LocationsRecently, we’ve been helping a client assess sales materials to figure out how they can improve relevance and quality. In talking to the product marketers and sales people, we discovered a few gaps.
Often, sales people modify materials to fit their prospects, presentation lengths, or personal styles—not to mention adjusting according to what works well and what falls flat. For marketing teams to capture what the sales people are learning and improve the materials over time, you need to build in a feedback loop.
Because everyone—not just customers, but sales people and marketers too—is getting used to interacting more directly through online networking and social media, our expectations have changed; we expect to be able to speak back, rate, and comment on things, whether they’re products, experiences, or even sales assets.
How might a product marketer enable that feedback and create the tools to capture it?
- Assign a contact person or owner for each piece of material. Even if it’s not the perfect person, or several people should be involved, having someone “own” the material will prevent “not-my-job” and help ensure that there’s some accountability.
- Create a central repository for the materials (many organizations already have something like this), but allow for commenting or rating of each asset. Think of how easy it is for people to “like,” “upvote,” or “downvote” something on Facebook, Reddit, or Digg – aim to create a frictionless way of communicating effectiveness.
- Have the sales team nominate their most effective colleagues in the field, then ask those people to share the collateral that works for them. Ideally, they could also provide trainings or even example presentations, so that both product marketers and sales colleagues could see the sales assets in action.
- Bring together some of those field champions to review content as it becomes available, using their experience to provide some initial improvements so the content can perform better right off the bat.
- As a product marketer, don’t get too attached to your material. If you feel personally invested in the materials instead of the materials’ success, your pride can stand in the way of getting the best content for your audience. Your job is to shepherd the content to its best result, not to guard its wording.
Most of all, keep in mind that any solution needs to save time, not create more steps and tasks. Be respectful of your colleagues’ time—anything that costs them sales time won’t be sustainable beyond a few weeks.