Discover the Right Sales Content eBook

Why Your Sales Team Doesn’t Use Your
Content, And How To Fix This
A KnowledgeTree eBook

Discover: A KnowledgeTree eBook
© 2014 KnowledgeTree Inc. sales@knowledgetree.com 2
Discovering the Right Sales Content
Customer-facing teams influence prospects when they use
effective content. But with potentially hundreds of pieces
available, what content is effective?
Effective content is:
-‐ Relevant to the sales situation of the prospect. It is
content that was developed to speak to a specific
customer pain or prospect need.
-‐ Proven to be effective in the market with real
measurements. It is content that marketing can
demonstrate was viewed and downloaded by
prospects – and helped to move opportunities in the
funnel.
-‐ Used by sales and other customer-facing teams. It is content that is easy to share – and
always the current version – not content that is downloaded once and reused from the
desktop.
This eBook looks at these three characteristics.
95%
of buyers chose a vendor
that provided ample
content to navigate the
buying process
(DemandGen).

Contents
Discovering the Right Sales Content .................................... 2
Relevant Content Eliminates Noise from Sales....................... 4
How Content Gets Used........................................................5
Recommendation-Driven Approach .....................................6
Time to Value.........................................................................6
Unknown Unknowns...............................................................7
Algorithm-Based Approach to Recommendation...................7
Search-Driven Approach ....................................................11
Search Result Weighting...................................................... 11
Proven Content is Measurable by Real-World Results............12
Measuring Content Usage by Employees...........................12
Measuring Content Usage by Prospects .............................13
Effective Content is Used by Employees ..............................16
Integrated with Sales Rep Workflow...................................17
Simplified Steps to Share ....................................................17
Track and Alert on Content Usage ......................................18
Conclusion .....................................................................18

Relevant Content Eliminates Noise from Sales
Marketing and sales leadership want to help
sales teams quickly find and use the right
content. There are two primary approaches to
help sales people find content –
Recommendation-Driven and Search-Driven.
A recommendation-driven approach filters available content by
sales situation so that the most relevant materials appear to
reps.
This approach reduces the time required to decide which content
to use, ensures that effective material is given precedence, and
surfaces useful content that users may not know of. Sales reps
spend more time selling, and less time searching for content.
Search-driven approaches focus on a user’s decision process.
This provides flexibility for users but increases the volume of
content that a rep must choose from, and assumes the sales rep
has prior knowledge of the terms utilized within the content.
For most use cases a
recommendation-driven
approach will more efficiently
surface the right content.

Marketing should look to address both use cases. For most use cases in large sales, support and
services organizations, a recommendation-driven approach will more efficiently surface the right
content quickly.
How Content Gets Used
Consider the following use cases, their frequency, and which approach is best-suited to meet the
day-to-day content discovery needs of the sales rep/account manager:
The Problem Frequency With Recommendations With Search
"I need some content for a
finance leader in the tech
industry"
Frequent Delivers just the right content, inline to
the CRM record
What search term should I use? What
has worked best with similar buyers?
"I need the most effective
case study for a financial
services company using
the XYZ product"
Frequent Delivers all financial services case
studies for the XYZ product, sorted by
most viewed by prospects
Returns a (LONG) list: every file
containing keywords “XYZ” or “Case
Study”, irrespective of which content is
most successful with customers.
"What's all the relevant
renewal content for a high
churn risk customer using
the XYZ product?"
Frequent Delivers purpose-built content that
speaks to churn risk for XYZ product
customers (e.g. customer engagement
metrics from Gainsight, or Totango)
What search term should I use? What
has worked best with similar at-risk
customers?
“Where's that whitepaper
that talks about 'XYZ
management solutions'?”
Occasionally Not Applicable List of files matching keyword or phrase
(e.g. a search for “XYZ management
solutions” would surface all content
related to the XYZ product field value).

Recommendation-Driven Approach
Large sales teams typically encourage best practices across
their organizations. That is, they test what works best in
different situations and then guide colleagues to practices.
That applies to content as well. A recommendation-driven
approach to content takes a best practice perspective on
content by highlighting content that is designed and proven
for a sales situation.
Time to Value
A recommendation approach emphasizes time-to-value.
Advanced search requires a period of time before the search
algorithm has seen enough searches to increase the accuracy
of its results.
A rapidly changing, and improving content portfolio would slow
this process. A recommendation-drive approach allows content
to be immediately suggested to sales teams based on what the
content was built for.
“Content is surfaced
intelligently based on the
stage of the sales cycle”
Dimitri Onistsuk
Director of Marketing, Shipwire

Additionally, content can be immediately added and
recommended for sales situations. There is no process of
waiting for new content to climb through a search algorithm.
Unknown Unknowns
Content is often developed to address a particular market
situation. For instance, a white paper may be produced to
answer a particular competitive situation. A recommendation-
driven approach surfaces content that customer-facing teams may not be aware of and was
possibly buried by the popularity of more generalized materials. This allows highly tuned content
to get into sales teams’ hands.
Algorithm-Based Approach to Recommendation
At the same time, a recommendation approach is not static. Recommendation should use 4
attributes to match content for sales:
1. Match with Business Rules
Content is produced to speak about specific pains and to certain audience. A banking case study
can message effectively to financial services companies and a competitive tear-sheet is useful in
churn-risk accounts and large new deals.
A recommendation-
driven approach
surfaces content that
customer-facing teams
may not be aware of.

Business rules provide a clean way to organize content to ensure that the right content is surfaced.
Rather than using unmanaged tags, use the existing, highly-structured schema sales teams already
use in use by your sales team via their CRM. That allows
marketing to match content to real sales situations and
protects the organization of content. There is no risk of
tag proliferation or competing tags.
2. Content Freshness
Recently added content generally contains more current and nuanced messaging. It also gives
sales teams new tools to share with prospects. This is often seen with a new case study, a webinar
promotion, or blog content, for example. More recently added content will rank higher in a given
set of recommended content to capture this value.
3. Content Performance with Prospects
Effective content should be promoted as best practice to sales
teams. But what is effective? It is not simply that content has been
accessed by internal teams. More importantly, it is whether it is
effective in the field. That is, are prospects viewing, downloading,
and sharing that content with their colleagues?
The challenge with a portal-based approach is that sales teams will
find content and then download it to their desktop. There is no way
Effective content should be
promoted as best practice to
sales teams.

to know in a portal approach if they shared that content once or
dozens of times with prospects. And the portal won’t know to prefer
content that prospects actually engage with.
Marketing and sales leaders should measure how many times
content is not only accessed by reps, but how many times it’s been
shared with prospects. And then how many times prospects are
accessing and using the content.
That allows you to recommend content that is:
That focus on market-results ensures that
best practice-based content usage is driven
by real-world results.
4. Content Performance with Users
When colleagues view and use content it
can be an important indicator that content
makes sense to use. The fourth
component of a good recommendation
algorithm is driven by users accessing and
The challenge with a
portal-based approach
is that sales teams will
find content and then
download it to their
desktop.
Effective
Content
Viewed by
Prospects
Downloaded
by Prospects
Shared with
Prospects

using content.
Portal-based approaches will also emphasize this element
as part of their algorithms. However, the challenge in a
portal approach is how sales uses the content. As
mentioned above, typically a sales person will locate
relevant content and download it to their desktop. From
the desktop they will repeatedly use the same version of
that content piece.
This means that performance by user is affected not by actual frequency of use by users, but rather
by the number of times it is searched for and downloaded.
The potentially dozens of times the content is actually used in a customer engagement, after the
one time it is downloaded, are ignored as part of a portal’s algorithm.
Instead, measure the number of times content is actually shared, not simply downloaded.
“Sales can find the content
they need at the exact
moment they need it.”
Liz Shulof, Senior Director of Marketing
Bomgar Software

Search-Driven Approach
While a best practice oriented approach emphasizes
recommended content, sales users still need the ability to
search for content.
Search Result Weighting
The algorithm described in the recommendation-driven
approach should apply to search results as well. So search
results should emphasize content that is a best match for a
given sales situation.
And critically, it should order search results based on real-world results, including success with
prospects and customers and actual usage by colleagues – not just the number of times content
was downloaded to a desktop.

Proven Content is Measurable by Real-World Results
As mentioned above, effective content isn’t a matter of opinion. It should be something that is
provable. Marketing automation and content marketers have been highly effective at the top of
the funnel by testing and measuring the effectiveness of content at generating interest and
converting leads.
The same rigor should be applied in the middle and bottom of the funnel. That means testing
content to see what advances leads and opportunities to close.
Measuring Content Usage by Employees
Employees’ use of content is an important measure of its
effectiveness. The more frequently it is used and positively rated
by employees, the more likely it will be of use to others. The
challenge, however, is knowing what ‘used by employees’ means.
In a portal environment, the use case is for an employee to
search for, find, and then download content to the desktop.
Once downloaded the content will be repeatedly used – perhaps dozens of times. However, a
portal will recognize only that a single download took place. 100 shares of a content piece should
be correctly weighted versus the single download captured by a portal.
Effective content isn’t
a matter of opinion. It
should be something
that is provable.

Measuring Content Usage by Prospects
Just as content marketers gauge the effectiveness of content in the top of the funnel based on
market results, the middle and bottom of the funnel should be the same. Portal approaches break
down in this area, again because the usage model is for a user to download content to their
desktop before sharing. That means that there is no input into the algorithm about whether or not
content was actually utilized by the prospect or customer.
Data about content consumption by sales and prospects should feed directly into the analytics
engine for marketing to evaluate. It should influence the ranking of content in search and
recommendation results. Content usage can be determined by three attributes.
Content Views
The number of times content is viewed by a prospect. This is also
compared with the number of times the content has been shared,
giving insight analogous to the ‘click through rate’ at the top of the
funnel.
Content
Downloads
Frequency of downloads of content by prospects. This higher-touch
action by a prospect often indicates greater commitment to the content
and message. Content ranking is also triggered by this action to
influence the ranking of the downloaded content.

Content
Engagement
Actual engagement of a prospect with the content being viewed. A
prospect that views a white paper is interesting. But far better is to
know whether they viewed 100% of the document, or abandoned it
after 10%.
The most obvious use of this data is via the ranking algorithm. Just as with marketing automation,
better performing content should be pushed to your sales teams.
That data should also be used by marketing to influence content decision making processes.
Equipped with data about views, downloads, and shares of content in the middle and bottom of
the funnel, marketers can:
-‐ Eliminate content that is underperforming. Lots of
shares but no views by prospects? Maybe you should
invest elsewhere.
-‐ Promote content that is rarely shared. Reps aren’t
seeing or sharing your content, try matching content to
more sales situations or promoting it to your team.
-‐ Promote content that is effective. Content that gets a
great response from prospects should be a best practice.
Promote it internally and tune it so your algorithm
recommends it.

Sales leadership can also use this data to answer questions
like:
Which teams of
users are
sharing which
kinds of content?Which kinds of
content are
effective with
leads?
Which accounts
are engaging
with content?
What content
helps close
opportunities
more quickly?
What content is
best practice for
a certain sales
situation?

Effective Content is Used by Employees
Content changes frequently. It may be updated, deleted, or
supplemented. And new content that messages more
effectively may be added. As content changes, it is important
to understand whether employees are actually using the
content.
Portals struggle with this challenge because, as discussed
above, they rely on users to download content. That
approach means that updated content will not be found by
sales users and users will default to using the content that is already available on their desktops,
regardless of the sales situation.
So, effective content requires that users want to engage with the content application. That means
that the application is not disruptive to their workflow, makes common tasks more efficient, and
provides additional value that makes them more effective in sales engagements.
Too many portal projects have failed because sales people found them too cumbersome, outside
their workflow, or not focused on actual sales activities. A focus should be on sales person usage.
Too many portal projects
have failed because sales
people found them too
cumbersome, outside their
workflow, or not focused
on actual sales activities.

Integrated with Sales Rep Workflow
Sales teams have limited available time to look for, download, and use content. Content should be
available as simply as possible in the workflow they are accustomed to. For most sales teams, that
means connecting into their CRM.
Simplified Steps to Share
Sharing content repeatedly over the course of a day is time-
consuming. Sales teams will reduce the volume of content
sent and use more generic content when pressed for time.
Instead, it should be recognized that the distribution of
content to prospects is an essential part of content usage.
That means look for tools that let sales reps quickly share content from
their content recommendation or search tool. That lets them move
quickly from finding to sharing content and ensures that the latest
version is used.
Sales teams have limited
available time to look for,
download, and use content.

Track and Alert on Content Usage
The view, download, and other content consumption metrics
are important for marketing and sales leaders to know what
content works. Critically, it is also valuable data for customer-
facing teams. When a prospect engages with content,
KnowledgeTree alerts the sales rep or account manager via
email and Chatter. That tells the sender that now is a great
time to follow-up with the prospect.
This kind of insight into which person looked at what content,
how they engaged with it, and more is extremely valuable to sales people. In fact, this kind of data
is what keeps sales people so engaged with the KnowledgeTree tool.
Conclusion
Customer-facing teams are more effective when they use effective content. That means that they
use relevant and proven materials in their conversations with prospects and customers. Marketers
should filter noise from content lists, testing relevance of content in the field, and simplifying usage
are why sales teams are enthusiastic users of both the technology, and their marketing content.
Customer-facing teams are
more effective when they
use relevant and proven
materials in their
conversations with
prospects and customers.

Want To Learn More?
www.KnowledgeTree.com - sales@knowledgetree.com - 1-877-900-0350

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