How to Bridge the Content Chasm Between Sales and Marketing

After three weeks, today is the day. 

We finally have the whole team in the office together. 

We’ve all been alternating being on the road, so it’s good to have the gang back together.

Anyway, let’s get into it. 


This week is brought to you by Demandbase: Hit Your Revenue Goal. Use Fewer Resources.


Bridging the Content Chasm

Sales is increasingly using strategic content creation and distribution as part of the sales process – from outbound, to advancing pipeline along, to awareness and education on social platforms. 

Sellers are responsible for educating their buyers digitally through multiple channels.

With that responsibility, often there is a need to create content to assist with the sales education process. 

Here is how to think about ownership and process: 

Ownership 

Who should take ownership for the creation process and content that the sales team uses – marketing or sales?

Well… it’s a bit of a trick question. 

Initiating the process could be either, as sales enablement is ideally an open and ongoing conversation. 

As for who takes ownership, this is how it’s reported to be most effective: 

Ownership of the assets: marketing. 

Ownership of curating the assets and content into what will best resonate through sales channels: sales. 

Marketing is the greenfield content creation engine, working with sales as they are pivotal to the content creation process.

Sales teams understand the pains and needs of the customer. Accordingly, it is best practice for marketing to seek out the sales teams input on content they should create when it relates to areas that sales interfaces with.

The process

Marketing content applied to sales use cases can fall flat and sound robotic. Russell Scherwin, Director, Facilitation at Force Management expresses that this is the worst thing you can do, as it dilutes brand value. 

Knotch’s research findings support this, confirming the plot twist reality that not all content is good for your brand.

One way of combating this is that marketing creates messaging and visual content (where applicable) that provides guidance, while allowing sales to adapt it.

As Sam McKenna, Founder of #samsales, expresses: “while the marketing content is vital, what’s an important pair to that is how the seller presents it. They need to have relevance and a point of view.”

Simply sharing content without connecting the relevance alongside a point of view is, Sam states, “a missed opportunity to connect with the buyer and build rapport/show up as a consultant.” 

It is extremely important to encourage sellers to post their own authentic spin on topics. 

There are a multitude of ways to house the content once created, such as a shared Google Drive, Sharepoint, or softwares. 

Scott Brown, Partner, Head of Platform at Cervin, notes that it’s important to ensure that a content silo doesn’t develop. This occurs when content is downloaded and eventually ends up on the desktop of a sales rep’s computer for usage, with the desktop being the source for pulling content. Despite sales enablement tools and processes, this inevitably does happen sometimes out of convenience. 

The master recipe: content enablement with the empowerment of authenticity. 

Provide the necessary resources, guidance and support to enable the sales team to leverage content, while empowering them to develop their authentic voice. 

It’s a team effort.


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That’s all this week.

Appreciate you rocking with us until the end.

We’re always up for topic suggestions for future newsletters so let us know what you’re currently wrestling with in the comments and we’ll try to cover it in one of our next editions.

Have a great weekend.

Barker ✌️

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Before helping found GTMfund, Scott spent 4 years at Outreach as Director of Strategic Engagement. He was in charge of aligning key relationships with VCs, BoDs, ecosystem partners and community members to drive revenue and strategic initiatives across Outreach. Scott initially ran revenue/partnerships for Sales Hacker (which was acquired by Outreach in 2018). Prior to Sales Hacker, he led and built outbound Business Development teams at Payfirma and MediaValet. Scott also advises for a number of high growth start-ups and is the host/author of The GTM Podcast and The GTM Newsletter. At GTMfund, Scott leads all fundraising efforts and runs the media arm of the firm. He’s also responsible for assessing investments, team management, LP/community relationships and GTM support for founders.

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