Justin Graci

My answer would change depending on what we're talking about (B2b Marketing program vs Sales enablement program). For a sales enablement program: 1. Pitch Deck 2. Product use case glossary 3. Case study 4. Discovery question list or Demo video 5. (this isn't necessarily an asset) Prospecting lists / target account lists w/ enriched data

Here are some of the top sections I'd include: 1. Positioning / value prop 2. ICP (with good-fit indicators) 3. Buyer personas 4. Use cases 5. Competitive landscape (with supporting comparison assets) 6. Proof (case studies, research, data, customer wins, 3rd party reviews) 7. Feature overview 8. Discovery questions 9. Objection Handling

This is probably pretty standard for most companies, but these sales materials have been the most used: * One pagers / data sheets (product overviews, use cases, etc.) * Pitch decks that reps can customize and/or leverage 'templated slides' for easy 'drag and drop' presentation building when prepping for a meeting * Quick hit videos -- these are usually short product demo or use case clips they can share Beyond the well known ones above, we've seen reps finding a ton of value in higher value things like tools, such as calculators. A lot of our best 'lead gen tools' or 'consulting tools' were originally created as spreadsheets, but eventually we invested in building these as proper web-apps that look good.

Here are a few tips for ensuring your sales team leverages the content you create: * Make sure the content can easily be found. Have a central, go-to place that reps can find all your content. This can be a 3rd party platform such as Highspot, Seismic, or Allbound. Or it can be a more simple Airtable/Spreadsheet that has proper filtering if you're on a budget. Of course with a platform you'll get data/insights into what's working, what's not, so I recommend a platform vs spreadsheet. * Keep the content up-to-date. If a sales rep loves a piece of collateral, but continues to find that it's outdated and missing the latest info, then they'll quickly lose interest in using it, and they'll lose trust in the marketing team. * Host monthly 'marketing/enablement showcases'. At HubSpot, we've hosted monthly meetings that are around 45-60 minutes, and attended by sales reps. During this time, the team walks through the latest content, collateral, and campaigns. And we don't just show what the asset is... we show reps why we created it, when they should use it in the sales process, and often try to share a recent sales-win from using the asset. * Showcase any rep wins attributed to your content. This one has worked REALLY well for us. If you find a rep who leveraged an asset from Marketing and it led to a good engagement with a prospect or customer, then get a quote and showcase that to the broader team. Once other reps see another having success, they're more willing to use it. Bonus - if you can show these wins to Sales Managers, who are willing to share with their teams, that'll work even better. At the end of the day, marketers who support the sales org need to focus on QUALITY and not quantity. Don't get yourself in a place where you're a content factory. Instead, do research with your reps, find what would be most impactful and useful, and commit to a small number of high value assets.

Great question. I suggest all marketers to collaborate with their sales team. At my previous company, marketers were required to shadow a certain number of sales calls per month. This was a great way for us to understand their process, hear what prospects are saying, and align what we're doing. In terms of engaging Sales for input, here is what I'd suggest: 1. Find a core group of sales reps who will be your champions. For us, we identified a group of around 5 reps in the segment we were focused on, who leverage content and campaigns in their sales process. These reps were willing and excited to partner with marketing. 2. Build a template to collect their ideas and feedback within. For us, we've created one that has 3 columns: what we'd build, why we'd build it, and when/where reps would use it in their sales process. 3. Send your prompts to your sales feedback group for input 4. Meet with them to discuss live in a focus group and/or async via commenting Another approach we've taken is with creating a "Sales Panel" which is a monthly recurring meeting with a core group of reps who are willing to provide feedback and ideas to marketing. These meetings have a dynamic agenda, where any marketer can join with a question they're seeking feedback/responses to. My last tip... hire a sales rep who has marketing skills to join your marketing team. They'll bring with them a ton of connections/trust within the sales org.

Great question. When it comes to measuring objection handling: * Leverage a conversation intelligence tool such as Gong, where you can report on keywords within sales calls and attribute those conversations to deal pipelines. For training: * The best way to measure impact of a training is to run 'workshops' in addition to a training such as an eLearning. For example... I'd recommend reps taking an eLearning that walks through the 'what and the why' and then organize a workshop where they put it to practice to understand the 'how'. With the workshop, create a simple matrix scorecard to judge/grade their effectiveness in putting it to practice. This could be a role play or it could be the rep recording a mock pitch and submitting it to their manager to grade. * I'd also recommend looking at 'before' and 'after' snapshots within your reporting. What was the runrate before they took the training, and what did it look like 30, 60, 90 days after? * In some cases, depending on the training, you'll be able to better track things. For example, if you lead a training on 'improving win rates against X competitor by leveraging new objection handling techniqes' then you can look at deals that involved that competitor and whether you saw a meaningful increase in win rates. At the end of the day, not everything is going to have a direct line to tangible results. But there are more and more solutions on the market to help today, and creative ways to think about it. 

This depends on how your organization is structured and what responsibities you define for Product Marketing. Sometimes product marketing plays a big role in enablement, while at other companies they just provide the messaging/value props/etc that enablement then uses as a framework for their enablement. But generally, product marketing focuses on: * Product positioning * Value props * Feature naming * Pricing and packaging * Talk tracks * Overview of what a product is and why it matters * Core assets, such as pitch decks While enablement might focus more on: * Creating trainings on how to sell a product * Creating collateral for products * Communicating new releases / updates to the sales team

This is always a difficult one. Sometimes it can be easier to solve with technology, while other times it's a bit more difficult to track/measure. With technology: * You can track which content is being sent out/used * You can track how many reps are 'customizing' a deck in their workspace * etc. * However, the issue with this is that you might see a pitch deck you worked hard on isn't being used at all. In that case, you need to evalutate whether its an adoption issue or a quality issue (ie. not the right pitch) Without technolgy: * You really need to rely on feedback loops and finding sales champions to work with * Meet regularly with those champions to review assets and listen to them on what's working, what's not, and what they'd suggest improving * Ask your reps to surface and share with you the assets they're creating on their own. Oftentimes reps are creating materials on their own, because they have a need and don't want to wait for marketing. So ask them! Then take those materials as guidance for how you can optimize, improve, and standardize them as 'approved materials' that are on-brand. At the end of the day, every company and sales team will need the same core assets/materials. Things such as an approved pitch deck, a few core one-pagers, a pillar page on your website, or a tool such as an ROI calculator. So it really comes down to a matter of quality over trying to figure out 'which materials to create' and this can only be figured out through sales rep feedback and working with them. So in short = work with your sales counterparts to listen, learn, and then create.

Our product marketing team meets with the sales team fairly regularly. We have a few formats: 1. Monthly 'sales feedback panel' meeting 2. Monthly marketing/sales showcase townhall (where marketing walks through the latest/greatest assets and how to use them) 3. 1:1 or 1:few meetings whenever kicking off a new asset or campaign to gather sales rep feedback and input to help guide the direction And beyond those, our leaders meet with sales leaders regularly to align on strategic priorities for the business

Identify use cases where both products come together to compliment one another or build a better solution together. Another way to approach it is by identifying products that share similar/same personas. As an example, we have a Marketing product and a CMS product. Those two products go together well, because oftentimes marketers are not only in charge of their campaigns, but also the website. We also know that for a marketer to build a proper digital experience / buying experience for their customers, they need to consider all the touchpoints across email, ads, social, AND the website. Bring those together. Always keep the customer in mind. Ask yourself "why would a customer need both products?" and "how would these two products compliment each other and provide the customer more value than if it was a stand alone?" -- the answers to those will likely lead to some ideas on multi-hub content.