When it came to content, we used to rely almost entirely on anecdotes and guesswork. That is no longer good enough – content is at the heart of the sales and marketing process and we must know how it is being used and how it is performing.
Marketing Automation tools made that a reality for marketing content. They let marketers analyze and optimize content marketing efforts during the first half of the sales cycle, providing analytics to show how effectively content moves customers through the funnel. But until recently, as soon as a deal was handed off to the sales team, it entered a content black hole.
There has been no way to answer very basic questions about sales content. Do reps have what they need? Do they use it? Do customers pay any attention to it? Does any of this actually generate real revenue? Even in our increasingly data-driven world, sales content has remained back in the days of guess and hope. But an emerging set of Sales Enablement platforms has changed that. They manage sales content throughout your sales engagements and use analytics to give you full visibility into how that content performs.
This guide walks through eight reports that answer the key business questions about sales content and shows how to use them to optimize the way your company engages with customers.
The Eight Key Reports
To analyze and optimize content used during the sales cycle, there are eight reports you need to have. Each one answers an important business question. Together, they paint a complete picture of the content that you have, how it is being used, whether it is effective, and how much business value you are getting from it.
In this guide we’ll look at each one of these reports, and see what it reveals about content performance throughout your sales cycle. But first, there are some foundational principles to keep in mind.
