfill.

Include a product demo

Product demos give users an opportunity to see firsthand the benefits your product or service can provide.

Access to demos helps prospects fully understand the features and product capabilities as well as allowing them to imagine the time they can save and the problems they can solve by using your product.

With demos available, sellers can directly question the prospect’s particular needs and show them how to solve their problems.

Your DSR is only as good as your sales content

When you’ve got a great potential buyer visiting your digital sales room, the real driver is the content you provide.

Use insights from past sales processes to deliver the most impactful content to your buyers at each stage of the buyer journey. This will enhance the buyer experience and simplify the selling process. The sales materials should educate the buyer without hard selling the product or service. The idea is to help the buyer become empowered in their purchase decision.

Ready to see DSRs in Action?

One secure, shared space for all content, communication, and deal planning.

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This post was originally published in October 2022, was updated in August 2023, and again in January 2024.

How to Develop a Solid Sales Enablement Content Strategy

Christian Pieper on December 14, 2023

Nearly three decades ago, Bill Gates penned a famous article about how “content is king.” Today, this sentiment still rings true – especially in the world of sales.

Sales enablement content is a key ingredient for sales success. When it’s done right, sales content can help sales organizations improve team performance, engage buyers, and ultimately, close more deals.

However not all sales enablement content is created equal. While some sales enablement content is frequently used and proven to move deals forward, other content ends up sitting on the shelf unused.

A solid sales enablement content strategy ensures you have more of that first kind of sales enablement content.

In this article, we’ll explore what sales enablement content is and the types of sales enablement content commonly used by sales teams. We’ll also share tips and tools for creating an effective sales enablement strategy that’ll help your sales teams confidently take on any deal that comes their way.

What is sales enablement content?

Sales enablement content is a powerful asset for new and veteran sellers alike. When sales reps have the right sales enablement content, they’re better able to attract, engage, and convert buyers.

But what is sales enablement content? Essentially, sales enablement content is any content asset developed to help a sales rep succeed in the field.

Some sales enablement content is developed for internal use. Typically, the goal of this content is to provide education to sellers. For example, some organizations create sales battlecards to help sales reps understand how they stack up against their competitors. Often, these sales battlecards are for internal use only.

Other sales enablement content is for external use. Members of the revenue team can share this sales enablement content with prospects as a way to convey or reinforce information about their products or services.

For example, a sales rep might share a case study with a prospect to help them understand how a similar company overcame challenges by using a specific product or service.

What are some sales enablement content examples?

There are many different types of sales enablement content used by sales teams. Let’s take a closer look at some common sales enablement content examples.

Scripts

Often, sales organizations provide scripts to help sales reps scale their outreach while ensuring they stay on message. The organization may develop call scripts – including those that can be used for cold calls and demos. In addition, organizations may equip their sales reps with email templates that they can use as a starting point for their digital outreach.

Competitive battlecards

Per Semrush, 57% of all sales deals are competitive. That number is even higher in certain industries.

Sales battlecards are a type of sales enablement content that helps sales reps understand how their solutions slack up against that of their competitors. Some sales battlecards compare a company’s offerings to a single competitor. Other sales battlecards compare a company’s solutions to multiple competitors. In addition, some sales battlecards are for internal use only, while others are developed to be shared with prospects.

Enablement collateral

Often, teams create a variety of sales enablement content that sales reps can share with prospects throughout the sales cycle. Those assets might include sales presentations, one-pagers providing an overview of specific product offerings, ebooks, and case studies – among others.

Marketing collateral

Some marketing teams develop assets including ebooks and whitepapers. Typically, these assets are developed to educate prospects on a specific industry issue or challenge; they’re not usually promotional. Ebooks and whitepapers can be great resources to share with prospects to demonstrate thought leadership and bolster trust.

Case studies and testimonials

Case studies are a common type of external sales enablement content. Case studies tell the story of how your solution has helped other companies solve their challenges. Case studies provide social proof – which can be a powerful motivator for buyers. They are especially effective for prospects who are further along in the funnel.

Videos

Videos are a more interactive form of sales enablement content. Videos can be internal. For example, the sales enablement team may create a video series to educate sellers on a new product. Or, videos can be customer-facing. For example, the marketing team may develop a demo video for sales reps to share with prospects.

What is a sales enablement content strategy and why is it important?

All too often, organizations develop content that they think will help sales reps – and then hope for the best. The result is that teams spend valuable time creating these resources, but they end up sitting unused. In addition, new sales enablement content is created on an ad hoc basis.

It’s not surprising that this approach isn’t effective.

Instead, organizations need a sales enablement content strategy. But what is a sales enablement content strategy? And what are some sales enablement strategy examples?

A sales enablement content strategy is the foundation for success with sales enablement content. It ensures all stakeholders (including sales, marketing, sales enablement, customer success, and product – among others) are aligned on the organization’s content initiatives.

A documented sales content strategy spells out:

What your goals are for your sales enablement content
Who the audience is for your sales enablement content
What types of content you’ll create to achieve your goals (including the sales enablement content examples we outlined earlier)
How you’ll measure the success (or failure) of your sales enablement content

A solid sales enablement content strategy can help boost seller performance. A great sales enablement strategy helps ensure sellers have the information, knowledge, and resources they need. That means they’re more likely to be successful in the field.

In addition, a sales strategy can help improve the sales process. Today’s buyers do plenty of research before reaching out to a buyer. A sales enablement strategy ensures sellers can share content that adds value and goes beyond the basic information buyers can easily uncover on their own.

How to create a sales enablement content strategy

Creating a great sales enablement content strategy can boost seller performance and improve customer experiences. But creating a sales enablement content strategy can seem overwhelming, especially if you’re used to a more random approach to sales enablement content development.

Creating a sales content strategy doesn’t have to be a daunting process. Here are some proven tips you can use to make the process easier.

#1 Talk to your sales team

Your sales reps are meeting with prospects all day long. Ask them for feedback on what challenges they regularly face in the field. In addition, ask them what types of content they typically use – and what additional types of content they think would be helpful. You may also want to ask them why they don’t use certain sales enablement content assets.

#2 Analyze your sales enablement content

Take inventory of your sales enablement content. If you use a sales content management platform, this should be relatively easy.

Your inventory should include both internal and external content. Make a note of which content is in need of updates – and which should be eliminated completely.

In addition, tap into data to see what content is being used, how often it’s being used, and whether it’s improving outcomes. Your sales content management platform should provide data, analytics, and dashboards that shed light on usage and effectiveness of your existing sales enablement content.

#3 Map existing sales enablement content to the customer journey

Different sales enablement content is effective at different stages in the buying process. For example, a thought leadership piece like an ebook or a whitepaper is a great asset for prospects early on the purchase journey. A case study, on the other hand, is more likely to resonate further down in the funnel.

Be sure to map your customer journey. Then, identify which existing sales enablement content fits into each stage.

#4 Identify gaps in your sales enablement content

Once you’ve gotten feedback from your sales team, taken an inventory of your existing sales enablement content, and mapped that content to your customer journey, you should have a good idea of where there are gaps.

#5 Develop sales enablement content to fill gaps

Once you’ve identified gaps in your sales enablement content, it’s time to create content to fill those gaps. This should be a collaborative effort among teams including sales, marketing, and sales enablement.

#6 Organize and store content in a sales content management platform

In some cases, sales enablement content is distributed through email. Other sales organizations use a service like Google Drive or Dropbox to store and distribute sales enablement content.

These approaches make it hard for sellers to find the content they need. What’s more, your sellers are likely using outdated sales enablement content.

A better approach is to store your sales enablement content in a complete revenue productivity platform that incorporates sales enablement content management capabilities. That way, sales reps can easily find the content they’re looking for – any time and from any device. The right sales content management platform also helps ensure sellers are always using the most up-to-date sales enablement content.

#7 Ensure sellers know how to use sales enablement content

Developing great sales enablement content is important. But so too is ensuring your sellers know it exists – and how to use it. Be sure to provide sales enablement, training, and coaching so your sellers know how to effectively use the sales enablement content that is available to them.

#8 Measure content performance

It’s important to measure the performance of your sales enablement content on a regular basis. That way, you know whether your sales enablement content is helping you achieve your goals.

Ongoing measurement can shed light on opportunities to eliminate content, create new content, and update existing content to improve efficacy.

#9 Revisit your sales content strategy on a regular basis

Developing a sales enablement content strategy isn’t a one-time event. Instead, you should regularly revisit your strategy to ensure it keeps up with the evolving needs and goals of your business.

Take your sales enablement content strategy to the next level with Mindtickle

Great sales enablement content helps sellers confidently navigate every deal that comes their way. A solid sales enablement strategy is foundational.

But creating a sales enablement content is just the first step. Sales organizations must also ensure their sellers know what sales enablement content is available, where to find it, and how to use it.

Mindtickle’s sales enablement content management capabilities allow reps to quickly and easily find the right content for each sales scenario. In addition, sales enablement teams can deliver training and enablement to ensure sales reps know how to use the content that’s available to them. Finally, sales leaders can measure the effectiveness of each sales enablement content asset. They can see whether the asset is being used – and whether it’s improving seller performance and deal outcomes. These insights can help ensure organizations prioritize their time on sales content that’s proven to work.

Sales Content Management in Mindtickle

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Sirion: Modernizing and Accelerating Sales with Digital Sales Rooms

Christian Pieper on December 11, 2023

Sirion, a global leader in enterprise Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) software, is demonstrating how proper alignment between revenue and enablement leaders, in combination with the right technology, can unlock new opportunities for deal acceleration and revenue growth.

In a case study session at Gartner’s 2023 CSO and Sales Leader Conference in Las Vegas, Gordon Thompson, Sirion’s EVP of Presales and Business Strategy, and Nick Salas, Senior. Director of Global Enablement, discussed how arming their team with Digital Sales Rooms, powered by Mindtickle, is transforming how their team sells and how their buyers engage with their offerings.

Aligning to the buyer journey

According to Gartner, 64% of buyers see no differentiation in vendor digital experiences.** But Sirion wasn’t going to settle for blending in with the crowd.

Sirion decided to add Mindtickle’s Digital Sales Rooms (DSRs) to their revenue tech stack because they saw the promise of how these persistent, collaborative spaces could help buyers and sellers align around the goals, needs, and tasks of their customers’ buying journey.

“We wanted to stand out from the crowd by providing more self-service information and more engaging experiences for our buyers and Mindtickle’s Digital Sales Rooms have helped us do exactly that.”

Gordon Thompson

EVP, Pre-Sales and Business Strategy

Their buying groups are commonly quite large, sophisticated, and detail-driven, and Sirion’s revenue and enablement leaders hoped that DSRs would help their buyers navigate the sometimes complicated evaluation process.

Sirion buying groups

Digital Sales Rooms

Large groups of evaluators
Sophisticated and experienced
Careful and detail-driven
Many steps and milestones

Unlimited collaborators
Engaging content experiences
Granular engagement tracking
Mutual action plans & task management

Earning seller buy-in and adoption

In part because they recognized the potential of DSR tech to transform the relationship between their sellers and buyers, they were planning to invest significantly in helping their sales team understand how to leverage this new capability. However, Sirion was pleasantly surprised at the speed with which their sellers and buyers took to this new collaborative model.

"Within three months of launching Digital Sales Rooms, we were seeing rooms being built for over 50% of new opportunities, and our sellers were letting us know how easy they were to use and how much they were helping."

Nick Salas

Sr. Dir. Global Enablement, Sirion

Accelerating complex deals

Gordon and Nick shared a powerful example of the impact Digital Sales Rooms have on deals at Sirion.

The Buyer

Digital Sales Rooms results

Fortune 100 tech company
Large, undefined buying group
Stakeholders from various business units and departments

Visited by over 100 participants of the buyer group
Earned over 1000 hours of self-service engagement with Sirion content

After Sirion’s reps closed this critical deal, the buying group reached out to comment on their experience with the Digital Sales Room specifically.

"They came to us asking us what tech we were using for the deal room because they saw how much easier it made it for them to navigate their own buying process. We told them to talk to Mindtickle."

Nick Salas

Sr. Dir. Global Enablement

See DSRs in action

Learn more about how Mindtickle’s Digital Sales Rooms can help you transform your buyer experience and accelerate your most critical deals.

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**Gartner, 4 Steps for CSOs to Improve the Digital Buying Experience, 22 September 2022. GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and is used herein with permission. All rights reserved.**

Mindtickle Named a Leader in The Forrester Wave(™): Sales Readiness Solutions, Q4 2023

Christian Pieper on October 4, 2023

Earlier today, Forrester, one of the most influential research and advisory firms in the world, released its 2023 Wave for Sales Readiness, evaluating the 11 most significant sales readiness solutions providers. Mindtickle was named a leader in the Sales Readiness Solutions, Q4 2023 Wave, with the top score in the Strategy category.

About the Forrester Wave(™): Sales Readiness Solutions, Q4 2023

Forrester releases Wave reports on a variety of technology categories that are considered essential guides for organizations that are evaluating and purchasing technology. The Forrester Wave reports contain a graphical representation of Forrester’s call on a market and is plotted using a detailed spreadsheet with exposed scores, weightings, and comments.

For the 2023 Sales Readiness Wave, Forrester evaluated the 11 most significant sales readiness solution providers. Sales readiness vendors, as defined by Forrester, deliver “advanced capabilities and integrations that empower enablement teams to correlate sales results data with learning program information to determine which efforts have a real business impact”.

“Mindtickle offers superior end-user experience, coaching support, and analytics.”

Forrester Research

Forrester Wave(™): Sales Readiness Solutions, Q4 2023

Results of the Wave

Mindtickle was named a leader in the Sales Readiness Wave. According to the report, “Mindtickle has a robust feature set that exceeds expectations in standard readiness functionality and adds unique functionality that provides best-in-class visibility to measure the effectiveness of seller learning programs.”

Mindtickle’s road to a Sales Readiness Wave leader

As cited by the report, “Mindtickle has been in the sales readiness space since 2011 and has built a reputation for providing a strong sales readiness platform with customers’ continuous innovation. It has recently added sales content management capabilities and DSR functionality to augment its readiness platform, and has dedicated significant resources to achieving parity within the sales content market.”

Mindtickle has been delivering readiness solutions to leading organizations for over a decade and has invested heavily in adding key capabilities to the platform arming enablement and operations leaders with the ability to transform the performance of their go-to-market teams.

In recent years, Mindtickle has launched conversation intelligence and content management in the platform, completely revamped its coaching offerings, acquired the leading Digital Sales Rooms provider, and introduced a suite of generative AI capabilities.

As part of the Readiness Wave, Forrester also evaluates vendors’ innovation, strategy, and roadmap. Mindtickle achieved the highest scores in the Strategy category, noting, “The company will have to execute on its broad roadmap, but it has a long history of meeting development goals.”

If you want to learn more about how Mindtickle can elevate readiness and enablement at your organization, reach out for a tailored demo and discussion with our readiness experts today.

See Mindtickle In Action

See Why Forrester Named Mindtickle a Leader in its Readiness Wave.

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7 Takeaways from the 2023 Forrester B2B Summit

Christian Pieper on June 15, 2023

Last week’s Forrester B2B Summit in Austin, Texas brought together revenue leaders, Forrester analysts, and rev-tech vendors to share their insights and strategies for revenue excellence. From discussions on sales competencies to aligning sales and marketing, the sessions offered valuable takeaways for businesses looking to thrive in the dynamic B2B landscape.

In this blog post, we’ll share key highlights and actionable tips from the sessions we attended and led as well as conversations we had throughout the event. You can also check out a mini photo gallery of some of our team at the event.

This post is for anyone who didn’t attend the Summit and wants to know our biggest learnings or for those who joined us in Austin and need a recap to reference as you start thinking about how to bring these learnings to your own revenue organization.

The booth troop!

Packed house

80s theme night

Another great session

One of the essential ingredients for sales success is having a clear understanding of your sales competencies. Before seeking a vendor or investing in tools, it’s crucial to evaluate and define your sales capabilities. By identifying your strengths, weaknesses, and areas for improvement, you can make informed decisions that align with your specific needs.

Measuring the success of your revenue enablement programs can be challenging, especially as they evolve over time. While initial indicators like adoption or consumption can be helpful, it’s essential to go beyond surface-level metrics. Gathering feedback on program quality and data on actual impact can provide valuable insights for continuous improvement. Measure how your programs are impacting field behaviors and how those behaviors are contributing to core revenue outcomes.

Revenue leaders and managers recognize the value of training coaches to be effective mentors. However, finding the time for sales coaching is often a challenge. To maximize impact, it’s crucial to prioritize coaching and invest in the development of your sales coaches. By equipping them with the necessary skills and tools, you empower them to guide and support your revenue generators effectively.

Forrester’s Phyllis Davidson and Peter Ostrow taught us how to avoid “sales content purgatory,” where reps have access to tons of content but can’t find what they need or figure out how to use it. This aligns with what we found in our 2023 State of Sales Productivity Report. The vast majority of content engagement comes from a small percentage of the content to which reps have access. To stay out of “purgatory” focus on quality over quantity. Prioritize high-value content and make derivatives of that content that apply to specific audiences, personas, and selling scenarios.

Continuing the motif of “quality over quantity,” Forrester’s Amy Bills and Jennifer Bullock applied this to the creation of customer case studies. Instead of producing a case study with every available customer, focus on creating a few high-quality stories that address common customer questions and concerns. Furthermore, involving the sales organization in the creation process ensures that case studies align with their specific sales motions. Remember, having case studies alone isn’t the solution; enabling sellers to effectively utilize them is key.

In a standing-room-only session, Kathleen Pierce proposed a shift toward mapping content to buyer questions as an effective structure for sales content. By aligning content with specific buyer questions, it becomes easier for reps to search for and find relevant content for the selling situations they encounter. It also maximizes content’s impact on buyer decisions. Work with your field teams to understand key questions and friction points, and implement a question-answer framework within your sales content management system.

Pierce and Anne Slough explored the challenges and potential of Digital Sales Rooms. While DSRs have promising benefits, widespread adoption struggles remain. Mutual action plans, real-time insights, and buyer collaboration are key value drivers for DSRs. Sales leaders should assign DSRs to solve problems such as substandard buying experiences, inefficient sales processes, and longer buying cycles. Communication of GDPR compliance and mapping DSRs to selling and buying processes are crucial for success.

Making these learnings a reality at your selling org

The Forrester B2B Summit delivered valuable insights and actionable strategies for businesses aiming to enhance their sales performance. Keep these takeaways in mind as you’re building out your revenue productivity strategy for the rest of the year.

Want to see how Mindtickle can help make these learnings a reality at your selling organization?P

Video: 3 Tips for Optimizing Your Tech Stack

Christian Pieper on February 22, 2023

In this video, Christian Pieper, Senior Product Marketing Manager at Mindtickle, talks about your tech stack and how to make it a finely tuned machine. He outlines how organizations should approach optimizing their tech stack by building its strength rather than simply trimming it down for the sake of it. Christian then shares why it’s important to carefully consider how each tool works with one another, prioritizing solutions, and ensuring each tool fits into sellers’ current workflows.

Key highlights

Make the right cuts but don’t sacrifice too much. Everyone is under pressure to get the most out of their tech investments and for many, that means making significant cuts. However, sales productivity tools don’t end up on the cutting room floor just for the sake of shedding tools.
Keep them connected. Point solutions do some things very well, but they are often in isolation. Ensure your tools are integrated and working in cohesion with one another, otherwise, you’ll struggle to get the adoption, usage, and results you want.
Don’t disrupt seller workflows. Look at where sellers currently spend their time. Whether it’s Salesforce, email, or another engagement tool, make sure the tools are meeting sellers where they are and helping push deals forward.

In case you’d like to read these tips rather than watch the video, we’ve included the transcription below.

Video transcription

Hello, I’m Christian and I’m with the Product Marketing team at Mindtickle. I’m here to share with you three essential insights for optimizing your sales tech stack, right? This is a big priority for lots of organizations, probably for yours. We wanna make sure that you get the results that you’re looking for.

So number one, don’t just slim your tech stack, tone it. We hear this all the time: “We need to trim our tech stack. Make it smaller and simpler so we have less friction for our sellers.” And that’s super important. But think about it this way. You could take all the tech away and give them the simplest solution, but it wouldn’t get the outcomes that you’re looking for.

Make sure you aren’t sacrificing important capabilities in the process of simplifying your tech offering for your, for your sellers, right? Think about it from a fitness perspective. Yes, you want to trim. I know I do, but you also want to build strength or you’re not going to get the health outcomes that you’re looking for. You’re just gonna become small, weak, and shriveled, and we do not want that for your tech stack.

Number two, continuing with the anatomy metaphor. Look for solutions that have connective tissue. It doesn’t matter how strong a muscle is, right? If it’s not connected to other muscles and muscle groups by tendons and ligaments, you won’t be able to do anything with that.

It’s the same thing for your tech stack. You can look for point solutions, things that do one thing really well, but if they’re isolated, if they don’t share data and information and functionality and workflows with the rest of your solutions, then you just have really strong things working in isolation, and you’re going to struggle to get the results that you want for your sellers.

In fact, in the most recent, now, tech on sales enablement and automation, Forrester recommends a litmus test for point, solutions: Do they integrate seamlessly with everything else you’re using? If not, you might be better off looking for solutions that integrate better or are part of a native platform of comprehensive readiness tools. Otherwise, you may end up with something much less than a best-in-breed approach. Solutions that may work well on their own, but don’t cooperate to get the outcomes you want.

Number three, prioritize just-in-time solutions delivered in the natural flow of work. You need to understand how your sellers are behaving because while you can change it over time and you should try to optimize their behavior, you’ll get better results quicker from your tech investment if you find solutions that meet them where they are now and expand the efficacy of their natural sales motions, right?

So where are they spending their time? In the CRM? In engagement platforms? In enablement tools? In sales, content management libraries? Where are they spending their time now? And how can you find additional solutions that expand the value in their access to the information that they need within that natural flow?

So as you’re bringing something on, ask yourself: does this meet our sellers where they’re working? Does this integrate with email? Does it integrate with the CRM in the way that we need it to? If you focus on that, then you’re going to be giving sellers the power that they need, right when they need it, right where they are to drive real deals forward in the field.

And that’s really what you want. Those are our three tips for optimizing your sales tech stack, and I hope they help you out on your readiness journey.

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About Mindtickle

What is sales content analytics?

According to Forrester

How does sales content analytics help your B2B sales team?

Data-driven orgs are

Content analytics inform more effective training and enablement

Sales content analytics help reps determine the next best action

Sales content analytics helps drive deal acceleration

What sales content metrics do you need to track?

Searches

Sales content usage

Sales content engagement

Sales content production timeline

Sales content performance and ROI

Feedback from the sales team

Leverage sales content metrics to optimize your sales content with Mindtickle

Sales Content Analytics in Mindtickle

Connecting with buyers – digitally

According to Gartner Research,

Delivering personalized, on-brand experiences

Engaging large buying committees

Increasing buy-in and seller adoption

See Digital Sales Rooms in Action

According to the Sales Enablement Collective

What is sales content management?

Access the right content

Customize content

Track peformance

The importance of sales content management

What are the benefits of sales content management?

Improves sales and revenue productivity

Reducing sales’ search time for content and collateral

Increasing win rates

Improving sales and marketing alignment

Reducing new sales team members’ ramp times

Improving the ability to track content usage

Reducing competitive losses

How to improve sales content management with technology

Sales Content Management in Mindtickle

What is sales collateral and why is it important?

Print

Digital

Internal

External

Print vs. digital sales collateral

Internal vs. external sales collateral

The importance of sales collateral

What are the different types of sales collateral?

Sales and marketing collateral for the awareness stage

Sales and marketing collateral for the consideration stage

Sales and marketing collateral for the decision-making stage

Sales and marketing collateral for retention stage

How do you create sales collateral for your business?

Asking key questions for sales content development

Question #1: Who is your customer?

Question #2: What are your customers’ pain points?

Question #3: How can prospects trust your solution?

Question #4: What types of content will help in the buyer journey?

Question #5: How can you retain your existing customers?

Streamlining management

Measuring and optimizing

Increase the impact of your sales collateral with Mindtickle

Sales Content Management in Mindtickle

What you’ll learn:

What are digital sales rooms and how do they work?

Digital sales rooms empower your buyers

How to create compelling custom buying experiences using DSRs

Personalize the digital sales room experience to your buyer

Have support accessible at all times

Make your content unique with purposeful interaction

Always make the next steps clear

Keep the content on brand to elevate purchase desire

Include a product demo