You’ve likely heard (or watched, or read!) the Moneyball story before. The Oakland Athletics, a baseball team in a mid-sized market, were struggling. They lacked the resources to attract and keep big name players, and were at a gross disadvantage to the larger market teams.
But the team’s management had a new strategy. Invest in players that were undervalued and were able to deliver key skills at the right time in a game. That allowed the team to spend less on payroll, but keep players that filled key needs.
Sales and Marketing Content Has its Own Moneyball
The largest spend in a typical marketing budget is on collateral. Collateral includes the presentations, proposals, and other materials that sales teams use to engage prospects and close deals. But most marketing teams don’t know which pieces to invest in; which collateral actually closes deals. The Moneyball concept applies to this sales content too.
How? Marketing organizations produce large volumes of collateral. And those case studies are sent by inside sales teams to prospects. Those presentations are delivered to customers. And that content is baked into hundreds of proposals.
So, when content gets used that frequently, you should ensure that the right content gets used. And if there is a gap in your content lineup, you need to invest accordingly to get new collateral. Say, you see lots of sales activity in financial services. Do you need to produce a datasheet that focuses on banking? Or perhaps the same proposal template is used repeatedly. Does that mean you need to add other content to support different types of sales pursuits?
We wrote a paper on the topic, and you can access it here.
