Do you know what marketing content actually drives revenue? More than 80% of marketing content goes unused by sales teams. Discover how to get more marketing content used by sales and see what the data tells you about content performance, including which content types win in different sales situations and stages of the sales funnel. Learn how to measure marketing content ROI, and triple the content usage in your sales organization.

1. The Content That Drives Sales:
Increasing Use in Your Team

2. Why
Content?
Why Isn’t It
Used?
Increase
Relevance
Build a
Virtuous
Cycle
We Will Cover

3. Impressive Marketing Statistic?
60% of the buyer journey is
complete before a prospect
reaches sales
Does that number seem right?
A low hurdle for a B2C buyer to purchase a product
means that a sales person could slow down a buyer’s
journey. But is that the case for your B2B sale?

4. SolutionComplexity
Buying Environment Complexity
Try and Buy
Challenge
As complexity of solution
and buying environment
increase, the value of a
sales person increases.
The Reality for Sales People

5. In-market for
your solution
As little as 3 – 5% of
your prospects are
looking for your
solution now – are
your sales reps
prepped to have the
best conversations
with them?
Most prospects
are experiencing
pain, but not
current priority
Inbound /
Outbound /
Allbound

6. The average
B2B purchase
includes 20
individuals.
Source: Four
Quadrant
• Sales people need to engage their
prospects and identify pains in these
accounts.
• Sales people need to build coalitions
of support across the decision
making committee.
• Marketers support the sales team as
they seek to build out a justification
for changing the status quo.
• Marketers should directly support
sales people to build a business case
for change.
The Buying Environment

7. What are the priorities of your
prospects?
Help sales address those
priorities. Develop a business
case for your product or
service.
Help sales reps challenge the
status quo of your prospects.

8. Changing the Demand Waterfall
Marketing and
Sales
Marketing
Sales
Traditional New Demand Waterfall

9. How important is content
to your sales process?
99%of sales people said content
is a critical part of their
sales processes.
Respondents = somewhat or very
How often do you use
content in sales process?

10. Just 20%
of sales
people
add value
to buyers.
Source: Forrester
When prospects don’t
see value from their
sales people, they don’t
have the information
they need to influence
change across the 20
influencers in their
companies.
They simply won’t be
able to push through
and change anything.

11. More than 80% of
marketing content
is unused by sales.
Source: IDC
Without content, sales reps
are less engaging and less
likely to advance a deal

12. So, why the gap between
use and need?
Two major challenges:

13. Challenge 1:
Can’t Find What They Need
“When we surveyed the sales team, one result really
stood out. It was clear that sales teams were losing
time looking for or re-creating content for
prospects.”
VP, Sales Operations

14. “We wanted a way to arm sales reps with valuable
content that supports the sales cycle.”
Director, Marketing Operations
Challenge 2:
Sales Needs Confidence in Your Content
The remainder of this
slide deck will address
this challenge in three
sub-points.

15. Detailed technical needs?
What about:
High-level content?
Infographics and blog posts might be great for
awareness and interest. But they aren’t necessarily
the kinds of pieces that help build a business case,
especially later in the sales process.

16. It resonated with
prospects and met
their information
needs
Why did specific content win?
It worked in a
given sales
situation – not
one-size-fits-all

17. Number of reps
that don’t know
how best to use
or share their
organization’s
content:
How do I use the content?
41%

18. How to Address
These Issues

19. +
Sales people that are
armed with summaries
and templates are
significantly more likely
to share unfamiliar
content.
Provide Email
Templates
Content
Takeaways /
Stats
#1 A Starting Point: Email Templates

20. IndustryProduct
Buyer
Persona
Primary
Pain
Sales
Stage
…other
2. Did It Win?
How did the content perform in these situations:

21. • They send digests to their sales teams weekly letting them know which
content their colleagues used and which content was most effective.
• They rank content recommendations to reps based on the Sales Content
Impact score. This number assesses the effectiveness of content by
sales situation.
• They push recommendations to peers based on the actual closed won
deals. This is like a win wire, except instead of passively advising reps on
what content worked for a deal, our customers suggest winning content
to reps with similar sales situations.
Our customers identify what content wins
in several ways:

22. IndustryProduct
Buyer
Persona
Primary
Pain
Sales
Stage
…other
Did it work?Which content should you build?
Do you know what content works in the
sales funnel?

23. Get qualitative feedback from
the sales team;
Use it to re-evaluate your
content portfolio from a sales
perspective

24. Segment by industry,
sales stage, solution
area, geography, or
persona
Quantitative Feedback:
Measure, produce, measure.
(This approach can double the rate of engagement
prospects have with sales)
Then track which
content is used in each
sales situation and
measure effectiveness
and attribute revenue
Amount of B2B budget that goes to content that sales doesn’t use: 18%

25. Early Sales Stage Late Sales Stage
Research Findings: We analyzed 1 million content shares performed by our
participating customers. A few of the findings, separated by stage….

26. Early Sales Stage Results:
What Content Sales Reps Share
34%Presentation Sales Content
Impact Score
32%Implementation Guide Sales
Content Impact Score
29%Video Sales Content Impact
Score

27. Late Sales Stage Results:
What Content Sales Reps Share
72%Video Sales Content Impact
Score
69%Case Study Sales Content
Impact Score
52%Datasheet Sales Content
Impact Score

28. KnowledgeTree customers find that:
more content gets used

29. Push
Prove
Predict

30. In summary, if reps aren’t using your content:
Predict which content is effective by sales situation.
When you have data about content performance,
you can suggest winning materials.
Push recommended content to your sales team.
Don’t wait for your reps to come to your content. Let
your marketing team reinvest in effective content.
Prove content’s effectiveness by sales situation. Let
your marketing team reinvest in content that makes
it truly effective.
Push
Prove
Predict

31. Predicts what to pitch for every prospect.
www.knowledgetree.com
The Content That Drives Sales:
Increasing Use in Your Team