Marketers are not immune to the challenges of selling today. But sales challenges like limited access to customers, increased market competition or saturation, or a lack of visibility into sales activities present marketing teams with an need to optimize collateral for the sales process in more holistic, long-term ways. Forward-thinking marketers are collaborating with sales colleagues to overcome these challenges through content development, deployment, and measurement

Common Challenges for Marketers:

• Limited Access to Customers
• Market Saturation
• Field Visibility

Limited Access to Customers
Customers are busier and more occupied than ever. Advances in mobile technology and global connectivity have led to business being conducted anywhere and at any time, which often forces reps to pitch buyers in unorthodox locations or in situations where time is extremely limited.

Marketers are challenged to create and deploy content that supports salespeople in these situations. Marketing content should be immediately accessible, flexible and readily available. Any time a rep spends waiting for a file to download or searching for it online wastes valuable selling time in an already time-sensitive environment. An increasingly mobile and wireless sales field also means marketing content and presentation media must be optimized for offline environments, like elevators or operating rooms.

Immediate access to content is a partial solution to overcoming limited customer availability. Marketing teams can empower reps to close in these restricted time periods by equipping them with rich, engaging presentation content. Sophisticated files like video and HTML5 are more engaging and enable reps to give buyers a more interactive, customized experience than linear content formats like pitch decks or PowerPoints can deliver. On top of creating a more personalized, streamlined experience for customers, rich media content like forms and videos can be accessed by reps at the touch of button, saving them the time and hassle of logging into a file-sharing system like Dropbox or searching through a binder or briefcase.

How Marketers Can Overcome Limited Access to Customers:

• Utilize richer, more engaging content formats and media
• Deploy content to salespeople in the field faster and more efficiently
• Integrate content deployment and metrics with other existing systems and workflows

The more proactive marketers can be in addressing the variety of challenges preventing reps from closing sales sooner or more often, the greater the impact marketing can have on helping the company achieve its’ revenue goals. By taking a holistic and collaborative approach to considering which content formats to utilize, how they should be deployed and how content effectiveness should be measured, marketing teams will be able to better align their efforts with the sales process and deliver what their reps need to drive more sales.