How to Create Better Sales Documents in 2025

Every professional requires certain tools to excel in their role. Sales reps are certainly no expectation.

Sales documents are a key component of any successful seller’s toolbox. In fact, with the right sales content, sellers can engage any qualified prospect – no matter where they may be on the purchase journey.

But creating great sales documents is only the first step. Organizations must also ensure their sellers can easily sales content that’ll resonate with the prospect and compel them to take the next step in the purchase journey.

In this post, we’ll discuss sales documents and why they’re a powerful tool for engaging buyers and moving them through the sales funnel. We’ll also share proven best practices for creating effective sales documents and developing a sales content management strategy that ensures your sellers can find the content they need whenever and wherever they need it.

What are sales documents?

Let’s lay the foundation by exploring sales documents and why they are such an important tool for revenue organizations.

Sales documents: a definition

Sales documents are written materials used by B2B sellers to support the sales process. They convey information to B2B buyers and help guide them through the purchase journey.

They are often referred to by other names, including:

  • Sales collateral
  • Sales assets
  • Sales content

Sales documents can take many different forms. Sometimes, they are printed materials. But increasingly, organizations are leveraging digital sales documents. We’ll take a closer look at some common types later on.

The importance of sales documents

Now, we’re clear on what they are. But why are they so important?

Buyers and sellers alike depend on sales content throughout the purchase journey. In fact, research tells us more than half of B2B buyers rely on content more now than in the past.

When buyers share the right documents with the right prospects at the right time, they can:

When a seller shares a relevant sales document, they show the buyer they truly understand their needs. This increases trust – and the prospect’s likelihood of making a purchase. After all, 86% of B2B buyers are more likely to purchase if a company understands their goals.

Buyers need the right information to make informed purchase decisions. With sales documents, sellers can share the right information at the right time.

Most buyers will raise at least some objections throughout the purchase journey. With the right sales documents, sellers can overcome these objections – and move buyers closer to a purchase.

Buyers only want to invest in solutions that’ll deliver ROI. With the right sales content, sellers can help buyers understand the value of their solution.

Modern buyers expect consistent experiences, no matter who they interact with at your company. Documents enable organizations to deliver consistent, on-brand experiences – no matter which sales rep a prospect is working with.

In short, when sellers have a robust library of sales process documents (and can easily surface the right asset at the right time), they can increase engagement and conversion rates and accelerate sales cycles.

Common types of sales documents

Sales documents can take many different forms. It’s important to ensure your sellers have the right types of sales content to engage buyers at different stages of the sales cycle.

Some common types include:

#1 Case studies

These tell the story of a customer who has used your solution to overcome their challenges and meet their goals. Case studies must be relevant to be effective. For example, you might share a case study with a prospect that conveys how a business in the same industry or similar size used your solution to overcome its pain points.

#2 Sales battle cards

According to recent research, 57% of deals are competitive. That number is even higher for certain industries.

Sellers should expect buyers to bring up competitive objections – and be ready to address them.

Sales battle cards are a type of sales document that conveys how your solution compares to one or more competitors. Some are for internal use only, while others are meant to be shared with prospective customers.

#3 Sales presentations

These are documents you use to present your solution to prospective customers. Sales presentations should be tailored to each prospect’s needs.

#4 Pricing sales documentation

Pricing documents convey how much a customer can expect to pay for your solution. This information lets them decide if your solution is within budget.

Typically, pricing documents aren’t one-size-fits-all. This is especially true for businesses selling to enterprise customers. Instead, these documents should be customized to the needs of each prospect.

#5 Sales playbooks

A sales playbook is a type of sales documentation that outlines the strategies, processes, and best practices used at your organization. Research shows that sellers who use sales playbooks are much more likely to meet their sales goals than those who don’t.

Sales playbooks are an example of a sales document intended for internal use only. In other words, they are not meant to be shared with customers.

Enablement and sales documents: What’s the connection?

The right documents can help sellers engage buyers and move them through the funnel faster. But creating a library of sales documentation is only the first step.

Sellers must also be able to quickly find the right content for the right situation. Otherwise, they’ll spend too much time searching for sales content – or even creating their own.

Proper sales content management – which is one of the pillars of a holistic sales enablement strategy – helps ensure sellers can always find the documents they need, when they need them.

Mindtickle Asset Hub

A sales enablement platform provides sellers with a single source of truth for all documents. Rather than searching through disparate repositories, sellers can find all approved, up-to-date documents in one central location.

Ideally, a sales enablement platform should have robust organization and search features so sellers can easily find what they need. Innovative platforms also leverage AI to recommend content based on data like buyer engagement and sales cycle stage. Then, sellers can personalize this content for each seller.

Of course, not all documents will have the same engagement and impact. Measuring each sales document’s impact is a key part of any sales enablement strategy. Then, you can focus on creating more content that works.

Best practices for creating sales documents

Not all documents are the same. While some will resonate with prospects and propel them to action, others will fall flat.

By adopting proven best practices (as well as a winning content governance strategy), you can start creating more impactful documents that’ll resonate with buyers throughout the purchase journey – and convert more of them to customers.

#1 Develop buyer personas

It’s important to develop documents that’ll resonate with your prospective buyers. But first, you have to understand who these prospective buyers are.

If you haven’t already, develop buyer personas, fictitious representations of the people your sellers interact with. You buyer personas should include details like:

  • Job title
  • Geographic location
  • Company size
  • Industry
  • Job responsibilities
  • Pain points

Your buyer personas should be rooted in data. For example, dig into your data to see what types of people your sellers are engaging with – and which are the ones who are converting to customers. Your sellers will also have unique insight that can help shape your buyer personas.

#2 Map the buyer journey

Sellers need sales content they can use with buyers throughout every stage of the purchase journey. As such, it’s important to determine what the purchase journey looks like.

Be sure to map your customer journey. In other words, outline what paths your prospects are taking to become customers. Your buyer journey should include every phase, from initial contact to signing the contract – and even beyond.

#3 Audit existing sales documents

Once you’ve mapped the buyer journey, it’s time to take stock of your existing documents.

Take a complete inventory of your documents. Then, map each piece of sales content to the buyer journey.

This exercise will help you identify gaps in your documents. For example, you may notice that sellers have few to no high-quality sales documents to use at a certain stage of the customer journey.

#4 Vary the format of your sales documents

When you hear “sales documents,” you might first think of assets like PowerPoint presentations and static PDFs. These types of assets certainly have a place in your content library. But consider incorporating different formats in your sales content library, too.

For example, consider incorporating videos. Or, use interactive formats, like an ROI calculator. Prospects can input their information and get a tailored report on the ROI they can expect from your solution. As a bonus, this data can be used to personalize future outreach and documents.

#5 Empower sellers to personalize sales documents

Recent research shows that two-thirds of B2B buyers expect fully or mostly personalized content when researching and exploring a company’s products and services. Generic documents simply won’t do.

Empowering your sellers to personalize documents to fit the buyer’s needs is important. With the right sales enablement tool, your sellers can personalize sales content – while maintaining consistent, on-brand experiences.

#6 Store sales documents in a single system of record

All too often, organizations store documents in multiple tools or locations. That means sellers have to spend time finding the right assets, and they’re never quite sure if they’re using the most up-to-date versions.

Instead, consolidate all sales documents into a single sales content management tool. That way, your sellers have a central hub for finding all the documents they need. If the sales content management tool uses AI, your sellers can even get data-based recommendations on what content to use for specific sales scenarios.

Rather than using a stand-alone sales content management tool, consider investing in an integrated sales enablement platform that has robust sales content management capabilities. That way, your sellers can find all sales enablement resources in one spot, without spending time switching between tools. In addition, you can create, manage, and measure your documents alongside your other sales enablement programs.

#7 Measure sales document effectiveness and refresh accordingly

A recent analysis found that the top 10% of revenue organizations update their sales content at least once every 3.25 months. This ongoing refreshment is worth the effort, as it’s correlated with greater engagement.

The top

Update content

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It’s important to ensure your sales content is refreshed regularly to reflect changes in your business. For example, you must refresh your documents when you release new product features or update your pricing model.

In addition, be sure you’re regularly measuring sales document engagement and impact. You can use these insights to optimize your sales document library. For example, you may decide to rework the format of a sales document with a high engagement level but low impact. You may also decide to eliminate certain documents that have never been used by sellers completely.

Mindtickle equips your sellers with the right sales documents to engage buyers and close deals

Sales content is a key piece of the B2B purchase journey. When sellers share the right documents at the right time, they can accelerate sales cycles and increase conversion rates.

But all too often, sellers spend too much time searching for documents. Sometimes, they even take matters into their own hands and create their own unapproved documents.

With Mindtickle’s integrated revenue enablement platform, your sellers can spend less time searching for documents – and more time engaging with buyers.

With Mindtickle, sellers can quickly discover, personalize, and share sales documents that’ll resonate with any buyer – no matter where they are in the purchase journey. In addition to rich search features, Mindtickle also leverages AI to deliver data-based content recommendations.

Updating content is necessary and boosts engagement. With Mindtickle, enablement professionals can make real-time updates to sales documents. That means sellers always know they’re finding and using the latest, approved assets.

Mindtickle also delivers robust data and analytics that can help you improve sales outcomes. Sellers can get insight into how (and if) buyers engage with sales documents, which they can use to tailor their approach moving forward. Sales and enablement leaders can unlock insights into how buyers and sellers engage with different sales documents. They can use these insights to invest more in the most impactful content types.

Your sellers have only so many hours in the day. They shouldn’t waste them hunting down the right sales documents.

Sales Content Management in Mindtickle

Ready to see why leading B2B sales teams depend on Mindtickle to ensure sellers can always find and share the right sales content for any scenario?

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