analytics are at the heart of a modern data-driven...

2 The Definitive Guide to Sales Content Performance

Analytics are at the heart of a modern data-driven business.When it came to content, we used to rely almost entirely on anecdotes and guesswork. That is no longer good enough – content is at the heart of the sales and marketing process and we must know how it is being used and how it is performing.

Marketing Automation tools made that a reality for marketing content. They let marketers analyze and optimize content marketing efforts during the first half of the sales cycle, providing analytics to show how effectively content moves customers through the funnel. But until recently, as soon as a deal was handed off to the sales team, it entered a content black hole.

There has been no way to answer very basic questions about sales content. Do reps have what they need? Do they use it? Do customers pay any attention to it? Does any of this actually generate real revenue? Even in our increasingly data-driven world, sales content has remained back in the days of guess and hope. But an emerging set of Sales Enablement platforms has changed that. They manage sales content throughout your sales engagements and use analytics to give you full visibility into how that content performs.

This guide walks through eight reports that answer the key business questions about sales content and shows how to use them to optimize the way your company engages with customers.

MarketingAutomation

SalesEnablement

SalesEngagement

Marketing ContentAnalytics

Sales ContentAnalytics

Awareness

Consideration

Evaluation

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TheEight KeyReports

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The Eight Key ReportsTo analyze and optimize content used during the sales cycle, there are eight reports you need to have. Each one answers an important business question. Together, they paint a complete picture of the content that you have, how it is being used, whether it is effective, and how much business value you are getting from it.

We’ll look at each one of these reports, and see what it reveals about content performance throughout your sales cycle. But first, there are some foundational principles to keep in mind.

Report

Content Coverage

Content Freshness

Content Awareness

Content Usage

Pitch Activity

Content Comparison

Content Engagement

Business Impact

Business Question

Do reps have what they need?

Is the content up to date?

Do reps find it?

What gets used?

What gets pitched?

How is it being modified?

Does it engage customers?

Does it generate revenue?

Key Data

Items Per Category

Content AgeTurnover

Viewers

ViewsDownloads

PitchesPitched Items

Similar ItemsSimilar Slides

Pitch ViewsPitch View Duration

Influenced WinsInfluenced Revenue

Velocity UpliftConversion Uplift

Content

Managem

entSales Team

Activity

Custom

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ctivityB

usinessResults


To get a true understanding of content performance, you can’t just look at one small piece of the puzzle.

Activity, Local Impact, and Business ImpactUltimately, you want to measure the business impact that your investments are having. “I spent $X building this case study; how much revenue did it generate?” But even so, intermediate metrics yield key insights by measuring the steps along the way.

Activity metrics help you diagnose why you aren’t getting the business impact you want. Suppose the revenue influenced by a particular case study is zero – you wasted your money developing it. But why? Perhaps nobody knows about it – you have an awareness problem. Or the reps don’t think it is worthwhile, so they never share it with customers. Or they pitch it to customers, who ignore it. Or customers open it up, but then they just move on because it doesn’t engage them. How you fix the problem is completely different, depending on what you find! So don’t dismiss activity metrics – they don’t tell the whole story, but they do tell an important part of it.

Measuring local impact is often more precise. Let’s say that during a five month sales cycle, you send the customer a particular piece of content. How important was it in closing the deal? It depends – there are many factors that affect whether a deal closes and how long it takes. The impact of one piece of content is much higher, however, on the particular sales stage when it is sent. A great pitch deck won’t close a deal by itself, but it can have a clearly measurable effect on moving that deal to the next stage of the sales cycle. And a bad one, especially in the hands of an inexperienced rep, can torpedo the deal quickly. So it’s highly valuable to measure and optimize content within a sales stage as well as across the whole sales cycle.

The Whole Sales LifecycleIf you can’t analyze across each stage of the sales cycle, you can’t answer crucial questions.

• If you don’t know which deals the content touched, you can’t measure revenueinfluenced and business impact.

• If you don’t know the sales stage where content is used, you can’t tell whether youhave good coverage for each step of thebuyer’s journey.

The Whole Content LifecycleContent has a lifecycle, too. Analyze the return you are getting on your content investments by gathering data at every stage of its evolution:

• Content creation• Publication to the sales team• Evolution, modification, and

customization in the field• Delivery to customers through pitches• Customer engagement• New version updates, deletionFoundations of

Content Analysis

ANALYZEEND TO END


Foundations ofContent Analysis

CONTENTEVOLVES

Analysis Must Understand How Content ChangesDuring the early stages of the buyer’s lifecycle, marketers connect with large audiences directly, using content they have perfect control over. But in the later stages, when the sales team enters the picture, ”perfect control” is lost. The content filters through the organization, moving from central marketing through field marketers and regional sales leaders, finally landing in the hands of the sellers. And along the way, that content changes and evolves.

In larger organizations, the original pitch deck that marketing built is rarely what is actually put in front of the customer. Field teams (from both marketing and sales) add information about the industry, the region, or the customer in order to personalize the material for each situation. The slides in the deck are remixed, reordered, and recombined with content from other sources.

In this world of continually evolving content, basic analytics can’t measure what is actually happening. With conventional systems, when anyone modifies a presentation, even to edit a slide or add a new one, it looks like an entirely new and unrelated deck. When a marketer analyzes the performance of the pitch deck they created, they only see what happens to the original untouched deck – all the many variations become invisible. In many organizations, that means as much as 80% of the content disappears from view.

Analyze Slides,Not Just DecksDocuments are modified, but much less often; decks are composed of slides, which are easily shuffled around and moved from deck to deck – much more so than pieces of a document. Also, decks are personal – people present them, and the buyer’s experience is a mix of the content and the person. Documents are more abstract.

So decks get modified constantly as they are used, and the changes typically happen at the granularity of individual slides. If you treat a presentation as a single unit, you lose valuable insight into how that content is truly being used and how it is performing.

Track Content as it is Modified and RepackagedTo answer the question “how is this deck performing?”, the analytics system needs to be able to find the content from the deck regardless of how it is presented to customers. It’s the same pitch deck, even if a rep added a slide for one particular customer. It’s the same slide about your value prop, even if it was pulled out of one deck and dropped into another.

By detecting the relationships between pieces of content, the analytics system can deliver the true performance and business impact of your content however it is reaching your customers.


Foundations ofContent Analysis

KEY INSIGHTSCOME FROM

SEGMENTATION

Slicing and Dicingis CriticalOverall statistics are important – if nobody is using a case study, it obviously isn’t effective. But many deep insights take more work than that. You need to cut the data in different ways to figure out what works and what doesn’t.

There are many ways to segment data. The table below lists some that are useful in many organizations, and you probably have specialized ones of your own, as well. Start at the top level and then drill down, comparing the data across various segments. Look for outliers – cases where the results are unusually good or bad.

Look forWhat’s MissingAnalytics typically focuses on what is happening, but it’s often just as important to figure out what isn’t happening. Find the holes in your content coverage that are hurting your deal conversion rate and fix them.

For example, perhaps every deal you won in Life Sciences required a document that each rep had to build themselves – you don’t have a standard version of it. Or nobody pitches anything during the discovery phase of your sales cycle, because you don’t have any customer-ready material available.

IdentifyBest PracticesSegmentation is critical for discovering best practices. You often find them by analyzing the behaviors of your “eagles” (the most successful reps in your team) or by looking at practices that led to successful outcomes such as customer engagement and winning deals. Both rely on looking at particular segments – a special group of your reps or a subset of the deals and pitches.

Best practices themselves are often segment-specific. Reps may, for example, have found a particularly effective way to engage customers in a region (like Germany) or a vertical (like Manufacturing).

Here are some common ways to segment analytics data:

Segmentation Example Discovery Report

Product Line Customers are engaging much more with case studies for product A than product B Content Engagement

Use Case/Scenario We don’t have any thought leadership pieces for this key scenario Content Coverage

Region Reps in Europe hardly ever use our product brochures Content Usage

Sales Stage The content we have developed for the Prove sales stage isn’t getting sent to customers Pitch Activity

Time The number of winning deals influenced by each case study has dropped year over year Business Impact

Customer Size ROI calculators for the Enterprise aren’t effective in SMB companies Content Engagement

Vertical Industry The case studies for Healthcare are all old and out of date Content Freshness

Sales Team None of the reps in the western US region have seen any of our new compete battlecards Content Awareness

Rep Performance The “eagles” (the highest performing reps) are all modifying the standard pitch deck Content Comparison



Report 1:

CONTENTCOVERAGE

TheEight KeyReports

There are many pieces of content that may be used during the sales cycle.

The content coverage report lets you analyze what kinds of content you have to help you find the gaps that are making it difficult for reps to move deals forward.

Business Question: Do reps have what they need?

Items Published content that has been made available to the sales team

Key Data

The modern sales process typically requires many different kinds of content coming from multiple teams and often calling for specialized knowledge and expertise. The need constantly changes as the business evolves, and content generation frequently struggles to keep up. As a result, most companies have uneven coverage – they have good depth in some areas, while others are thin or almost non-existent. Maybe there is a new product line, or the company has expanded into a new country and there isn’t enough content to support the sellers there. The content coverage report will show you where your gaps are.

Typical Findings: You have critical content gaps


Report 1:

CONTENTCOVERAGE

TheEight KeyReports

Using the ReportApply the coverage report to your published content. A few ways you might analyze by segment:

Content TypeLook at certain types of content, such as white papers, or case studies. It is often useful to segment further, as in the sample report above that shows how many case studies are available by vertical industry.

Vertical IndustryThis is important if specialized content is needed to sell your product into particular industries. You might start by seeing the total amount of content for each industry. Then look at various segments of interest – in the example, you can see that there are hardly any case studies for the natural resource industry. That’s a problem, since the company has made that vertical a strategic focus for growth.

RegionIf you are a multi-national, have you created the content that your various regional sales teams need? Look at totals by region, then drill by content type. As you expand into new markets, there are often large gaps in the content that your reps have available. Find them and get the most important ones filled as soon as you can.

Sales StageIf you have a content-heavy stage in your sales cycle, have you built out what the reps need during that phase of the deal? Perhaps you have late-stage content, but you are missing thought leadership pieces that they need to use early in the cycle to get prospects interested.

Sample: Case Studies by Vertical20

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Report 2:

CONTENTFRESHNESS

TheEight KeyReports

In our fast-changing world, content must be constantly updated. Is old content being retired or versioned? Unused content being improved or eliminated?

The content freshness report shows you whether you are seeing good turnover. Your content should reflect your best ideas, new features, shifting competition, and changed business realities.

Business Question: Is the content up to date?

Content Age The date when your content was published to the sales team

Turnover What fraction of the content has been versioned or newly added

Key Data

There are two basic problems you can have, and both are true at most companies.

1. Official content is out of date. You haven’t been aggressively removing and updating some of your content, so old information is lingering around too long. Maybe your compete battlecards are stale, and reps look out of touch when they don’t know how the competition has moved forward. Or there is an important new trend in your industry, but none of your “thought leadership” pieces mention it since they haven’t been updated in over a year. In your older content, you will often find badly outdated messaging.

2. Reps are pitching old content. Often sellers continue to use content that has been replaced by something more up to date. It’s easy to fall into the habit of pitching something you are familiar with, even when the world moves on. Sellers need their story to keep up with the latest and best information you have.

Typical Findings: Some of your content is old and outdated


Report 2:

CONTENTFRESHNESS

TheEight KeyReports

Using the ReportMonitor TurnoverIn a healthy environment where content is being kept up to date, you should see good turnover – the percentage of content that has been versioned or newly added. If your business environment isn’t static, your content shouldn’t be either. How much turnover you want to see will depend on your business; as a general rule, however, content that remains untouched for a year is probably starting to show its age – business conditions, priorities, and messaging tend to evolve between fiscal years. If that sounds right for your business, look for turnover of at least 25% per quarter and nearly 100% per year. It’s also useful to look at turnover by content type, since some pieces are meant to live longer than others.

Check the Age of Your ContentAre your sales reps still using and pitching old content? Out of date price sheets? Decks that don’t reflect the latest messaging and positioning of your companies and product? A quick way to find out is to use a report like the sample above, which shows all the content that has been pitched or viewed, by category, broken out by its age. The case studies are getting a little dusty .. and what’s up with those pitch decks that are more than two years old? Periodically prune content that has passed its “use by” date. If it isn’t getting used, it is taking up space. If it is being used, it is probably sending the wrong message through your reps to your customers.

Sample: Age of Pitched and Viewed Content By Type

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Report 3:

CONTENTAWARENESS

TheEight KeyReports

The best content in the world won’t do any good if the reps don’t actually know that it exists.

The content awareness report will show you what they have seen, so you can make sure that they know about the content that they need.

Business Question: Do reps find it?

Reps are very busy, constantly under the gun to hit their numbers – they generally don’t have time to explore and find out about new content. So the awareness report will often reveal that nobody knows about key areas of content you have invested in. You need to get the word out – maybe you can highlight it in one of your field emails. Or show the content directly inside their CRM system next to an opportunity where it is relevant. Or you can highlight it at the next sales kick-off event.

Typical Findings: You have an awareness problem

Viewers People who have viewed each piece of content at least once

Key Data


Report 3:

CONTENTAWARENESS

TheEight KeyReports

Using the ReportYou have many different kinds of content, and different segments in the field. The content awareness report will let you check whether the reps know about the content investments that you have made.

Check Broad Awareness of Key Types of ContentOften there are whole categories of content that may not be well known by the sales team. Perhaps you have gotten feedback that you need more early stage content to help generate demand. You have created it, but do the reps know that it exists? Run an awareness report, and you may find that you need to do a better job of publicizing the new material that you’ve made available and why they should seek it out.

Look for Awareness Gaps By SegmentOften the message about important kinds of content isn’t getting out consistently across the sales team. For example, suppose that you are struggling with some tough competitors, and you’ve built some really strong battlecards to help explain the benefits of your solution. Run a report like the example shown above. You can see that the word has gotten out across the US and Canada, and somewhat in Europe, but most of the sellers in LATAM, APAC, and India have never seen any of the new material.

Sample: Compete Battlecard Awareness by Sales Region

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Report 4:

CONTENTUSAGE

TheEight KeyReports

It doesn’t matter how great your content is, if the sales people are not using it.

The content usage report shows you what reps are viewing and downloading. So you can find the content that is getting traction and see what is being ignored. You can also find the sellers who are not being served by what you provide them.

Business Question: What gets used?

Most companies are investing a lot of time and energy building content that never gets used by the sales team.

• Generally there are categories of content that are being largely ignored. For example, you’ve developed detailed sales material about individual features, but the people who make the buying decision don’t care and the people who implement solutions need documentation, not sales information.

• Within a category, typically a few items get almost all the attention. There is commonly a sharp curve, where the top few items get a great deal of use and then it tails off pretty quickly. In many cases, once you get past the top 20% of the items, the amount of usage drops nearly to zero.

Typical Findings: Many items are being ignored

Viewed The items that have been viewed

Downloads The items that have been downloaded

Key Data


Report 4:

CONTENTUSAGE

TheEight KeyReports

Using the ReportFind Popular and Unpopular ItemsIn most organizations, a small percentage of the items get a major percentage of the use. Find out what your teams actually use. If you are building a lot of general-purpose content that is getting very little attention, you are wasting your money. Invest in the content that your people actually need.

Compare Sets of ContentFor example, you may have built content for different roles. That often results in very uneven usage. Maybe the traditional sales rep is getting what they need, but the SDR content is really not cutting it, so everyone ignores it. Or you are spending time and effort building out compete battlecards but nobody uses them. The reps definitely know that the battlecards exist – your awareness report told you that. But perhaps the battlecards just aren’t useful in practice. Go talk to some reps and find out why they aren’t interested in them.

Segment by TeamAnother way to find underserved groups is to track viewing activity by role. In the sample report above, we’re seeing average view and download activity per month per user across all the key roles in the sales team. The account executives and inside sales teams are very active, but the SDRs hardly use the content at all. The account managers aren’t doing much, either. That’s a problem – those are both content-heavy roles, but apparently the content they ought to need isn’t getting used. There are other roles that are expected to be low – the support team, for example, has its own knowledge base for answering most customer questions.

Sample: Average Content Usage by Role in Previous 6 Months

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Report 5:

PITCHACTIVITY

TheEight KeyReports

You are providing a lot of content to the sales team, at great cost and effort. But does it actually reach any customers?

The pitch activity report gives you the answer. It tells you exactly which items are being put in front of your prospects. Our experience shows that the answers are often surprising — we’ve repeatedly found that what you think is happening, isn’t.

Business Question: What gets pitched?

Most “customer-facing” content hardly ever touches a customer. Often there is a disconnect between what the marketing team thinks a customer should see and what the sales team believes that they need to move deals forward. As with content usage, there are categories of content that don’t get pitched. And then, within a category, a few items are used for most pitches. The numbers are very enlightening, but for the whole story you also need to talk to the sales team. Once you know what is actually happening, those conversations will help you understand why.

Typical Findings: Many items never reach a customer

Pitches The number of pitches sent by a rep, so you can measure pitch activity by person

Pitched Items The items that were sent to customers in a pitch, so you can see what is actually being sent to customers

Key Data


Report 5:

PITCHACTIVITY

TheEight KeyReports

Using the ReportMost Popular Items to PitchList all pitched items, sorted by how often they were pitched (filtering out items that are only for internal use). Typically you will find a (very) small number of items that get a lot of action, a group that goes out reasonably often, and a long tail of small numbers (including a lot of zeroes).

• Low pitch counts generally represent a wasted investment. Infrequent use may be appropriate for highly specialized items, but it probably isn’t for everything else. Are you building a lot of content that almost never touches a customer?

• Are the right items getting pitched? Maybe sellers aren’t using the best content. But if they aren’t pitching what you think they should, are you sure that you are right about what resonates with the customer? Reps are in constant contact with prospects and they often know better than you do what messages are actually landing. In the above report, maybe you were surprised to see that analyst report getting pitched so often – it turns out that customers insist on hearing the message from a trusted third party rather than from the vendor. You need to focus on getting more of that evidence.

Segment by Sales TeamOften the patterns are very different across different parts of the sales organization. Look at the top items by regional sales team or by other ways that you segment (one product line vs. another, enterprise vs. SMB, and so forth). Compare your top performing reps to the rest of the team they are on, looking for best (and worst!) practices.

Compare Pitching ActivityAre the reps in one team pitching more frequently than another? How do your eagles compare to the average seller in terms of how many pitches they send? Activity does not equal results, but it is certainly a factor.

Item Source # Pitches

Introduction to Nexus Path Pitch Decks 389

Companies Adopt Cloud PBX Solutions Analyst Reports 180

Should Your PBX Move to the Cloud? Demand Generation 150

Cloud PBX – The New Revolution Demand Generation 110

Why Nexus Path Pitch Decks 80

Cloud PBX Overview Product Brochures 70

Yubay Medical Slashes Telco Spend Case Studies 49

Sample: Items Pitched in Last 6 Months by Enterprise Sellers


Report 6:

CONTENTCOMPARISON

TheEight KeyReports

After you publish your content, it is constantly modified and repackaged. Regional marketing teams add local market data. Sellers customize decks for particular customers and segments. What is happening to your content?

The content comparison report shows you how your content is evolving in the field. It lets you gather insights from the reps who are interacting with customers every day.

Business Question: How is it being modified?

There are three ways that content is often modified in the field:

1. Presentations are customized for particular needs. New content is added to address the needs of a particular market or a particular customer engagement. This is often necessary for sellers to be effective in that situation, but generally doesn’t provide much insight for improving content aimed at a general audience.

2. Decks are created by assembling slides from multiple sources. This is often done when sellers think the standard decks aren’t telling the whole story customers need to hear.

3. Messaging is adjusted that doesn’t work. If sellers are frequently changing core slides, that often means the original version isn’t working with customers. You may get some great ideas by looking at the variations that sellers have created, but at a minimum you know that something is probably wrong and needs to be addressed.

Typical Findings: Content is often modified and repackaged

Similar Items Items that are closely related to one another

Similar Slides Slides that are closely related to one another across decks

Key Data


Report 6:

CONTENTCOMPARISON

TheEight KeyReports

Using the ReportReview Item VariationsFind out how the field is modifying the content on its way to the customer. What parts of the deck are they changing? What are they adding? Combine this with the content engagement report to find out whether some variations are performing better in general, or with particular customer segments.

Review Slide VariationsFind the ways that individual slides are being modified and repackaged. Perhaps some of the slides are being used but not being modified, indicating that the reps like them as is, but other slides have many different variations. That indicates an area where the standard messaging is not working, and reps are trying to tighten it up and make it work better. Look for slides in a deck that are pitched far more or less often than others – that means that when reps repackage, they are choosing to leave out some slides and to repeatedly use others. That shows the content they feel is really effective.

Segment for Additional InsightIn the sample report above, we are looking at the slides of the standard product overview deck and seeing the variations being used in the UK market. Notice that the third slide, giving a detailed product overview, has not been touched. The intro slide has been changed quite often to reflect local market conditions, which is expected. However, the second slide showing the value proposition has a surprising number of variations that are quite different from the original, suggesting that the standard positioning isn’t working in that market and reps are trying to make it more compelling. That’s something to dig into. Another way to segment is to look at the variations that have been created by your highest performing reps – how do the eagles adjust content so it works better for them?

Sample: Slide Variations of Cloud PBX Overview in the UK Market

Slide Variations

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Report 7:

CONTENTENGAGEMENT

TheEight KeyReports

You have built the content, reps found it, and liked it enough to pitch it to customers. But do the customers pay any attention? What content do they spend time looking at, and what do they ignore entirely or just look at briefly before moving on?

The content engagement report tells you what grabs their attention and what doesn’t. See the items they look at, and where inside of those items they spend their time.

Business Question: Does it engage customers?

It’s often hard to get potential customers to look at content. Most pitches never get opened, and those that do frequently get a cursory look before the prospect moves on. Typically there is a small number of items that get much higher levels of interest from your potential customers.

• A fraction of the content you send out will often have much stronger open rates. Something about the content intrigued them enough to take a look.

• But that’s usually not good enough – you also need to look at view duration – you don’t just want clickbait that gets them to open up the content but then leaves them disappointed. Generally, there will be a small amount of content that they open and spend time looking at. That’s the content you want to identify.

Typical Findings: Most content is unengaging

Customer Views Which pitched items or slides did customers click through and view

Customer View Duration How long did customers spend viewing the item or the slide

Key Data


Report 7:

CONTENTENGAGEMENT

TheEight KeyReports

Using the ReportMost Viewed Item FamiliesAn item family groups items together that are essentially the same. This happens continually as reps customize content for particular customers. List the item families, sorted by the number of customer views they generated. Find the items that customers open and engage with. Prune or improve content that gets pitched but doesn’t get customer attention. Look for and learn from unappreciated gems that generate a lot of customer interest but are not pitched very often.

Most Engaging Slide FamiliesSlides are often repackaged into other decks. A slide family is the set of essentially identical slides pulled from decks across the company. Analyze the true performance of each slide by measuring how much customer engagement it gets, regardless of how it is pitched. The example report measures the performance of each slide in a deck. You can see in column two that the slides have been repackaged 25 or more times into other decks. Looking at the results, the number of times the slides have been pitched and viewed is similar, but the way customers engage is radically different. They have some interest in the second slide, but it’s the first one – a feature comparison against the competition – that really grabs their attention. Find the best performing version of the most engaging slides, so your decks have the content customers seek out and linger on.

Segment for Additional InsightLook at engagement by sales stage – perhaps you have strong and engaging content during the early part of the sales cycle, but then it tails off and you are losing people. Or by content type, by region, and so forth.

Sample: Most Engaging Slides From Nexus Path Pitch Deck

Slide Variations Pitches Views View Time

25 389 160 345

35 360 190 221

33 395 240 19


Report 8:

BUSINESSIMPACT

TheEight KeyReports

The ultimate goal of creating content is to close deals. How much do your content investments affect the bottom line?

The business impact report answers that question. It tells you how many winning deals each piece of content influenced and how much revenue those deals brought in. It also measures the change in deal velocity and conversion when that content was used.

Business Question: Does it generate revenue?

Influenced Won Deals Number of successfully closed deals during which this piece of content was shared with the customerInfluenced Revenue Revenue generated by the influenced won deals

Velocity Uplift How much faster (or slower) deals move forward when this content is used (per stage or across whole cycle)

Convert Uplift How much more (or less) likely a deal was to convert when this content is used (per stage or across the whole sales cycle)

Key Data

Typically, content falls into three main buckets in terms of business impact.

1. Since most of it doesn’t get used, pitched, or engage customers very well, unsurprisingly it has little to no business impact.

2. There is a second group that does its bit to help move things along. Solid and useful, it serves an important purpose, and you have to have it.

3. Then there is a small group of content that really moves the needle. For example, a compelling case study with an industry leader that is right on target for a particular audience – it provides great credibility and helps move more quickly and more often to the next sales stage. On the other hand, there is also content that moves the needle the wrong way – for example, a confusing and unconvincing pitch deck that turns off prospective customers right away. It has highly negative business impact.

Typical Findings: A few items have high business impact


Report 8:

BUSINESSIMPACT

TheEight KeyReports

Using the ReportAnalyze the forest, not ( just) the treesWhen considering business impact and ROI, it is often useful to ask questions at a broad level. Look at categories of content and compare the return you are getting from them to your level of investment. Maybe you’ve prioritized content early in the funnel this fiscal year; is that paying off in terms of influencing and winning deals?

Find the Most Effective InstancesIt can be hard to compare the business impact of radically different kinds of content – a case study vs. an infographic, say. But it is very useful to compare how similar items perform. The report above looks at items intended to help generate demand. It shows the results of using that content during the discovery stage, measuring the impact on stage velocity and conversion. Is the content moving deals to the next stage? The most used piece touches a lot of deals and basically defines the average in terms of impact. Some of the content seems to be little used and ineffective – maybe you should get rid of it or improve it. But a couple of pieces seem to measurably improve the conversion rate and/or the conversion velocity – maybe you should be using them a lot more often?

Compare SegmentsContent effectiveness is not universal. Often something that works very well with one group of customers is not effective with another. There may be regional differences – your customers in Asia may have different priorities than the ones in Latin America. It might be customer size – large enterprises often need different information than small and medium sized customers. Different vertical industries need to have content that is tailored to their specific requirements. By analyzing business impact across segments, you can find the content that is extremely effective, and you can see gaps where you aren’t getting the business results you need.

Sample: Business Impact of Demand Gen Content During Discovery

Item TypeInfluenced Won Deals

Influenced Revenue

Velocity Uplift

Convert Uplift

Cloud PBX – The New Revolution Ebook 150 $4.6m -1% +0%

Moving Your PBX to the Cloud Ebook 40 $1.3m +10% +15%

Companies Adopt Cloud PBX Analyst Report 30 $1.1m +6% +0%

Mission Bay Testimonial Video 28 $900k +0% +4%

Is a Cloud PBX Right for You? Brochure 14 $500k -5% -3%

The PBX Takes to the Cloud Infographic 8 $55k 0% -20%


CALLTO

ACTION

Engagement is the lifeblood of the sales conversation – an indifferent customer is a deal waiting to fail. And in our hyper-informed age, you can’t deeply engage your customer without content. Use these reports to analyze and optimize your engagement with customers throughout their buyer’s journey.

The purpose of analysis is to drive action.Graphs and tables are a means to the end – the goal is to improve engagement with the customer as a way to drive increased revenue and shorten the deal cycle. Each of the eight key reports answers an important business question, identifying key issues and opportunities so that you know how to act.

Some of your content is old and outdated Prune old content that is no longer neededCreate new items or new versions to replace older contentIs the content up to date?

You have an awareness problem Do targeted outreach within the sales teamDo reps find it?

Content is often modified and repackagedFind core content that is frequently modifiedGet into the field to find out whyMeasure effectiveness of variations to find best practices

How is it being modified?

Most content is unengaging Analyze what customers do care aboutActively hone your content to maximize engagement

Does it engage customers?

A few items have high business impact Identify and prioritize content that yields the highest ROIRemove or Improve content that doesn’t drive results

Does it generate revenue?

You have critical content gaps Prioritize missing content and build itDo reps have what they need?

Many items are being ignoredGet into the field and talk to the repsCompare against the content that does get usedRemove or improve neglected content

Many items never reach a customer

What gets used?

What gets pitched?

Typical Findings Call to ActionBusiness Question