Measuring the Success of Sales Assets

During a recent visit to a travel agency, I was surprised by how little the agent knew about the destination I was considering. Let’s just say there are many TV ads for this kid-friendly vacation spot, but when I asked specific questions, the basic response was, “It is a really popular destination.” This was of little use in my decision process. I was expecting more insight – popular activities, comments from other vacationers, whether our travel dates coincide with the busy season. Instead, I am back at square one with too many choices and a fast-approaching vacation deadline.

Reps often have this problem with their asset management tool. Listing what is hot or popular does have some benefits, but sales reps want content suggestions for their specific opportunities and sales stages. Needing to search for content on the system adds another administrative function to their already busy day.

To use content measurement to better define and serve the needs of reps, consider the following phased approach:

• The first phase measures the number of downloads (i.e. popularity) of the asset. This tells you a little bit about the asset, but not everything. For example, if a recent training class instructs trainees to locate and download a specific product brochure, the resulting spike in activity cannot be easily separated from the real activity that takes place that day. This impacts the individual asset metrics as well as the dashboard that displays the top downloaded assets.
• The second phase measures the value of the asset, including ratings and comments. Although these measurements are powerful, reps seldom participate in these forms of feedback, which require a commitment to go back into the sales asset management tool in order to rank or make a comment about the asset based on the buyer’s response. That’s a significant time investment. These metrics can be improved with a reminder email to the rep that includes a link to the original content, but again, this adds another administrative task for the rep.
• The third phase tracks asset activity that is linked to a single opportunity at a specific sales stage. This requires tight integration between the sales asset management tool and the sales force automation platform. Since many factors contribute to the success of a sale, metrics from this activity can only show if the pairing of the same asset to similar opportunities is helping close more opportunities with greater speed.