Down the Rabbit Hole of content management

(A glimpse into the inevitable evolution of Sales Enablement)

Probably one of the most common and painful challenges for Sales Enablement is the tendency to overlap with Product Marketing by focusing excessively on content creation.

Mindtickle, “State of Revenue Productivity Report 2024”: Revenue enablement orgs can gain substantial advantages by restructuring their content strategy to prioritize return on investment (ROI). Identify top-performing pieces and focus on creating similar content while retiring less effective collateral

One significant drawback of having an excess of content is the considerable time required for moderation. Here is another interesting finding from Mindtickle's "State of Revenue Productivity Report 2024":

The 10% of top organizations update their content at least once every 3.25 months. The bottom 90% update their content once every 4.5 months.

Given the current market dynamics and economic climate, these content update frequencies are not only hindering our progress but also placing a substantial burden on the enablement team by requiring significant time to measure the adoption of their contributions. 

While content is important, Sales Enablement's role should be to orchestrate its creation, not to produce it directly. Instead, Sales Enablement should guide Product Marketing by identifying what content is missing, explaining why it is needed, assessing how Sales reps are adopting it, and analyzing its impact on Sales performance. 

This approach ensures that content is relevant and useful for the Sales team. When enablement teams become preoccupied with generating content themselves, there is a risk that the materials produced may not align with the immediate needs of the Sales team, rendering them either unusable or irrelevant. 

This misalignment can lead to wasted resources and missed opportunities for relevant and empowering training sessions which could directly enhance sales performance. By maintaining a focus on coaching and training, and by effectively communicating content needs to Product Marketing, Sales Enablement can drive tangible improvements in sales effectiveness and avoid the pitfalls of becoming merely a content factory.

Here are a few questions that will help you to measure the impact of content, its relevance and contribution to sellers: 

● Who is consuming what and when?

● How do top consumers perform? 

● How do low consumers perform? 

● What is the contribution of the collateral to the Sales Velocity? 

● What does it take to find a specific resource? 

● How do reps feel about the content? 

Please keep in mind that underutilized and irrelevant content comes at a very high cost due to the following reasons: 

● Time, money & effort to create it 

● Time, money & effort to read it 

● Time, money & effort to update it 

● It cannibalizes Selling Time

Closing Thought

Content management doesn’t become a problem because teams lack tools, discipline, or good intentions. It becomes a problem when content is created faster than it is understood, used, and retired.

The moment content stops being tied to real GTM behavior - how deals move, how buyers decide, how teams actually sell - it starts pulling the organization down its own rabbit hole. More structure won’t fix that. More platforms won’t either.

The way out is not better content management, but less content with clearer purpose - anchored in outcomes, ownership, and real usage across the GTM system.

Climb out of the hole by stepping back.

Before creating the next asset, ask these simple questions: How will consuming this content serves the purpose of accomplishing the desired outcome? and most importantly - How much time does it take to consume the learning path? What does it take to maintain it? Are maintance speed and effort aligned with GTM goals (e.g. Sales Cycle)?

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Founder, Author, Auditor www.ProjectMoneyball.com