Whether you’ve read her book “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up,” or binged her Netflix series, you’ve likely heard of the tidy titan Marie Kondo. Through compassionate coaxing, Kondo takes those with a tendency to cling to material items on a journey to identify items that “spark joy,” and honor, then let go of what remains. Once the goal is met, they’re left with only the things that either satisfy a specific need, or propel them forward. The rest? It probably didn’t serve a purpose anyway.
The notion to simplify in an increasingly complex, noisy and crowded consumer and business environment is a necessary one, if not only because it’s almost impossible to make clear and timely decisions these days. Whether it’s tidying up our wardrobe, music collection, refrigerator or in this case, content repository, finding and consuming things that matter is the only way to climb out of the clutter. The question is, how do we figure out what matters, when we never know when we might need it?
It’s a good point. Likely, you have a lot of high-quality sales content and you may even be using it in a thoughtful, targeted way to reach the right customers. In fact, Gartner research showed that a whopping 89% of customers indicated they are receiving high-quality information during the purchase process. But the same research shows that, while your content may be high-quality, buyers are still likely to end a buying journey in no decision or settle for a purchase that may not meet their complete needs. Information overload is real, and according to Marie Kondo, the first step is to honor much of the content we have (and the work that went into it), and then let it go. So, what happens to the rest?
3 Keys to Decluttering Your Sales Content
Resonating with buyers means being able to communicate value effectively. When sales content is evaluated for relevance and organized into value “buckets,” sales reps have the tools they need to tell a convincing, value-based story about return on investment (ROI) or total cost of ownership (TCO). Ask yourself these three questions about what your sales content is (or is not) “sparking.”
- Is Your Sales Content Aligned with the Buyer’s Journey? Marie Kondo would be proud; with the right sales enablement technology, marketers can map sales content to the buyer’s journey, which means they only produce the relevant content needed to facilitate purchase decisions. When content has a specific purpose, it can remove friction for buyers during the journey and walk with buyers during each stage – early, mid or late – allowing them to consume content according to their appetite for it. Decluttering and identifying the most valuable content for buyers relieves sellers of digging through ineffective, outdated content to start conversations, and relieves buyers of being inundated with information not aligned with business problems.
- Is Your Sales Content Generating The Right Outcomes? The first step in knowing what content is driving positive business outcomes is understanding if and when it is being consumed. Sure, a sales enablement platform can be great for making content accessible. But if it’s not ensuring that content is consistent, relevant and dynamic at every stage of the buyer’s journey, the outcomes you’re seeking will unlikely follow. The details are in the data; this means utilizing an AI-powered platform that can quantify the impact your sales content has on revenue. It’s not enough to be able to find relevant content, it’s about moving the needle.
- Could Your Sales Content Be Modernized? Marie Kondo would urge you to honor your outdated content’s purpose, then leave it in your past. Yet, if there’s a way to repurpose outdated sales content and modernize it in a way that makes it resonant again, I’m pretty sure Marie Kondo would approve. For example, if you’ve modeled a spreadsheet, you can utilize sales enablement technology to incorporate interactive tools like ROI calculators, TCO and product comparisons, and diagnostic and benchmark assessments to revitalize the value from useful data.
Need help taking the leap from stale, traditional content to interactive content that drives purchase decisions? Download our guide ‘Why Spreadsheets Don’t Work’ to learn how to transform your outdated content into next-generation tools that resonate with modern buyers.
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