Behind the scenes in today’s technology-centric culture, the term “MVP” gets thrown around in product management circles with such conviction you might think that the brilliant minds that brought us such life-enhancing technologies as the iPhone and the GoPro camera are major sports fans.

That could be the case—who knows? But the MVP in question when it comes to software applications is the almighty Minimum Viable Product: the minimum feature set that can be shipped to test an offering’s viability—its salability—with the least risk.

The goal is simple: Get a product to market quickly to find out what works and what doesn’t, what consumers love, what they hate, and do so quickly. Take the input, iterate, scale, and release a better, more robust product that meets demand with all the right features.

No matter the industry, we in sales and marketing can learn a lot from the principles of the MVP cycle. We can use a release, measure/seek feedback, adjust, update, re-release approach to deliver sales enablement materials that will empower sales teams and drive increased revenue. But, how?

Sales and marketing can be the real MVPs—Most Valuable Players—of any organization with the right approach.

Think about your company’s sales and marketing teams. Do they get along? Do they work well together and strive to help each other succeed with open, two-way communication and mutual support of a common goal?

If they do, that’s great! If not, you’re not alone.

The friction between sales and marketing is not new, by any stretch of the imagination. As long as sales has quotas to meet and marketing is charged with providing the collateral and enablement materials required to close the deals, there will be friction. The great irony, of course, is that removing the friction has the potential to dramatically increase sales and drive revenue—a win for both parties.

Generally speaking, Sales tends to undervalue the materials marketing provides because they’re seen as off-target, take too long to develop, or are impossible to locate amongst all the clutter of their daily lives. As the faces on the front lines—the feet on the street—Sales knows what resonates with clients, but the feedback rarely comes full circle to the copywriter in the cubicle struggling to meet a deadline on a new pitch deck. And of course, as a result, the problem continues.

The lines of communication are clogged, but it’s not irreversible.

The way to make both sales and marketing teams excel is with a structured, measurable approach to housing, distributing, and managing the marketing content library.

This means leaning on the technology available today that can take the frustration out of the relationship, that can put actionable metrics against deliverables, and that makes it easy for both sides to do their jobs.

Enter sales enablement platforms.

It’s only natural that as technology has evolved to let us measure anything imaginable that dedicated platforms to house materials and measure sales enablement effectiveness would emerge. The marketing closet full of brochures and sales sheets quickly became obsolete as soon as sales enablement moved online.

To be sure, the early goings were rocky.

First generation centralized content solutions were inflexible, difficult, and not really designed for ease of use by busy sales organizations, whose number one goal is, and always will be, simply to meet quota (which, by the way, only 40% manage to do). If it takes time away from meeting quota, there is very little room for “figuring it out.”

Network drives, SharePoint libraries and even content management systems (CMS) tied to a web portal front end left more than a little to be desired, as materials were often organized willy-nilly by whomever uploaded the materials. Instead of being oriented around Sales’ searching patterns and content needs, these systems were (and still are, for those using them) a mess of content thrown together, their contents reading like a corporate novel with many chapters, all written by different authors.

With no reliable standard way to distribute, measure, and track content consumption, marketing organizations everywhere started to lose control of the message. Market entrants like Dropbox, OneDrive, and other cloud-based storage and transfer solutions made storing and sending files an individual-level scenario, and the content management waters became even more muddied. Large PowerPoint files began to run rampant as one-offs through the various cloud solutions—they have to be sent somehow—and finding the right content at the right time became little more than a pipe dream.

Pipe dreams (at least the good ones) are meant to be fulfilled, and modern sales enablement solutions enable a predictable, measurable, closed-loop sales cycle. Marketers can finally say with certainty how and when content is used, and quantify its impact on the performance of every deal. Sales can provide actionable feedback and know it will be seen. In the right hands, that’s some pretty powerful information, but not all solutions are created equal, so selecting the right solution is critical to long-term success.

Sales enablement, re-imagined  

If you’ve tried a sales enablement platform in the past with mixed results, it’s time to look again and re-consider options.

When selecting a sales enablement platform, at a minimum, you should consider these three critical components to success:

1. Sales team access to content. There must be a content management system that is comprehensive, intuitive, and flexible. Ensure that sales teams can find the content they need when they need it for each specific selling opportunity.  

2. Ability to engage the customer through content. The system must include a digital platform for the sharing of content with prospects that is efficient, professional, and even elegant….and provides the sales rep with engagement reports to make the rep more effective.

3. Closed-loop performance analytics. Analytics are absolutely critical. Key reports should include usage and uptake data for each individual client initiative as well as the aggregated performance of the overall content strategy and execution. (Did the contact consume any content? Which pieces? Which media? Was there response or engagement? Which tests worked best? And so on.)

About the Author

Jeff Day is the VP of Marketing at Highspot. Previous to Highspot, Jeff ran Marketing, Product and Sales for DomainTools, a cybersecurity software company. Before that, he was founder and CEO of Enodo Software, a marketing analytics and revenue attribution company. Jeff has been running marketing and product management for over 15 years for both startup companies (Apptio, PolyServe) and large enterprises (HP, Sun Microsystems, Intel). Jeff started his career as a computer engineer for Intel, with a BS EE from UW.

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