Gaurav Harode

Recently, we moved from a long demo video (of 20 minutes) to several topic-specific short videos ranging from 1 min to 5 minutes. Having granular content helps us manage these videos easily without reproducing the entire video.  We then use our own product to create a content page for these videos. In some cases, we create multiple pages. A sales rep never has to worry about video versions or product changes. As long as they are using latest video assets published in the portal, they are assured that it is the latest video. Plus, if a video is changed, all shared links automatically show...

Sales Enablement is a very broad term. But, content and messaging is an important part of sales enablement.  We believe that product marketing is the best positioned to drive content enablement because, * product marketing is responsible for the messaging and majority of the content (directly or indirectly). They know the buyer personas, target markets, own product positioning, and competitive intelligence.  * product marketing is better aligned with the other teams than the traditional sales enablement function. Companies need consistency in their messaging across the fun...

Full Disclosure: I am founder of one of the products that addresses this exact problem.  You have vast array of options. As Anand mentioned, on the high end, you can look at HighSpot, Showpad, Seismic, and Docurated. There are also other options for the mid and lower tier market.  Our product Enablix is targeted for SMB market for sales and content enablement. We also have other competitors in play here. I would recommend checking out G2 Crowd and search for Sales Enablement category. You will see the available options.  If you plan to use any of the cloud storage platforms, please...

There are multiple ways to go about a client advisory board. At Oracle, we took a more independent approach. Since our solution offering was in the regulatory space, we encouraged our customers to form an advisory board with Oracle as a participant of the board. Some specifics,  * The board was not a product-specific or Oracle-specific board. Instead, it was an industry-specific group where we discussed relevant regulatory topics.  * The initial membership of the board included most of our customers.  * Other market practitioners (who used a competitive product) were welcome to ...

In addition to David's answer, I will also add the following points that should help build the credibility.  Consistency You want to continue to deliver fresh content consistently. Consistent doesn't mean high quantity. But you need to follow a consistent cadence. Too many times, marketing will create content in these bursts and then stay back and watch. If your company is selling, then there is always an opportunity to gather insights and share them with your sales team to help them with their selling.  Make it easy You need to make it easy for sales team to get access to this info...

Agree completely with the other answers.  However, at Oracle, when there was a minor or major release (not a software patch), we always created a What's New Deck that included bulleted items that were coming new in that release. This helped our sales and customer success teams to engage with prospects or existing customers.  It is worth noting that we did not have a SaaS offering then, so these What's New Decks also helped when decision makers at our customer org were deciding on spending on upgrades. 

I have not implemented this but I attended a local marketing-tech session recently where one of the Product Marketers discussed how they are using JIRA to manage their product marketing plans. In a nutshell, they are using an affordable project management software to help with their planning and execution. I can see how this can be helpful. It may take some time to set up a framework. But once defined, it but can be scaled and tweaked as you go along.   Here is a page on Asana's (similar to JIRA) website where they talk about different ways marketers can use Asana. 

In my career, I have always seen Product Marketing creating content. Product Management and solution architects are also contributing to this content but majority of the thought leadership comes from Product Marketing.  For Case Studies, it is a mix-bag. The templates and the positioning (that needs to be emphasized) is something that product marketing owns. The specifics can come from sales or customer success team memebrs. 

Once you get the insights (from the different methods that the other answers have already shared), it will help to crystalize important changes in competitive deck so that sales and other customer-facing team members have access to the key competitive data points. This could be done through one single slide deck or having different assets to compare Features, Pricing, SWOT, etc. 

While I like the spreadsheet idea, I don't think it is practical and scalabe. It may help marketing keep track of where you have coverage and where there are gaps to filled in but expecting sales team to open a spreadsheet to look for Case Studies is going to result in lack of engagement and email requests for case studies.  One of the key challenges of a sales enablement program is not the lack of processes and tools but the behavioral inertia that you need to overcome. And in today's world of instance gratification and short attention span, I would strongly suggest that you invest in a...