Bruce Randall

In my experience, the best thing you can do for any type of content is to have a very solid and market-tested positioning and messaging document.  With this is a base, with any assets you create, whether for sales or something customer-facing like a case study, you’re able to be very consistent in what you believe your differentiators are.  And then it’s just a matter of applying for the correct audience.   And since you asked about a case study specifically, it’s a matter of finding customers w ...Read More

There are a couple of things to consider there. First of all, you are a seller to the salesperson. You have to convince them that your product will give them the easiest path to the most amount of quota retirement. Secondly, you can tie your product to larger stories or products that are already existing. In some ways, this is really an element of the first point I made, because what you're doing is showing a quick and easy way to sell your product. You can't really look at those other products ...Read More

For sales enablement content,I look for a few very specific elements: First, how does it motivate the salesperson, And the answer is always back to how they'll get paid and how quickly they make quota. Secondly, how does it solve a real problem or challenge for a customer Third, how does the content describe the solution in a very simple and easy to understand way. Fourth, what sort of proof points exist that the solution really does solve the problems and challenges that the customer has. And o ...Read More

It is true, it is hard to track the impact of sales content sometimes. I've usually done a couple of things. First of all, look at the downloads and views of the content itself. This is something that most sales enablement tools allow you to do on a regular basis. Secondly, you have to do some qualitative work as well. Make sure you have a few people in the sales force that you can touch base with to see how the content is performing. You should also be using the same or different set of sales p ...Read More

What I like about Competitive Intelligence, is that they are doing the research that you need to be able to help you build your market position and even your messaging to a degree. I like to partner with them to get that information in order to build better and more secure messages. I also like to partner with them to create specific sales tools against specific competitors. And I've also found that my partners in Competitive Intelligence often have a pretty good pulse on a lot of things happeni ...Read More

I've actually done a couple of things. First, I make sure we have a shared template around a few questions that we really want to have answered. And then every time someone else on the team has a conversation with a customer we track those questions and answers so that we can actually get more than just a random sample of feedback about how deals go Next use these as proof points within your sales enablement content. In other words, use these deals to create stories about how you are talking to ...Read More

What I like about Competitive Intelligence, is that they are doing the research that you need to be able to help you build your market position and even your messaging to a degree. I like to partner with them to get that information in order to build better and more secure messages. I also like to partner with them to create specific sales tools against specific competitors. And I've also found that my partners in Competitive Intelligence often have a pretty good pulse on a lot of things happeni ...Read More

Focus on message consistency across the organization as a key indicator of effective positioning. Our number one job is to get message consistency out in the market. It's actually less important to have the perfect message than to have one that can be consistently used by everyone in the organization. When you see sales reps, customer service representatives, and product managers all using the same messaging, that's a strong indicator that your positioning is working. It means you've created a s ...Read More

Look for risk-taking attitude and strong storytelling abilities that can resonate with different audiences. I start with attitude - I look for someone willing to take risks and try new things. Second, strong storytelling ability is crucial. As product marketers, we're selling to the sellers and marketing to the marketers, so we need to tell stories that resonate with different audiences. While product teams can describe features and capabilities, product marketers need to articulate how someone ...Read More