Sales content audits (making them easy)

Do you have a current inventory of all the sales content your team uses? "Sort of" but probably not? Maybe it's high on your list of todos, so hopefully this will help make your next sales audit just that much easier.

Why you are auditing sales assets right now

I'm guessing you are about to audit all of this sales content buried in Google Drives, Dropboxes, and squirreled away on sellers local machines, because it's getting increasingly difficult to figure out what's being used, when it's being used, and you are further (rather than closer) to understanding the impact of content on converting prospects across your sales funnel. This is what I hear all the time:

• Our folders are a mess and we're having trouble even finding the stuff we already have.
• When we launch new products, it takes too long for the sellers to activate with the latest resources.
• Sales isn't using the best content Marketing is providing.
• Marketing isn't giving Sales what they need.
• Marketing can track regular campaigns, but it's a black hole when it comes to understanding what content is successful for Sales

What would you add to that list?

All this back and forth and missed opportunities creates gaps in the buyer's journey. Gaps in the buyer's journey means slower sales cycles. All of these issues can have a direct impact on the ability to achieve quota and also on the ability to prove the ROI of the awesome content you're already producing.

One of the first steps to using content more strategically in your sales process is to put together a sales content audit -- an inventory of what you already have, how it's performing, and what you and the team additionally need.

How to tackle sales content audits

Well, there's a little bit of strategy and a lot of grinding to complete a sales audit (and hopefully keep it up to date). Here's how I approach it:

• Set your goals for the audit by understanding outcomes to prioritize right now.
• Survey your Sales team to understand their needs.
• Create your sales content inventory.
• Organize all that existing content.
• Revisit your goals and come up with your strategy.
• Reconnect with your Sales team with training and content rollout.
• Track content wins and success.
• Rinse. Repeat. Keep it all up to date.

I cover a lot more detail on this in our full post on how to do a sales content audit, but here's a quick rundown on the key elements.

Setting goals for your content audit

You already have a good idea of your issues which is why you've identified an audit as a good place to start. It's important to note that sales content goals are usually different than marketing content goals -- for you, it's more of a focus down funnel than top or mid funnel.

Have you reviewed the funnel performance across the entire funnel? Are you looking to tackle bottlenecks and improve conversion at a specific point (eg Marketing to Sales handoff from MQL to SQL or later in the final conversion to paid customer?). Maybe you're looking to activate on launches more quickly to hit planned revenue targets.

Whatever the goals and KPIs you are setting, it's meaningful to review these and have them in mind as you take your content inventory and prioritize next steps.

Survey your Sales Team

A simple survey with questions about content usage, content organization, content accuracy, and insights on the buyer's journey will go a long way to build trust and credibility with your Sales team and pave the way for a successful sales content audit. Later on, when training and rolling out, it's super valuable to revisit early input and connect the dots to underscore how decisions were made.

Here are some questions that will be helpful to ask your Sales team:

• Are sales materials easy to find and well organized?
• What documents do you use most frequently?
• What materials lead to conversions?
• Which documents are outdated or incorrect?
• Which pieces of content have valuable information but don’t convert well?
• What materials do you typically send together?
• What questions do we need to answer with new content?
• Are there any gaps where new content would be useful to smooth the buyer’s journey?

Need a survey template to get started? I've created one here that you can copy and start using.

Create your sales content inventory

Here's where the real grind happens -- you're going to look everywhere possible and consolidate all that content used by Sales into one place.

That means all those ebooks, guides, one-pagers, datasheets, webinars and more that get shared with prospects needs to be accounted for. Also -- something that a lot of teams miss -- are high performing blog posts and videos. Don't forget all that internal-only content, either, like battlecards, sales decks, sales playbooks, and product positioning.

If everything has been spread out in disarray into Google Drive, Dropbox, Onedrive, or Box folders, then you probably don't have a central sales enablement solution to import this stuff into. That's OK -- here's a sales content audit spreadsheet template to help you get started and that will seriously ease the pain of getting organized.

The upside of a this template is that it's quick and free to use. The downside is that it's harder to keep up to date and won't offer some of the capabilities (like universal search, continuous audits, prospect content experiences, activation leaderboards, and content requests) that we offer in Content Camel's sales enablement tool.

Organize all your sales assets

With everything in one place -- either in the template or a sales enablement tool like Content Camel, you need to map assets to funnel stage and type. That's going to help you identify content gaps in your sales funnel. In addition, score content based on effectiveness, correctness, freshness, and any other factors that align with your identified goals.

Review goals and set priorities

With your sales content map in place -- your sales content inventory plus your overlaid organization by funnel stage and content type, now revisit your focus for the next steps.

If you're focusing, for example, on later stage conversions to paid, then do you have the content to support that? Is it fresh and effective? I like to focus on later stage activities and make sure we're delivering the right content for the prospect at those later stages and build backwards up the funnel, covering our bases.

Pay attention to your content types here -- lightweight blog posts might not be a fit for later stage decision makers just as in-depth ebooks might not be great for building awareness at your top of funnel.

Rollout and train on content

With content in one place, activating the sales team on existing content (that performs) and new content (that's designed to drive revenue), is a lot easier. I've found that doing refreshes at least once a quarter is key, as well as getting the team up to speed around important launches.

Track sales content success

Tracking success will depend on your metrics, but it's important to have custom tracking links for each asset and, ideally, you'll be able to track shares (by the sales team) and views of each piece of content.

While that's not automatic or easy with the audit spreadsheet template, it is incredibly automatic and easy if you're using Content Camel. You'll want to know who's sharing what, what content gets used the most according to funnel stage, and what prospects are actually engaging with.

?? sales content activation leaderboard in Content Camel

Armed with the knowledge of what's working, you'll be able to double down on more, effective content and help prove the ROI of the content you've already deployed. You'll be able to reduce ramp time for new sales reps as well as ramp time on any new products or services. Meaning, you'll enable the team to hit quota faster and more predictably.

Keep improving sales content

As you probably know, keeping your content audit up to date and relevant is not a one time task. It's an ongoing adventure that's worth the time you put into it. I personally would love to minimize the time spent maintaining a content inventory which is why we created Content Camel and are focused on teams of all sizes being successful with sale enablement. You can sign up for a free trial here, but if you just want to get organized first, then definitely check out our detailed template including some key reports that you'll want ??.