All You Need to Know About Measuring Sales Content Performance

Measuring sales content performance is a crucial step in improving your sales materials. By understanding which content resonates with your prospects and identifying what doesn't, you can pinpoint areas of improvement, refine your sales strategy, and ultimately boost revenue.

Gone are the days of sending out sales pitches blindly and hoping for positive outcomes. With the rise of data-driven decision-making, measuring the performance of your sales materials is now easier or more effective.

Yet a lot of sales teams are still stuck in a position where they don’t really know the impact of content. In this article, we'll delve into the importance of measuring sales content performance and explore some of the most effective ways to do so.

What is Sales Content Performance? 

Sales content performance measures the effectiveness of your sales-related materials and resources in achieving a desired goal. These goals can be generated leads, closed deals, or an increase in revenue.

By measuring sales content performance, you are able to correlate the quality and impact of your content with your overall sales performance. Here are the most common metrics used to assess content performance are:

• Open rates
• Who viewed your content
• Time spent on content (slides/pages) 
• Conversion rates
• Return on investment

According to McKinsey, companies utilizing analytics to support marketing and sales performance are 1.5 times more likely to attain growth rates above the average compared to their counterparts. With content being your main currency in B2B sales, implementing the same principle is a no-brainer.

Why Measuring Sales Content Performance is Crucial to Driving Revenue?

Einstein (supposedly) said, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” So why do you keep using the same content when your buyers seem to just ignore it?

With the data you get from sales content analytics, you can clearly identify what works and what doesn’t. This then empowers you to make well-formed decisions to improve your sales content strategy and tactics where needed.

Gain critical knowledge and improve outreach even with the basic metrics 

By analyzing even just basic metrics such as open rates, who viewed your offer, content usage, and share rates, you'll know for sure which content resonates with your prospect. These metrics offer crucial insights into their interests, identify the decision-makers involved, and reveal any potential obstacles to closing the deal.

Sales teams can use this information to adjust and improve their outreach, and even reach out to buyers in advance. You ultimately create a better buyer experience and increase engagement when you understand what is relevant and what is not.

From tracking the engagement of your emails to analyzing the open rates and usage of your presentations, there are numerous metrics, tools, and data points out there. We recommend using the metrics mentioned above to help you gain get well-rounded insights into your sales content effectiveness. Additionally, consider using email trackers to further enhance your understanding of how your sales emails are performing.

How to Utilize Sales Content Analytics to Develop Your Content

Compelling and tailored sales content is the key ingredient to your success in sealing the deal. And improving it doesn’t have to be complicated. Regular assessment and improvement of sales content effectiveness ensures you maintain relevance with your prospect.

Here are 3 ways to you can leverage insights to develop your content: 

1. Segment your buyers to better target your content

Segmenting your audience means grouping your target audience into smaller groups based on their shared characteristics or behaviors.

One size doesn’t fit all and the same is true for your content. Your buyers may have similar needs, but they engage in content differently and might be interested in different offerings.

These are reflected in what appeals to different buyers. Some prioritize a clear implementation plan, ROI and effort estimations, transparent pricing, or customer references, just to name a few.

Segmentation is key to creating and sharing content that resonates 

Segmenting your buyers takes a conscious understanding of their shared intentions, pain points, or behaviors. And understanding this can guide you to tailor your messaging to each specific segment and really hit the mark when it comes to your content resonating with your audience.

Sales content analytics gives you a peek as to where their needs and priorities may lie. Metrics such as open rates, share rates, and even page views allow you to divide your buyers based on interest and what they’re looking for.

You can even segment them based on how they interact with your brand, such as how often they engage or the type of content they like.

When you have your buyers segmented and content base set, you can evaluate the actual behaviors of these segments and improve with these metrics. This may mean conducting content comparisons, adding more visual elements, or simply improving the tone of your content.

2. Enable your team’s ability to create targeted content for better buyer engagement 

Now that you have segmented your buyers, it’s time to evaluate your content.

Your collateral is one of your most important sales assets. It helps you communicate your company's offerings and value to your buyers in order to help them make informed purchasing decisions. But it can also be ineffective if it doesn't address your buyers' requirements.

See how buyers react to content you share with them

Just like you can’t be everything to everyone, your content can’t be the same for all your buyers. Effective content has to address the specific buyer in a specific situation.

When you measure sales content performance, you are able to keep a closer eye on how your buyers consume and interact with your content. An open rate, a page view, or a share rate from document interactions can be reliable indicators of what catches their attention the most and what draws their attention the least at a given stage of the sales journey.

Tailor your sales presentations based on prospects' interest

For instance, the data shows that your prospect has opened your sales presentation and spent time on content about your existing customers. This content showcases how certain product functionalities have improved their process, then it’s likely that your prospect will find that relevant to their needs. You can use this to your advantage and tailor your sales presentation to center around that use case.

Your content can be tailored to meet their needs and to match what will most capture their interests at a given point in time based on these insights.

This also works vice versa if you find yourself with unopened or unengaged sales materials. Based on sales content performance, you can see any patterns of behavior and understand which use cases are irrelevant.

Reveal blind spots, see behind the curtain

With these insights, you can also spot any content blind spots based on which content or specific pages are viewed the most. This is like your buyer’s way of saying “This is exactly what I’m looking for!” 

3) Improve content use rate within your sales team

According to G2, up to 90% of B2B sellers don’t use sales materials because they are irrelevant or outdated.

By tracking content use rates, marketers can gain feedback and dig deeper into why their content is not being used. With these insights, marketers can see which particular content is most valuable to sales teams and can allocate their time and efforts better on content that actually works.

Focus marketing efforts and resources to support sales better

With sales content analytics, marketers are able to understand when and how sales leverage your content during meetings and presentations. This way, marketers can focus their efforts on optimizing content that the sales team uses frequently.

As a result, marketers are more effective at supporting sales by continuously providing up-to-date information and most importantly, relevant content.

Identify stakeholders who are involved in decision making

Data on share and download rates are also particularly beneficial in identifying which stakeholders are involved and who the decision-makers are in the sales process.

As the account moves through the sales journey, its requirements may evolve along with it. By having the advantage of seeing how they consume your materials, you are able to anticipate prospect's needs better.

You are able to inform each stakeholder’s particular needs without interruptions or circling back in the sales process as you adapt your content. You’re not only providing them with the right information at the right time but also potentially shortening your sales cycle.

Common Issues Affecting Sales Content Performance

It is worth mentioning that despite the advantages measuring sales content performance can give you, it is not a magic bullet for problems with your content. There may be other factors that are affecting your sales content effectiveness.

These factors include content accessibility or how easily your sellers can find content, unclear messaging and value propositions, lack of personalization, and poor content formatting. It’s worth considering addressing these issues first.

Sales content analytics can help build a stronger bridge between your sales and marketing teams. As difficult as this might be to implement, it is crucial to the success of any organization. The synergy between these two departments can lead to improved sales performance, enhanced customer satisfaction, and increased revenue.

But there are also a few things to keep in mind. First, content quality is crucial.

In order to create content that resonates, it must be thoroughly structured and researched. Then it should also communicate the key value propositions of your product. Not only that, content visuals and formatting also play a key role in improving the overall quality of your content.

Create a process for continuous improvement

Sales representatives are on the front line, interacting with customers and prospects on a daily basis. They have a unique perspective on what customers need and what messaging resonates with them.

Marketing must incorporate this feedback into their content creation process to ensure that the content is relevant and effective. This is where the feedback loop plays an instrumental role.

Close the gap between sales and marketing

Lastly, the role of sales content analytics is to bridge the knowledge gap between marketing and sales. By analyzing customer data, you reap insights into customer preferences, buying behaviors, and sales trends. These can then be used to refine marketing and sales strategies, optimize content, and improve overall performance.

Asendia USA's Success with Sales Content Performance

Asendia USA, an international logistics company delivering parcels and mail worldwide, implemented Showell to help sales teams make the best use of their sales collateral

Showell not only eased their problem of disorganized and scattered content but also provided benefits by tracking content from Showell's Digital Sales Room (DSR). They can use the DSR link beyond an email attachment and send it through various platforms that their sellers use to prospect. Salespeople can now track customer engagement for the first time.

No matter what platform they are prospecting on, the insights gathered from sales content performance help them refine their sales strategy. This kind of versatility helps salespeople make the most of their pitching efforts.

“We're not providing a service; we provide solutions. So, we customize solutions for our customers. Being able to go into Showell and pick and choose what they need in the presentation to customize the offer, has definitely put us in a position to make us more competitive.”
- Sharvon P. Hales, Sales Support & Marketing, Asendia USA

This has also fostered a stronger alliance between their sales and marketing teams. By eliminating the hassle of scattered content, their salespeople can address buyer objections and inquiries at any time with just a click. The content is now more focused and resonates better with their buyers. 

Track Your Sales Content Effectiveness with Showell

In a nutshell, using sales content performance to develop your content is a total game-changer. By keeping tabs on engagement metrics, finding the common threads in what resonates with your audience, and customizing your messaging for each group, you can make sure your content is always hitting the mark. By putting sales content performance at the forefront of your content strategy, you're setting yourself up for some serious wins.

You no longer have to rely on gut feelings to gauge your content's effectiveness. Sales enablement tools embedded with sales content analytics, like Showell, help modern salespeople make better-informed decisions by understanding content data. You can start today with Showell Free or click the banner below to book a demo with our sales enablement experts. Happy selling!

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