The question of who really owns sales content can be a tricky one.
An organization’s marketing and product marketing teams might believe they’re solely responsible for building and executing on a content plan. Their expertise in creating quality, on-brand content matters most. The sales team, however, might believe they are best suited to create and own content because they’re closest to buyer conversations. The conflict lies in the struggle of ownership.
During my session at ATD SELL Conference, I break down why it takes a village to build an adaptable content framework and production strategy. I’ll encourage attendees to rethink the content production process and how it can support sellers in a better way.
In this blog post you’ll get a sneak peek at the session and come away with an understanding of why marketing and sales teams should take ownership of sales content.
What Content Means to Marketing and Sales
The lifecycle of a piece of content looks different to sales and marketing teams. Let’s look at it through the lens of each.Content in Marketing
Content is marketing teams’ bread and butter. Most content, whether it’s an e-book, blog post, infographic, whitepaper, or case study, is heavily visual and descriptive. A marketer’s main goal with content creation is to address customer problems and encourage the best way to resolve them.
Marketers are storytellers by nature. They aim to tell a story that resonates with the customer, puts them on the right track to finding a solution, and captures them as a return visitor to their website.
The marketing team works to provide the sales team with on-brand, on-message, and up-to-date content that resonates with current and future customers. However, marketers often see their content becoming a shadow of its original self once it lands in the sales teams’ hands.
Content in Sales
To a sales team, customization is key. Sales relies on the content’s message and how it can be tailored to every customer’s specific needs. Sales teams believe in tweaking the content based on demographics like region, title, and company size.
Content customization is important to a sales team because it shows they care about every customer’s unique problem and took the time to find a personalized way to deliver the solution.
Sales teams deem themselves best equipped to build content with stories that resonate with customers. They view content as something to be constantly adjusted based on the selling situation.
Why Shared Ownership Is Your Best Bet
Why is it so hard for marketing and sales to take joint ownership of sales content?Both teams strive to provide solutions, but the nuances of content goals can make overall goals a bit fuzzy. Put simply, marketing wants to amplify the solution and get it out to as many people as possible while sales typically cares about one customer at a time.
This disconnect between teams results in content sprawl, multiple repositories, inconsistent messaging, and a fractured relationship between sales and marketing. The reality is that everyone—sales, marketing, and sales enablement professionals—owns content.
When marketing and sales are aligned, they can rely on each other during the buying process. Marketing can align with sales to ask about the customer needs and sales can wrap back around to marketing after a deal is complete to let them know what they need for next time. It’s one continuous, harmonious loop.
Rethink Your Content Creation Process
Authentic messaging is essential for any customer to trust a company and, ultimately, buy into their product. Gather your marketing and sales teams together to determine how content will be managed. Don’t let differences of approach keep you from creating a seamless content production process. After all, an engaging story (marketing) and exceptional messaging (sales) are one and the same.The most successful revenue-generating teams regularly collaborate and iterate on content. Tune into Russell’s session to learn how to rethink the content production process and how it can support sellers in a better way.
