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Jan 202312 min read

The What, Who, Why and How of Sales Content Analytics

Lacking content tracking means missing out on valuable insights from your sales collateral. Without it, you have no way of knowing what works and what doesn't until you receive feedback, if you even receive any at all.

Nowadays, it just doesn't make sense not to gather data and use it to refine your approach to cold calling, pitching, and closing deals. For all the technological savvy we have, why shouldn't content tracking be applied to every stage of selling?

Coupled with sales enablement, this fact-finding tool is vital for remote selling as both sales and marketing can use it to align with buyers' needs and pivot sales strategies when the time comes.

What you’ll find in this blog:
 

What is Sales Content Analytics?

Do you know what sales content your sellers use, or what your buyers skip and actually read? Did you know that a staggering 90% of sales content often goes unused?

By delving into sales content analytics, you gain critical insights into the effectiveness of your sales materials and how your team utilizes them. This knowledge helps you to focus your resources on creating content that truly resonates and drives performance, ensuring your efforts are aligned with what works best. etc.

 

💡 Are you also wondering how to deliver sales content efficiently to your team? No worries, we got you covered. Read more about The Best Way to Provide Content to Your Sales Team.

 

The Value of Sales Content Analytics for Sales and Marketing Teams

The value of sales content analytics lies in its ability to help not only sales leaders but also marketing teams. These insights can provide valuable information on what types of content are most effective at different stages of the sales process. This allows your team to create more targeted, relevant, and effective sales materials tailored to their specific audience.

For Sales Leaders

Get an overview of how your sales representatives perform and use your sales collateral. You can then take advantage of these insights to improve your sales strategy and collaterals.

For Content Creators and Sales Support

Discover which content is the most effective and used the most. Be more efficient by focusing your efforts on what works and developing content based on data.

For Sales Representatives

Take the guesswork out of your sales work! Understand how your buyers are interacting and consume the content you share with them. 

sales representative looking at sales content performance from Showell app

3 Reasons Why You Should Start Using Sales Content Analytics

Sales content performance shed light not only on your content performance but also on buyers’ activities that your salespeople never gained insights from before. This can help you and your teams understand the needs and preferences of your buyers and help them craft targeted messaging that truly resonates with the buyer’s needs.

With sales content analytics you can ensure your sales teams, dealers and distributors follow your sales guidelines. Here are 3 reasons why you should start using sales content analytics:

1. Identify which sales materials bring the most value

Sales content performance helps to shift through collaterals that are no longer used by your salespeople, content that needs to be updated based on market trends, or content that no longer resonates with your buyers. 

Benefits for Sales Leaders:

These insights can help sales leaders identify areas where their sales content is successful and areas where it could be improved, as well as understand the preferences and behaviors of their buyers. This can show sales leaders a better picture of the buyer’s needs and preferences, and create more effective sales content that resonates with them and drives conversions.

Benefits for Sales Representatives:

Having the ability to retrieve data and insights on how the materials they share with buyers are being consumed helps your salespeople to be more effective in their sales efforts. By taking out the guessing from their work, they become more effective when interacting with buyers. 

Benefits for Distributors:

Insights gathered from sales content performance empower distributors to effectively execute reselling plans, recognize any lack in support or activation, or replicate the success of top-performing sellers through training.

There are several ways to analyze and measure the effectiveness of sales content, such as content engagement metrics. This involves measuring how long buyers spend viewing or interacting with sales content or how often it is viewed or shared. You and your sales teams gain solid information to understand what serves your buyers’ needs best at a given stage in the sales process. 

Insights gathered from sales content performance empower distributors to effectively execute reselling plans, recognize any lack in support or activation, or replicate the success of top-performing sellers through training.

Sales content analytics helps your salespeople to be more effective in their sales efforts. By taking out the guessing from their work. 

 

💡 As long as you keep your focus on your buyer, ensuring their needs are at the forefront of your presentation, you’re guaranteed a meeting that resonates with your prospects every time. Learn 8 Rules of Tailoring Your Presentations.

 

2. Understand how your sales content is being used by a person, team, distributor, or geographical location

Understanding how sales content usage differs by salesperson, sales team, distributor, or geographically can provide valuable insights into the effectiveness of sales content and the preferences of different audiences.

Content Usage: Sales Reps and Sales Teams

For example, analyzing how different sales teams or salespeople use sales content can help identify best practices and areas for improvement. This can involve looking at metrics such as how long salespeople spend on each piece of content, how often they use or share certain types of content in sales meetings, and how well different types of content perform in terms of engagement and conversion rates.

In addition to that, this ensures your sales reps and sales teams follow your sales playbook. When it’s time to scale your sales efforts, these insights provide an overview of your sales reps’ and overall team performance.

 

💡 Bonus: you can see the activity levels of your salespeople from the sales content analytics.

 

Content Usage: Distributors/Channel/Partner Sales

It's difficult enough to keep tabs on your internal teams without having several meetings a week, but with distributors and sales networks, managing them can be a huge undertaking.

This is where content tracking can add value with external visibility. Not only can you see when they are selling but how dealers are executing reselling plans, how they are performing, and if they’re actively working on your portfolio.

You’ll also be able to see what your internal and external teams are using to close deals by observing how they customize content to maximize sales and start learning from it. Most importantly, you can identify your top-performing distributors and distributors’ reps and replicate their success. This way you can pinpoint areas where you can better support and activate other distributors and reps who need more support and activation.

Most importantly, you can identify your top-performing distributors and distributors’ reps and replicate their success.

Similarly, understanding how sales content usage differs geographically can help you tailor your sales efforts to adapt to different regions or markets.

This can involve analyzing data on the types of content that are most effective in different regions, as well as the specific needs and preferences of prospects in those areas.

 

👉 By utilizing analytics within the channel sales enablement platform, you can gather valuable insights into how sales materials are being used by your channel partners. Read more about The Best Strategies for Channel Sales Enablement.

 

Content Usage: Marketing Teams and Sales Support

There are multiple ways marketers can benefit from sales content analytics. These insights allow your marketing team to understand what messaging works best for a specific target segment, what type of content engages your prospects more, and what content will help address your prospects' needs. Meaning, you can create meaningful messaging that you know will have an impact from the get-go and continue to refine from there.

By measuring content effectiveness, your marketing team can also understand if your sales networks find the content relevant to their sales funnel and if prospects resonate with it or not.

With insights to show each content’s effectiveness, this gives marketers a better impression of the buyer’s preferences. By analyzing data on how buyers engage with sales content, marketers can gain insights into what type of content is most appealing to them and what factors influence their purchasing decisions.

Marketers get an overview of which content works and what doesn’t and if it’s even being used by the sales reps or not. Resources can be limited so having the advantage these insights provide allows marketers to allocate their time, energy, and resources better.

 

💡 Tip: Showell's sales content analytics is conveniently located within the Digital Sales Room so you can keep tabs on how your buyers engage with your content. Learn more about Digital Sales Rooms here Digital Sales Room: Everything You Need To Know.

 

3. See what content is used in different stages of the sales process and what works

Measuring ales content performance can be a game-changer for your sales strategy. Imagine being able to see exactly which pieces of content are most effective at each stage of the sales process. You can track metrics like engagement and conversion rates to see how well your content is performing, and even see how long it takes for prospects to move through the sales funnel.

With this information at your fingertips, you can make data-driven decisions about which content to use and when to use it, ultimately leading to more successful sales outcomes.

Example 1:

If a business finds that certain types of content are particularly effective at driving engagement and conversion early in the sales process, it may focus on creating more of that content and using it more frequently. On the other hand, if they find that certain types of content are not performing well, they may choose to revise or eliminate them in favor of more effective alternatives.

You can make data-driven decisions about which content to use and when to use it, ultimately leading to more successful sales outcomes

How to Build Trust and Credibility in your Sales Process

It’s important to build trust and credibility with your prospects in the early stages of the sales process. This is where sales content analytics can help. By using data to shed light on your prospects' behaviors and needs, you can better understand their requirements and communicate your solution more effectively.

There is nothing that can control every sales process each of your buyers goes through. Each of your buyers is unique in their needs but also preferences and behaviors. But with the help of analytics, you can influence, make suggestions, and better gauge your buyer’s interest throughout the sales process.

Each of your buyers is unique in their needs but also preferences and behaviors. But with the help of analytics, you can influence, make suggestions, and better gauge your buyer’s interest throughout the sales process.

 

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What Sales Content Metrics to Track?

Tracking relevant sales content metrics is an essential part of the whole sales content management process. It helps businesses understand the impact of their sales-related content and make informed decisions about how to optimize it for better results. By tracking key metrics such as engagement, lead generation, traffic, and conversion rate, businesses can gain valuable insights into their sales content's effectiveness and identify improvement opportunities.

Here are the sales content metrics you should start tracking:

  • Most or least viewed content
  • Average view duration
  • Most or least shared content
  • Number of shares
  • Number of share views
  • Share downloads
  • Who viewed your share
  • Which specific pages were viewed
  • For how long was it viewed 

 

analytics on how customers or prospects engage with sales materials; metrics such as open rate is shown

Practical Examples of How to Use the Sales Content Performance Data

Whether you're looking to increase engagement with your audience, generate more leads or drive more sales, insights from content analytics can help you understand what's working and what's not, so you can make strategic changes to your sales strategy.

By regularly tracking and analyzing your sales content, you can stay ahead of the game and drive success in your business. Here are a few examples of how you can tie these data to actionable insights:

  • Based on the content use rate, you can remove content that is not being used or no longer provides any value.
  • Improve your sales materials to be more engaging. If buyers show better engagement with certain sales materials, assess if there are any similarities (copy, format, etc.) and scale.
  • Train salespeople to use content they should use based on the data.
  • When a buyer opens or shares your sales materials, this may indicate interest from their side or a new stakeholder joining the sales process. Reach out to buyers at the right moment!
  • Track distributors' and reps’ performance and fill in gaps in support and activation through training.
  • Combine sales analytics data with CRM data to create meaningful correlations between sales content usage by the best-performing salespeople.

It's simple to use because tracking happens as you sell, with insights gathered in real-time that are easily accessible and help pinpoint your next great leap forward. It couldn't be easier to superpower your sales game!

 

💡  By understanding what content resonates with your prospects and what falls short, you can identify content blind spots, optimize your sales approach, and drive more revenue. Find out more about All You Need To Know About Measuring Sales Content Performance.

 

Use Showell To Track Sales Content Performance

Ultimately, sales content analytics is essential for driving success in today's digital landscape. By understanding the impact of your sales content and using that knowledge to inform your strategy, you can position your business for success and stay ahead of the competition.

By having a sales content analytics and tracking system in place you can greatly increase the success of your sales representatives in their daily selling activities.

So if you want to boost the efficiency and effectiveness of your sales efforts, consider using Showell's sales content analytics to gain a deeper understanding of what works and what doesn't. By analyzing and adapting your sales collateral based on real data and insights, you can ensure you're always delivering the right message at the right time to the right people.

Curious about how and where to start? Book a demo with us by clicking the banner below, or get Showell Free!

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