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Optimizing Sales
Enablement for
Customer Journey and
Better Content
The second in a Series From the
Big Content Alliance
Press
Pause

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Today’s Presenters
Kathy Baughman
@comblu
Kevin Nichols
@kpnichols
#Content
Sales
Enablement

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Establishing Baseline
Getting started and
needing a roadmap
Building Bridges
Need more internal
collaboration
Ready to Scale
Enhancing approach
with tools and metrics
Three Reasons to Press Pause Which one are you?

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Session Agenda
1. Three reasons to press pause
in the sales enablement
maturity progression
2. Readiness factors and
trouble shooting for each
“reason” or point on the
progression
3. Common themes across all
three reasons to press pause
4. Q&A

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Sales
Enablement:
A process to facilitate effective
communication between sales
teams and customers
throughout customer’s
lifecycle.
Structured Sales
Enablement
Programs Lead to:
higher team quota
attainment
more revenue growth
higher sales velocity
increase in lead
conversion. That’s how
powerful it is.
— Aberdeen Research Report
62%
205%
725%
23%

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Reason One:
Establish Baseline

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Establish Baseline: Things to Consider
1 in 4 companies
says their marketing
and sales teams are
either “rarely aligned”
or “misaligned.”
— HubSpot’s State of Inbound
2016 Report
Know all of
your buyers
Understand their
role in the journey
Don’t forget
partners
Include
internal
stakeholders
Plan for new
content needs
Make sure your content
strategy supports Sales
Enablement

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Know your Buyers
• Have you identified the full buying center for your
services?
• Did you include partners and their role in the selling
process?
• Do you have a fully developed persona for each key
role in the buying center?
• Does the persona provide deep insights
into content consumption patterns and pain points?
• Is your content strategy aligned to fulfill the needs of
your target buying center?
• Do you have a systematic process to refresh and
share customer insights?
7+ pieces of content
are consumed by each persona
in the buying process
— Sirius Decisions
+
6.8 people
are involved in any B2B
purchase, on average
—IDG Enterprise Study

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CEO
Partners
Catalyst for IT purchase, based on
strategic business requirements.
Kicks off the formal purchase
decision process to fulfill business
mission. Involved at a high-level
throughout the process and
“owns” final approval.
CMO
LOB
CFO
Exec Business
Decision-Makers
CIO
SVP
CTOExec Technical
Decision-Makers
VP
Sr. Mgr.
Director
Admin
Mgr.
Engineer
Technical
Decision-Maker
(TDM)
Influences consideration set,
evaluates potential solutions and
recommends preferred
technologies and vendors.
Translates business need to
technology specs, developing a
consideration set and
evaluating prospective
solutions.
Vets options in technical; helps
with planning and migration.
Technical
Influencer (TI)
Enterprise Technology Purchase

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Understand Buyers’ Roles in Journey
• Do all business units share a common customer
lifecycle definition?
• Are the steps within each stage well defined?
• Have you identified key handoffs between marketing
and sales?
• Do you understand the conversion points that push
the customer from one stage to the next?
• Do sales lifecycles align or do inconsistencies create
issues with customer insights?
• Are each of the customer lifecycle stages performance-
based?
• Do you understand the business goals for each stage?
Do you include distributors and internal sales teams?
ROI
on marketing spend
from persona-based
approach.
- McKinsey
95%
of B2B organizations
share content internally
before making a final
purchasing decision.
- CMO Council
70%
of the purchase
decision is made before
talking to the company.
- Content Marketing Institute
5-8X

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Integrate solution into
operations
Awareness Solution Options Implement
Buyer Purchasing Journey
Create content for each buyer at each point of the journey
Become aware
of industry challenges
Identify compelling
problem/opportunity
Determine best solution
approach
Choose a few vendors
& providers
Internet In-person
Problem/
Opportunity
Short-list
Providers
Choose best vendor solution
for buyer team
Decision
Marketing & Sales Buyer-Centric Lead Qualification
Content Marketing & Sales Enablement Content Strategy
Marketing & Sales Integrated Revenue Process

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Enhance Enterprise Content Strategy
• Do you have a defined enterprise content strategy
that includes sales and marketing inputs?
• Does the enterprise content strategy consider
overall business direction/goals?
• Are you prepared for the increase in content
volume resulting from a buyer center/journey
approach?
• Have you created a content roadmap that
considers all buyers and partners?
• Can customer facing employees provide feedback
into content strategy and associated customer
journeys?
65%
of sales reps can’t find content to
send to prospects—the most
common complaint of sales teams.
— Kapost

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Reason One to Press Pause: Establishing a baseline
Customer insights drive content
roadmap
1. Start with sales enablement goals and objectives
2. Conduct Strategic Audit; not a content inventory.
Include sales collateral; content to support distributors
and each sales channel.
3. Identify gaps and sourcing model
4. Create an objectives-driven enterprise roadmap aligned
with sales enablement strategy
5. Create/streamline the process required and align the tools
and platforms needed to distribute and amplify content
87%
of buyers choose a solution provider
that “Provided them with ample
content to help navigate through
each stage of the buying process.”
— Demand Gen Report

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Reason Two:
Build Bridges

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Building Bridges: Things to Consider
82%
of B2B buyers say
that marketing
content is not useful,
relevant or aligned
with needs of
decision makers at
their companies.
—IDC
76%
choose vendors that
deliver effective
value messages.
— Forrester
Shared vision between sales
and marketing of sales lifecycle
Including subject matter
experts in your discussions
Involving sales in the content
roadmap and related content
initiatives (e.g., omnichannel)
Identification of
cultural roadblocks

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Shared Vision Between Sales and Marketing of Sales Lifecycle
• Audit your processes. Have you identified
everyone in your organization that creates sales
and marketing content?
• Are the right people in marketing communicating
with the right people in sales?
• Is there true collaboration between CMO and CRO
(Chief Revenue Officer)?
• Are you measuring content performance across
and within sales and marketing teams?
• Are you organized to support industry trends and
current sales and marketing functions?
52%
of companies report
that marketing
produces all of their
sales enablement
content.
—Corporate Visions
63%
of executives say that
organizational silos &
lack of integrated
systems are the two
biggest obstacles
standing in the way of
improving customer
experience.
— Lithium

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Create an integrated
sales/marketing approach
• Validate/define sales enablement goals and objectives
• Map the customer lifecycle to objectives
• Identify integration points across organization; account for
distributors and each sales channel
• Note which content is necessary to support each stage of
customer lifecycle
• Identify how content performance is tracked
Identify Points of Leverage
• Determine how to leverage assets: customer insights,
journeys, personas, roadmaps, tools, in-person meetings
and distributor sales collateral
Reason Two to Press Pause: Building Bridges

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Build a Sales
Enablement
Roadmap
Identify what else you need to
get to next level
• Processes
• Content
• Systems
• Skills
• Tools
• Governance
GovernanceToolsSkillsProcess
Sales enablement
strategy
Content
Current State Mapping Future State Mapping

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Content Interaction Between Functions
• Customer
Interaction
• Sales
Enablement
• Messaging
• Outreach
• Strategy
• Brand
• Technical
Expertise
Sales
Marketing
Corporate Direction
SMEs

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Involving Sales in the Content Roadmap
• Have you actively engaged sales in the
process of building the content roadmap?
• Have you established a process to continue
tapping their knowledge and insights?
• Have you socialized the approach and
established regular touchpoints?
• Have you put formal training in place to make
sure the content and topics will be integrated
into the sales process?
• Have you engaged sales advocates who will
help inculcate the philosophy and keep the
bridge between sales and marketing strong?
78%
of salespeople using
social media to outsell
their peers.
— Forbes

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Identification of Cultural Roadblocks
• Do stakeholders act collaboratively? Is
there a defined governance process to
establish roles and responsibilities?
• Are there strong leaders who can impact
adoption of a collaborative process?
• Are business silos preventing effective
communication?
84%
of sales reps with best-in-class sales
enablement teams achieve their
quota, compared to just 50% of sales
reps with subpar sales enablement.
— Aberdeen

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Reason Two to Press Pause: Building Bridges
Do a culture gut check
• Determine how ownership issues can be facilitated
• Define change levers needed
̶ Leadership buy-in
̶ Org definition
̶ Customer-centricity
̶ Publishing model (self-publish vs. centralized controls)
̶ Customer-facing alignment on overall strategy
• Establish strong governance and ongoing
engagement
̶ Workshops
̶ Training
̶ Skills
̶ Continuous learning and collaboration
̶ Performance measures
208%
greater revenue when sales and
marketing teams are aligned.
— HubSpot

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Reason Three:
Creating Scale

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Things to Consider A large technology firm
has created analytics
teams in Digital
eCommerce, Marketing
(two separate teams),
and Sales Enablement.
All with different goals,
definitions and analytics
tools. This leads to
duplication effort, lack of
alignment, and overall
confusion as to what
certain numbers mean.
Content that supports both
sales and marketing
Metrics that matter
Alignment of analytics teams
throughout the organization
Automation for enterprise
content strategy

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Content That Supports Both Sales and Marketing
• Have you organized content in a way that
allows for use by sales and marketing?
• Is your content structured for easy reuse?
• Have you built an architecture to support
effective content management (including
personalization)?
• Is there consistent language (labels and
definitions) between sales and marketing
(and by extension, the entire organization)?
65%
of marketing content
is not used by sales.
— Sirius Decisions
90%
of B2B sellers don’t
use sales content
because it is
irrelevant, outdated,
and difficult to
customize.
— Forrester

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Reason Three: Creating Scale
It’s about the
content, content, content…
Ensure You Have a Content Plan and Editorial
Strategy
• Define what content is necessary for initial and ongoing sales
enablement, use the customer journey to identify gaps and needs
• Put in place the necessary resources to create the content, source
the content, and publish it
• Account for ongoing content planning to ensure current and
future needs are met
• Fashion content lifecycles around customer needs to eradicate
silos; ensure business units are telling a consistent brand story
Content
Sourcing
for at
scale
Industry
Trends and
Analysis
Product/
Service
Marketing
User
Generated
Content
Influencer
Content

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Reason Three: Creating Scale
Content Architecture is the ‘design
phase’ for content management
Create a blueprint for content optimization
• Plan the data structures required to deliver content
across programs, channels and devices
• Survey all sales channels, distributor collateral, CRM
data and in-person sales collateral
• Architect content so that it can be assembled and used
for multiple purposes and devices
• Consider the context in which content will be delivered
• Remember to build performance into the model

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Metrics that Matter
• Do you understand how buyers engage with
content when they are ready to buy?
• Have you identified meaningful metrics to
predict sales readiness?
• Do you have metrics for multiple customer
touchpoints?
How content is
organized, packaged,
grouped , delivered
and tracked is driven
by how buyers
consume content
when in purchasing
mode.
— Corporate Visions

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Sample Metrics
• Average Length of
Production
• On-time Delivery
Rates
• Cost per Asset Type
• Bottlenecks in
Workflows
• Content Coverage
Gaps
• Cost per Asset Type
• Sales Utilization
Rates
• Internal
Traction/Reach
• Month-over-Month
(MOM) Referral
Traffic per Asset
• MOM Internal
Shares per Asset
• Views per Asset Type
• Shares per Asset
• Clicks per Asset
• Shares per Channel
Category
• Referral % per
Channel Category
• Downloads per
Month/Topic
• Downloads per
Sales Stage
• Rate of Immersion
per Topic
• Downloads per
Buyer Persona
• Consumption
Time/Topic
• Time on Page
Internal Surface
Internal Commitment
External Surface
External Commitment

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Reason Three: Creating Scale
Platforms are meaningless in the absence of an enterprise content strategy
Get all the stakeholders in a room and
don’t let them out until you agree
upon an enterprise approach to
content
Map content experience along the full
customer lifecycle…from pre-to post
sales; include customer funnel
alignment
Agree upon step strategy
to move along content
sales enablement
maturity progression
Agree upon best way to
collaborate to deliver collectively
against the strategy
Source content from across
stakeholders and then
organize its components in
a way that allows re-use
and dynamic delivery
1
2
3
4 5

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Reason Three: Creating Scale
Inspired by Hawkeye Graphic
Look at the tech stack contextually
Leveraging customer lifecycle to inform tech stack
allows sales teams to:
• View technology needs more contextually
• Include every user target: salesforce (direct,
distributor) and the end user/customer
• Visualize and develop a user-centric publishing model
• Understand the journey(s) prior to technology
purchase or implementation
• Align sales content with marketing messaging
• Drive a model that distributes relevant content
experiences across all distribution channels
• Eliminate unnecessary functionality

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What Did
We Learn?

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Common Reasons You Press Pause
Inspired by Hawkeye Graphic
Deficient enterprise
content strategy
Need for alignment
among processes
and collateral
Absence of right
skill sets
Lack of alignment
between marketing
and sales teams
Absence of effective
governance

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What we have learned
Reason One: Establishing a baseline
• Know your users – buyers and partners
• Leverage customer and buyer journeys
• Respect that it’s a team sport and consult all necessary teams and inputs
• Create an enterprise content strategy and roadmap through collaboration
Reason Two: Building Bridges
• Bridge gaps between sales and marketing teams on content objectives
• Get the rights SMEs at the table
• Integrate teams into larger enterprise content strategy and roadmap discussions
• Identify cultural roadblocks and define strategies to overcome them
Reason Three: Ready to Scale
• Understand how sales and marketing content feed each other
• Create a unified content architecture between sales and marketing teams
• Align analytics teams and gather the right metrics
• Ensure tech stack supports the buyer and customer journeys, and better integration
between sales and other teams

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Questions? Call BCA if you need:
• Help with content strategy
• Mapping content across the
customer lifecycle
• Breaking down silos between
marketing, sales and CX
Contact us:
BigContentAlliance.com
@BigContentBCA
Kathy Baughman
@comblu
Kevin Nichols
@kpnichols
#ContentSalesEnablement

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Appendix

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Reason One to Press Pause: Establishing a baseline
Customer-centricity is the most foundational competency.
Each requires specific
insights that provides
a foundation for
outcome selling.
Customer lifecycles
should include the
internal sales team,
sales partners and the
end-customer.
Segment/Cohort
• Segment ID
• Topic modeling/
segment
Persona/Role
• Buyer center ID
• Persona creation and
alignment between
B2B and B2C
• Use case definition
• Use case content
needs per persona
Person/Account
• ID high-value
customers & prospects
• Single view of
customer/
federated profile
• Data point definition
and source mapping
• Sales partners and
distributors
Customer Lifecycle
• Holistic lens for
customer relationship
with brand
• Defined stages of
customer maturity
• KPIs defined at
conversion points from
one stage to next

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Content Requirements: Map Content to User Journey/Segment/Channel, Etc.
User
Journey
1
Pre-requirements/
Education
2
Requirements/
Evaluate options
3
Design/
Build business case
4
Approve/
Buy
5
Post-purchase/
Implement and
cross-sell
User State • Anonymous • Anonymous • Known visitor • Known prospect • Customer
Channel
• Website (desktop)
• Mobile search
• Website
• Mobile search
• Website
• Mobile App
• Chat
• Conversation
• Lateral search
• Online store
• Mobile app
• Sales contact
• Customer portal
• Internal
search/website
• Online community
• F2F communications
Content
• Emerging technology
• Pricing and promotions
• Thought
leadership/POV
• Product/solutions
overview
• Vendor comparisons
• Performance
benchmarks
• VOC/peer testimonials
• Testing documentation
• Requirements
checklists
• Analyst report
• Original research
• Use case performance
• ROI/TCO calculator
• Architectural
documentation
• Contract • Newsletters
• Knowledge base
• UGC
Persona: Technical Decision-maker

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Dashboard Approach
Surface Metrics Commitment Metrics
Definition
Engagement metrics that indicate content
interests
Consumption patterns that indicate sales
readiness
Pros
• Topline insights into topics and formats
of interest to prospects
• Easy to source metrics
• Deeper understanding of content
sequencing that converts
• Provides insights about how to cluster
content assets to move people more
quickly across journey
Cons
• Poor indicator of sales readiness; lots
of false positives and funnel inflation
• Tends to provide information about a
single content asset
Requires sophisticated recombinant
metrics and algorithms
Examples Clicks, views, shares
Page time, # assets consumed,
consumption time

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Why Commitment Metrics Matter
Time starved B2B buyers tend to
“content binge” when in buying mode
• Consume multiple pieces of content in a session
• Serving up one piece of content per click does not
accommodate someone in research mode
• Harried B2B buyers get frustrated and will move on if
they can not find deep enough information easily
• Monetizing attention is a mission critical imperative for
marketers that need to educate and nurture quality
prospects
Commitment metrics allow B2B marketers to provide hyper-
focused content clusters aligned with specific need or pain
point in a data-driven sequence.
93%
of B2B buyers want
marketers to package
related content together.
- Demand Gen 2016 Content
Preferences Report
more likely sales ready
when a buyer content
binges.
- Lookbook HQ
67%
rely more on content
research today than last
year to make decisions.
- Demand Gen 2016 Content Preferences Report
75%
report they have less time
to view it.
2.4X