Marketers, we’ve all been there. You spend days, weeks, months crafting the perfect message that will resonate best with your audience. You’ve scoured analyst reports, voice of the customer, competitive insights, industry thought leaders, and more to create your brainchild. You make sure all of your content is on-message, and hand it over to the sales team.
The problem is, once you’ve given it to the sales team, there’s no guarantee that the message is staying intact. CSO Insights reports that 18.4% of salespeople are creating (not just customizing) their own content. If a salesperson can’t find the content they need to present to or send to a prospect, most will take matters into their own hands and create something one-off, or edit an existing piece to match their circumstance. However, without having done all of the legwork to determine the message, most likely, the salesperson won’t use the proper message. They may use bits and pieces, chopped up here and there.
The prospect then receives the content, with a potentially conflicting message to what they’ve seen in their previous research – after all, we know that based on CMO Council data, on average, decision makers consume 5 pieces of content before engaging sales. This fragmented experience can very quickly derail a potential sale, and erode trust in a company.
So how do you ensure your message maintains consistency across your organization? Here are 3 simple tips.
- Make cross-departmental communication a priority – this means communication in relaying key messaging to the field, communication in regards to how to access the right content and the process for new content creation, and bi-directional communication to and from the field. After all, salespeople are the ones who typically receive the most feedback on content and message from prospects. Utilize them as boots on the ground.
- Provide messaging guides as a resource to everyone – this can be started small and expanded as segments are determined. A good place to start is a 2 sentence overview of your solution, a 1 paragraph overview, a 2 paragraph overview, and a 1 page overview. No matter the need, your salespeople can easily find a blurb that is appropriate for their situation. From there, you can create a messaging matrix for specific personas in specific industries, and more. Making everything as clear-cut as possible for your field team will not go unappreciated!
- Let technology help you – there are tools out there that can automatically push the latest content to a salesperson’s mobile device, ensuring their content is never out of date or off-message. You can also use tools like Bigtincan to lock down certain areas of text and images in a document or presentation, giving salespeople freedom to edit certain areas but not others. Those edits can be made on-the-go so salespeople are never without engaging, personalized content at their fingertips.
Want to learn more about Bigtincan’s content controls? Contact us – we love questions.
