Creating sales-ready collateral that moves buyers along their journey

Sales teams often find marketing collateral impractical or unsuited to the sales process. Marketing teams, on the other hand, struggle to understand why sales won’t use what they’ve made and are unsure how to support them. So what’s the secret to creating content that actually moves buyers along their journey?

In Episode 3 of our Bridging the Sales and Marketing Divide series, Peter Meyers and I explore the common challenges and best practices for developing sales-ready collateral.

Misaligned sales collateral

Misalignment between marketing and sales when it comes to collateral leads to underutilized materials, wasted resources, and missed opportunities.

Here’s what sales sees as the issues:

• Relevance: For sales, collateral often fails to address specific buyer needs and pain points.
• Usability: Materials can be overly complex or not formatted for buyer conversations, quick consumption, or decision-making.
• Practicality: Sales needs collateral that is directly applicable in real-world sales scenarios versus designed for broader messaging purposes.

Yet marketing faces these challenges: 

• Understanding buyer needs: Marketing teams often lack insight into specific buyer challenges — which sales often hears firsthand.
• Alignment with the brand and/or product: Corporate and product branding are often develop to create a certain impression in the marketplace, and marketing’s job is to reinforce that branding. But the content sales needs may not always align with those requirements, leaving marketing caught between sales and other groups.
• Resource allocation: Marketing often doesn’t have the bandwidth to tailor collateral specifically for each account of sales team member, resulting in one-size-fits-all materials.

Best practices for sales-ready collateral

Effective sales collateral is a team effort. Companies can develop materials that truly support the sales process by understanding the disconnects above and fostering closer collaboration between sales and marketing. Remember, the goal is to make it as easy as possible for a buyer to make a confident, informed decision. Here’s how content can help:

1. Show an understanding of buyer needs and pain points. Creating materials that directly address the buyer’s needs and pain points will ensure that it’s meaningful and applicable to real-world scenarios.
2. Produce clear, concise, and easily digestible content that buyers can quickly understand. In other words, keep it simple. Sales collateral should not be overly detailed or cluttered with too many options. 
3. Help buyers feel more confident in their decision-making process. Make sure each content piece addresses the buyer’s biggest concerns and risks at each stage of the journey.

What’s the secret to collaborative content creation?

Companies that have implemented joint workshops and regular feedback loops between sales and marketing see significant improvements in the effectiveness of their sales collateral. They report higher usage rates of marketing materials by sales teams and increased alignment in messaging. Here are some strategies to facilitate this collaboration:

• Joint workshops: Facilitate regular workshops in which sales and marketing teams can collaborate on content creation.
• Feedback sessions: Implement structured feedback mechanisms to continuously improve collateral based on sales insights.
• Practical training: Offer practical training sessions that improve the use and impact of sales collateral.

If you have any experiences or insights related to creating effective sales collateral, or if you’ve faced similar challenges, reach out to us via email or on our socials with your thoughts. And stay tuned for the next episode where we wrap up the series with some final takeaways.