A well-organized, centralized content library empowers your channel partners to confidently represent your brand and offering. Whether it be training tools or customer-facing content, a content library provides critical resources for your partners to sell effectively to their audience.
This article will discuss how you can build a channel content library to set up your sales partners for success, along with a few organizational tips to make it user-friendly.
Empower your partners with diverse training materials
Channel partners need easy access to training materials that reinforce their knowledge of your product(s), keep them updated on any new features, and arm them with answers to prospects’ questions.
These are critical resources to make available through a centralized content library tool. Be sure to create and provide a comprehensive range of trainings, such as:
• An overview of products and services to review and refresh your partners’ knowledge of your brand
• Product demonstrations that highlights use-cases, features, and possible integrations
• Training presentations and videos to walk their sales teams through any detailed or technical information in a visually engaging way
• Videos of sales conversations that prior partners or internal sales teams have had with prospects
• Data sheets or one-pagers that summarize key features of your products and services
Use your PRM tool’s content library to create multi-step training courses with a concluding quiz. The exam will provide you with valuable insights about who is paying attention, as well as the materials’ overall clarity.
Don’t be afraid to experiment with new content-types. Providing onboarding partners with new approaches lets you gain fresh insights into what works best. As a bonus, your content library’s broad range of materials lets individuals find the training that matches their particular style of learning.
To learn additional tips on how to help new partners, read 5 Steps to Successfully Onboarding Partners.
Support your partners with sales enablement tools
Training materials aside, your channel partners also need compelling, ready-made content that they can share with their audiences.
From introducing your brand to addressing specific product concerns for a prospect, your content library should have resources that engage leads at different stages of the sales pipeline. These include:
• Sales battlecards that compare and contrast your products and and services with those of your competitor(s)
• One-pagers (or data sheets) that summarize critical features of your products and services for external audiences
• Sales presentations and videos that can be shared on social media or sent directly to prospects
• Blog posts to generate new leads for their sales teams
• Ebooks and whitepapers to educate customers, as well as generate leads
• Case studies that showcase specific use cases and solved pain points
• Email templates for salespeople to send to prospects
You can also reduce the legwork for your partners by providing sales playbooks to follow while engaging with prospects. Through playbooks, you can guide your partners step-by-step through the sales cycle, and provide content already organized by selling stage.
Organize content for maximum accessibility
As with any library or database tool, your content needs to be organized, and the content in it needs to be easy to find.
If your partners can’t locate items via a quick search — or aren’t aware that a document even exists — your content won’t be used, no matter how compelling or creative it may be.
With that in mind, here are a couple of tips on organizing and maintaining a sales content library that is easy to navigate and use.
• Assign tags to your content. Consider organizing your content using tags such as buyer persona, industry, partner role, or sales stage. This makes it easier for users to find relevant content through the search function — which makes it more likely that your content will be seen and used.
• Customize user access so that users can only view materials that directly apply to them. This eliminates the need for users to wade through content unrelated to their needs and/or feeling overwhelmed with the library. Through Allbound, you can customize user access by partner grouping or by training-related milestones.
• Automate behavior-triggered notifications. Guide users through the library by setting up notifications. For example, if a user passes a quiz or changes the status of a registered deal, this action then triggers a notification leading them to the recommended next step.
• Share content only through the library. The content library is the centralized hub where you upload content for your partners. For organizational purposes, make sure that content is consistently shared through the library, and not through emails, Google Drive, or other mediums.
• Allow partners to create short-cuts to their favorite pieces. Allbound lets partners pin individual materials to their dashboard’s homepage so they can access it with a single click.
• Utilize a designated tool rather than relying upon a manually organized system. Shared folders work well for small-team collaboration, but not content distribution across a multinational ecosystem. While you may deem your manual content system as sufficient for today’s needs, it’s far from future-proof. The more your library grows and audiences diversify, the more chaotic and inefficient your library will become.
The right tool lets you easily systemize your library’s sales content without creating clutter. In turn, you can build a solid foundation on which you can scale both your library and your partner program.
Track partner engagement using your content library tool
Once you created a sales content library, your next objective should be to track and measure partner engagement and content effectiveness.
Perhaps you’ll find that a particular piece assists with conversions at a higher than average rate; or conversely, you may notice that another piece generates fewer leads than anticipated. To further refine your content strategy, utilize a content library tool that tracks the following:
• What content types do partners rely upon time-and-time again (such as video vs. pdfs)?
• Which content themes do partners revisit the most?
• Do certain partner demographics engage less with certain content than others?
• Which sales content resonates most with which buyer personas?
• Which content’s correlating quizzes have concerningly low success rates?
By keeping what works and improving or removing what doesn’t, you can ensure that your library remains populated with high-performing sales content. For more guidance, read How to Perform a Channel Content Library Audit.
Final takeaways about content library tools and tips
Building a well-organized channel content library provides your partners with a wealth of content at their disposal. By following these tips, you can support your channel partners as they generate new leads, engage prospects, and meet their sales goals — and yours. Want to learn more about how Allbound can help optimize your channel content management? Request a demo.
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