Content Marketing, Meet Content Selling

Content Marketing,
Meet Content Selling

The way we’ve thought about sales has changed forever. Traditional selling has been
altered by easy access to social media and online analysis, opinions, and other data.
Business buyers can intelligently select products with only minimal interaction with
sales people. Industry analyst firm Sirius Decisions backs this up. They see the majority
of the buying process occurring before a prospect has even spoken to a sales person.
Content Marketing,
Meet Content Selling
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7
7
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Does that mean that Marketing can’t influence
sales anymore? Of course not. In fact, it
means that Marketing has an increasingly
important role in generating awareness and
influencing the buying process. That can be
achieved by providing information that helps
buyers decide which solutions to select.
This Content Marketing approach has led to a
Marketing arms race. Vendors are producing
huge volumes of informative, engaging, (and
fun) content to help direct buyers toward
their products. White papers, presentations,
ROI tools, infographics, and other content are
being built at an incredible pace by masters in
the practice of Content Marketing.
Content Marketing
Supports that Shift
“This Content
Marketing
approach has led
to a Marketing
arms race.“

But Content Marketing isn’t valuable if it’s not
put in the hands of prospects and customers.
That has meant that Marketing Automation
tools have grown at the same pace as Content
Marketing solutions. Marketing Automation
vendors like Eloqua, Hubspot, Marketo, and
Pardot provide email marketing, web content
management, social tools, and other functions.
These tools allow marketers to selectively target
messages and content to prospects at times
when they will resonate best.
Marketing Automation depends on
incrementally improving the messages that are
delivered to prospects. That requires tests and
data to identify which emails are more likely
to be opened, which collateral leads to more
sales, and which landing pages convert more
visitors. So, taking an analytics driven approach
to marketing programs is vital for smart Content
Marketers.
Content Automation
Supports Content
Marketing

The same change in how buyers purchase products has led to the idea that sales
teams themselves will vanish. After all, the conventional wisdom says, sales teams
will become mere order takers. But sales hasn’t lost its relevance, only its traditional
approach. For important product purchases B2B buyers will still partner with sales
people to get the right business case, price, and implementation.
So, sales people retain their relevance. But their role will change. Because the
frequency of interactions with prospects may be fewer and the stage at which
they interact will be later in the buying process, sellers need to adapt. Now every
engagement that a sales person has must be high value. That requires delivering
insights that both advance the sales process and demonstrate thought leadership to
the buyer.
Content Marketing
Needs a Partner
“Sales hasn’t lost
its relevance, only
its traditional
approach.“

As well, a significant element of any B2B sale consists of the preparation
of a business case to justify the purchase. Sellers can help here too.
They can offer information that helps buyers prepare a compelling
justification for the solution that they want to buy.
Because these two activities are dependent on content, we need to
recognize a new focus area, Content Selling. That is, we should look
at how sales can use content – and take advantage of the lessons of
Content Marketing – to sell more effectively.
Through this eBook, we’ll take a look at how the
two sides of content can work together in concert.
First, we’ll see how sales teams can use content in
their day-to-day activities. Second, we’ll see how
marketing can constantly improve the content that
they produce to boost sales effectiveness.
Content Marketing and
Content Selling - Together
“We should look at
how sales can use
content – and take
advantage of the
lessons of Content
Marketing – to sell
more effectively.“

CONTENTMARKETING CONTENTsellingmeet
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Contentmarketinghaschangedhowbusinessesselltootherbusinesses.Marketinghaslearnedthat
eﬀectivecontentbuildsawarenessandspeedscustomersthroughthepipeline.NowSalesandAccount
ManagementteamscanbuildonContentMarketingtogetmorerevenue.
MARKETING SALES

Welcome to Content Selling
Marketing automation tools get the right messages to prospects. Sales people must
do the same. People naturally filter out most incoming information. We process
data that is meaningful based on the context we’re in. Like a commercial for delivery
food during a sporting event, or a rental car review when you booked a flight.
Similar contexts matter in B2B sales. Sending a prospect a roll-out guide late in the
sales cycle makes sense. Sending it after a discovery call is putting the cart before
the horse. So, a Content Selling approach needs to be about helping sales people to
deliver meaningful content to prospects. You can summarize it as:
Content Selling enables sales people to efficiently discover, deliver, and track the
effectiveness of messages that advance a sales engagement.
Effective Content Selling translates into closed business. But how do we get there?
Let’s start by looking at what gets in the way.

What are the
Obstacles to Selling?
Content Access
Everything of value comes with some
challenges. Sales people and sales
enablement teams that support them
need to be aware of the obstacles that
prevent Content Selling.
Marketers deal with content every moment of the day. So, it’s easy for them to identify
the right content for the Content Marketing. But sales doesn’t have that luxury. In fact,
a recent KnowledgeTree survey revealed that the second biggest frustration that sales
has with marketing is their inability to find relevant content when they need it.
That means that sales teams lose hundreds of hours each year looking for relevant
content to use in their sales engagements. Or, they use the familiar – and potentially
ineffective or out-of-date – content that could slow a deal.

Content Timeliness
Content Relevance
Sales teams, and sales enablement professionals in particular, are in a
constant battle against the clock. They are on the phone or at a client site,
and their prospects and customers have questions. Will the responses
come days after the question, or will they be able to respond in a timely
way? If sales people can’t find relevant email templates, or ROI documents,
or call scripts, they are going to be slowed.
Messages work best when they are specifically targeted to the needs of
a prospect. So, a Content Seller needs to always ask whether the email,
phone call, or collateral you’re communicating to a prospect aligned with
their specific pains. Content Selling can’t be about “close enough” content.
It needs to be the right message for a customer or prospect’s context.
By taking a Content Selling approach, sales people can communicate with
their prospects in a more targeted and resonate way.

How Sales Operations Should
Approach Content Selling
With these obstacles in mind, let’s look at how you should start your Content
Selling approach. There are a few key attributes that we suggest.
Not all content is created equally. Some content
will work better at different stages in the sales
cycle. Or for different industries. Or in certain
geographies. And some content simply doesn’t
work at all and ought to be eliminated.
Identify Content that Wins in
Different Sales Situation
w

Marketing and sales operations should evaluate the content they have to
determine what should be promoted to sales teams. That means assessing
your various sales situations and prospect categories and then mapping
your content to these different scenarios.
At the same time, marketing and sales operations need to understand the
ROI for the various pieces of content that they’ve developed. If one piece of
collateral advanced a sales cycle, it ought to be promoted more heavily. And
if another piece consistently has bad results, marketing and sales operations
need to know so they can remove it from circulation.
“Marketing and
sales operations
need to understand
the ROI for the
various pieces of
content that they’ve
developed.“

Your sales and marketing teams have produced huge volumes of collateral. But
according to analysts up to 70% of content goes completely unused. Why? Largely
because it is inaccessible to sales teams. Imagine a sales team selling to a financial
services company. Which content should they use?
They may start by searching in a document management tool to find what they
want. But when the search returns hundreds or even thousands of search results,
it is simply not possible to find what you need. So, marketing and sales operations
teams need to ensure that content can be quickly located by sales people.
That doesn’t mean simply storing it in a content management or document
management tool. That’s where content goes to die. You need to ensure that it is
within the tool that sales people spend the bulk of their time in – and that’s often
Salesforce.com.
Make Content Accessible

Field sales teams are always on the move.
They may be at a client site and then back
at their home office. No matter where
they are, they need access to the right
content for their sales situation. If they
are stuck having to go through a firewall,
or struggle with a complex and bloated
document management tool, they’ll go
with the default content. That is, they’ll
use whatever is at hand.
So it is important to make sure that
content is instantly accessible to all sales
people no matter where they are. The
rise of the iPad makes this easy to achieve.
All it requires is an app that connects to
your content repository. And better still,
content that is relevant for your particular
sales situation.
Make Content Mobile
OQ

It’s not enough to simply produce content and throw it over the wall to sales. Marketing
needs to understand which content is working and in what situations. That’s where an
analytically absorbed marketing and sales operations team can win.
Determine which metrics make sense to track. For instance, you may look at which
content is actually being consumed by the sales team to understand which valuable
content needs to be promoted internally. And look at ROI data about which content is
generating business. So marketing can decide where to intelligently invest.
That focus on measuring content and determining what works best is the center of
an analytics-driven approach to getting the best messages in front of prospects. That
approach is called the Moneyball approach to content.
Learn What Works
“ Marketing needs to
understand which content
is working and in what
situations. “

A Moneyball Approach to
Content Selling
Marketing needs to provide the highest quality content possible to sales teams. So
we’ve found that it is critical that marketing teams take a deeply analytical approach to
their content. We call this approach “Moneyball for Sales and Marketing Content”.
It was 2002, and the Oakland Athletics knew they needed to do things differently.
Based in a mid-sized city, they had a loyal, but small, fan base compared with their
opponents. And with a smaller set of fans comes lower budgets to hire big-name
players. In fact, their payroll was the third lowest of all teams in the league. Competing
to sign marquee players was simply not an option.

But then again, baseball is a different kind of sport. If you’ve ever been to a
baseball game you know that it is a game of numbers. When a batter steps to
the plate, you’ll see their On Base Percentage, Batting Average, Runs Batted
In, and other statistics flashed beside their picture.
Managers study this data relentlessly, looking for small advantages in match-
ups between batters, pitchers, and other players. This meant that Oakland’s
management could hire less expensive specialists that deliver a lot of value in
specific match-ups. So, a player that bunts well against left-handed pitchers
can be called in at the right time. And the investment is lower.
This statistical approach to investing in players got a name (and a book, and a
movie). It’s called Moneyball. This mathematical approach led Oakland to win
63% of their regular season games, their divisional championship and broke
the 1906 Chicago White Sox record for the longest win streak in the American
League. This winning season happened despite the loss of three major stars
to other teams. And despite paying just one-third of the New York Yankees
on player salaries.

What can sales and marketing teams
learn from this? Let’s see what
Moneyball for sales and marketing
looks like.
Sales teams only have limited time
in front of prospects and customers.
And they need to spend that time
wisely. That requires that they put
their best foot forward each time they
deliver a presentation, send collateral,
or submit a proposal. Collateral that
supports a sales engagement needs
to deliver the right message for a
prospect no matter where they are in
the sales cycle.
Marketing is the Same Sport
m
K

And from marketing’s perspective, money is a major consideration. Research by
industry analyst ITSMA reveals that 18% of marketing communications budgets go
to collateral – writing, producing, and delivering collateral. That is the largest single
component of any marketing budget. So, that money has to be invested intelligently.
How does this all apply? Let’s walk through some common baseball scenarios and
see Moneyball for sales and marketing in action. These tactics, combined with the
learnings above, can help you to formulate an approach to content development that
puts the most relevant and resonate messages into your sales people’s hands – at the
right time.
“18% of marketing
communications
budgets go to
collateral.“

lLBatting order is an important part of baseball strategy. You want fast runners that
get on base frequently to be ahead of skilled batters that can drive them in for a
score. The same principle holds true for your sales and marketing content. Different
messages and vehicles will be effective at different sales stages.
For instance, using a best practices guide early in the sales cycle can lead to
spooked prospects. Similarly, sending high-level marketing content late in the game
may diminish the apparent value of your solution. Is there a research phase where
prospects need to educate themselves on the market? Is there an evaluation phase
where prospects trial your solution? Are there concerns or misunderstandings that
prospects consistently run into?
#1 Batting Order or When to Use
Sales and Marketing Collateral

As a result, we recommend that you
understand which content resonates best
with different phases for your prospects. To do
so, you should look at the journey your prospects
take through the sales process to becoming a
customer. This will help to understand which content
works during different phases in your sales process.
Let’s start with the simplest model, a standard sales funnel.
In a funnel, a prospect will pass through a standardized set
of steps which are largely understood. That may be an early
research phase where the prospect is learning the scope of the
pain and the market players. Later, they may be looking to build
a business case internally. And lastly, they may move to a final
stage where they need to demonstrate that they can get
internal adoption.
Assess Your
“Customer Experience”

By breaking your sales process into these standard steps, sales and marketing
managers can understand the pains and questions associated with each step.
That allows the team to match content with the concerns that the prospect has
at each stage. For instance, an early prospect may be interested in educational
and thought leadership materials. At later stages they might want to understand
product-specific details and competitive differentiation in order to build a
business case. And lastly they may want case studies and best practices to plan
implementation.
In this structured model marketing and sales managers can measure which
content is most effective at advancing a prospect to the next step. Does a piece
of thought leadership material advance the qualification stage, or do case studies
work better? By assessing prospect reactions to content based on the issues
they have at each stage, you can gauge which content should be best-practice to
include during each sales step.

However, a standard sales funnel is becoming increasingly less common. Today’s
business-to-business buyers have changed. Buyers now engage with your sales
and marketing team as needed. They’ll browse videos, read papers, ask questions,
and prepare business cases with fewer touches with a sales team.
With this shift, you should first start with a frank assessment of how your buyers
interact with your go-to-market team. Understand which pains and questions a
prospect has, much like in the sales funnel above. But critically, because touch-
points with the prospect may be fewer, you need to identify the context of your
prospect early so you can deliver the right messaging.
Customer Experiences are Increasingly Dynamic
S

By understanding these blocks, you can map which content succeeds in different sales
contexts. Then, when a sales person identifies a certain context for their prospect,
they can use the most effective collateral to move closer to the sale.
There is no magic to determining the best order for your content. You should
understand what pains and questions prospects ask depending on their various stage
in the buyer journey. Then, pair content that addresses these pains and continuously
measure and adjust your content mix.
“ There is no magic
to determining the
best order for your
content.“

We know that effective sales tools close
business. To get great collateral requires
that you assess how well it resonates with
prospects. And as you find out what wins, you
can invest accordingly. That’s the moneyball
approach to sales and marketing content.
Above we looked at the importance of timing
and sequencing of the content sales sends.
That lets your sales team speak to the exact
informational need that a prospect has at
any given time. Now, let’s see how you pick
content that is well-tuned to your prospect’s
need to dramatically speed up the sales cycle.
#2 Relevant Collateral
Helps the Buyer to
Play Ball
“Pick content that is
well-tuned to your
prospect’s need to
dramatically speed
up the sales cycle.“

An effective presentation or proposal addresses the needs of a customer. It speaks
their language. But what levers should you pull to match these needs? Remember
that your prospect isn’t just sitting on the collateral that you send them. They are
using it to build an internal business case for your offer. So, ask yourself some key
questions about their sales content needs:
• Geography and Language: Do prospects in Europe have different pains than their
American counterparts? Are country-specific case studies necessary, or is it more
about the resonance of the message?

• Industry: How should you message when selling into the financial services
industry? Do banking case studies work for insurance prospects?

• Product Mix: Which products work together well from a messaging perspective?
What level of technical detail should you go into for different products?

• Key Pains: Which pain points elicit the strongest reaction? Do different industries
and geographies respond differently to different pains?
Question Your Collateral

Your company will have its own key elements that you want to
organize messages by. Look at how you segment your market
and the various personae. By understanding the different types
of customers and audiences within those customers, you’ll
know how to blend messaging effectively in your content.
But the next step is vital. You need to measure results. That
means tying ROI back to your collateral. It makes sense. You
likely do it now with your email and website content. You
should also do it for the content that your sales team depends
on. Track which collateral is linked to getting appointments,
short lists, and closed business. You’ll find that not all variations
actually affect your key metrics. But test it and you’ll quickly
discover where to invest time.
A KnowledgeTree client ties each piece of collateral to the
number of closed opportunities and the amount of revenue
generated. That’s allowed the team to eliminate unproductive
content, saving significant time – and redouble efforts around
refining collateral that is closing business.

When sales people are equipped with the right collateral at the right
time they communicate compelling stories to prospects and customers.
But what happens when content isn’t resonating? When a marketing
hypothesis for a piece of content isn’t panning out? You need to
determine whether it makes sense to substitute in fresh content.
#3 Don’t Let Sales and Marketing
Collateral Get Stale

Sales operations, sales management, and marketing teams can learn how to test
for this based on their experiences with marketing automation tools. Each day
B2B companies test multitudes of social media, email, and website content. They
check open and click-through-rates, conversions, and more. And they need to do
the same with the collateral that prospects use to build internal business cases.
The content that closes deals.
Managers should look at which content is used by sales people and understand
at which stage in the sales process it is being used. Is the content consistently
part of a successful sales campaign? Does it regularly lead to an advancing sales
process? If not, pull it and replace it.
You already collect ROI on other marketing materials. Companies must also
do it for collateral – the largest single budget item for most B2B marketing
organizations.
Use Analytics to Identify When Content Works

Collateral will often have a different impact at different stages in a sales engagement.
A best practice guide may not resonate early in the sales cycle when case studies do.
Always test not only whether content works, but whether it is being used at the right
point in the sales process.
The same holds true for a prospect and customer’s context. Are they in a competitive
situation or interested in a particular business pain? What industry or geography is
the prospect in? The context of the prospect will heavily influence whether content is
successful. So, don’t discard collateral because it isn’t being used or getting results.
Understand whether it’s simply playing the wrong ‘position’.
Focus Analytics on Customer Timing and State
“ The context of the
prospect will heavily
influence whether content
is successful. “

In addition to analytics, managers should keep their ears open to
feedback from users. Sales people are in the field using sales materials
every day. They know which content works effectively and which needs
work. But how do you get these opinions back to marketing so content
can get better over time?
That means actively encouraging sales teams to give input with easy
communication mechanisms. Try tools that prompt sales teams to
comment on content quality as soon as it is used. Monitor which sales
people are using particular pieces of collateral and gather input from
them on why they use specific collateral pieces and when.
Marketing collateral isn’t simply produced and forgotten. It needs to be
constantly evaluated for quality and resonance. Moneyball managers test
whether content is getting used and whether it is still working. And when
it’s not… swap it out.
Qualitative Feedback on Sales Enablement Tools

You’re moving through a sale quickly. The buyer is interested, likes your product, has
the budget, and a business case. But then a curve ball kicks in. One of your competitors
joins the pursuit. Now, suddenly there’s a fight on your hands.
Sales teams need to be equipped with the right materials to address competitive
threats. But which materials are going to work? As we’ve talked about before, marketing
can help by matching content to certain sales situations. If you have specific strengths in
certain industries, you should use collateral that highlights that. Or, if you have multiple
product lines then tailoring which messages can confront the competitor for a particular
product might be useful.
#4 Have Collateral Ready When
the Competition Challenges

In addition to discovering the right
content at the right time, there’s another
element. Sales teams are at the coal
face day-in and day-out, confronting
competitors and learning what works.
Marketing can target messages that can
undermine competitors, but they can
do it so much better when they know a
competitor or threat inside and out.
That requires that sales provides
feedback about what messages are
working against a competitor. Sales teams
know what resonates and hear responses
directly from the customers themselves.
They need to communicate back to
marketing (and marketing needs to solicit
this information from sales) about what
works so that product, content, and go-to-
market can be adjusted. That’s true sales
enablement – a two way street.
Sales Enablement is
a Two-Way Street

Your product is the top choice of your prospect. They like its fit, your price, and they
want to work with you. But you’re not done selling. The prospect still has to get over
a few major hurdles internally before you can close out the pursuit. So what will help
the prospect buy your product?
In any sales situation you need to equip your champion with relevant information and
materials that will help them to build a business case for the solution and specifically
for your products. Different stages in the sales cycle mean different kinds of content
should be shared.
#5 The Right Collateral at the
Right Time Enables the Closer

Early in the sales process you might share case studies and general value
summaries. But what sales tools should you deliver late in the process? It’s all
situational, but generally tools that emphasize the business value and support the
construction of a business case will be more useful at this stage.
That could be ROI calculators, best practice and implementation guides to support
roll-outs, and other content that helps the champion. But where is that content
and which collateral should the sales person use? With large sales teams and lots
of products sales people can’t be expected to efficiently locate the content they
need.
Look carefully at your prospect’s context to understand the next steps for sending
targeted, effective content that advances the sale.

It is vital that you communicate strong,
effective messages that resonate to your
prospects. That requires having the right
content on hand. As a result, sales and
marketing teams must work together closely
to generate effective content that can drive
sales. At the same time, these teams must
aggressively measure the results of their
content. Is it leading to closed business and
advancing deals?
Lastly, marketing and sales operations must
aggressively curate their content so that only
winning materials are used by the sales teams
and that sales reps time is focused on selling
activities, not searching for relevant content.
Content Selling is a Reality for
Sales Enablement Teams
Discover Your
Content Selling ROI.
Contact Us.

KnowledgeTree helps companies discover and use the best
collateral for any sales situation. Sales people deliver the right
content at the right time to prospects and customers right in
Salesforce.com.
Find out why Network World called KnowledgeTree one of
the 10 SaaS companies to watch. And learn why Software AG,
Alcatel, Genesys, Fuji Chemical, and 500 other global companies
use KnowledgeTree to unlock the value of their collateral.
What is KnowledgeTree?
Visit Our Website
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www.knowledgetree.com
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