Take Your Content Management in Salesforce to the Next Level

Ever read a great book you just couldn’t put down? That changed your life? That had to be read?

You probably wanted to share it with your friends and family and shout its virtue from the rooftops. A great book will do that.

Imagine, though, that this book was almost impossible to find. Libraries don’t have it. Bookstores don’t have it. You only have one battered, dog-eared copy. You want to spread the word, but you just can’t seem to find ways to do it.

Now imagine that the book is content that will help support your sales process. You need to share it with your customers, and if you don’t, you could lose a lot of money.

Those stakes seem a lot worse, huh?

Content is that important. There are few ways to make a good impression with potential customers than by giving them relevant content that speaks to their needs and desires.

However, digital content management tools that give you a single source for the right piece of content for the right customer at the right time – while minimizing wasted resources – are few and far between. But Salesforce, the industry’s leading customer relationship management (CRM) platform, doesn’t have a core digital content management system built-in.

You can find one, though, in the AppExchange. It allows you to level up your sales process and build stronger customer relationships through timely sharing. 

Here’s the what, why, and how of equipping Salesforce with a content management system that brings your content strategy to life.

What Content Management Systems Are Designed to Do – and Why It Matters

The easiest way to sum up how content management works is to illustrate a simple process that sales reps and marketing teams go through every day.

A marketing team spends time creating a really slick piece of content. They base it on data from analytics platforms and interviews with sales teams about what potential customers need to learn about.

If the organization has aligned sales and marketing, then they can even tailor that piece of content to the specific account. They can- even tailor it down to the specific person.

But even if it’s a stock piece of collateral stored somewhere, the sales rep needs to get it to the prospect. They also have to time it properly, to align with customer journeys. The right piece of content at the wrong time isn’t much better than the wrong piece of content at the right time.

Based on how well the sales conversation is progressing, the sales rep may keep feeding that contact more info; maybe some data about a different topic, or a one-page sales brief on a product feature.

Or maybe, they need to switch gears and move on to another contact as they get deeper into the target account.

Regardless, sales reps need to:

1. Quickly access the right content types and pick the best piece of content
2. Easily share it with a contact
3. Do all of this in a tight window of opportunity before it closes

Digital content management is how content managers enable that entire process. If done correctly, it’ll provide incredible dividends for customer experience and customer loyalty. It’ll also speed up the buying cycle.

If done poorly – the rep is too slow, or the content isn’t relevant or timely – then the sales team will miss out on valuable opportunities.

Note that all of this is true regardless of the quality of the content itself. Even the best-produced, glossiest, neatest, [insert your favorite superlative adjective here] piece of collateral from genius content creators will flop if not delivered the right way. It’s that important.

How to Give Salesforce the Content Platform It Needs to Help You

Salesforce has a lot of great capabilities. However, one business application it lacks right out of the box is a digital content management system.

You’ll need to power it up by plugging in an app that can help you filter, find, select, and deliver content. The best ones have these key features:

• Native in Salesforce: There is no integration, because it works seamlessly within Salesforce (that saves you a ton of time and money).
• Multi-file drag-and-drop capability and tagging for more efficient uploading: This is a must for even medium-sized content libraries that are updated regularly.
• Content analytics: You can track each content interaction and get real-time insights so content managers can adjust and optimize.
• Smart content recommendations: Sales reps don’t have time to pore through a library. Having automated guidance is crucial to a hyper-efficient operation.
• Content playlists: You can create collections of content for every sales rep, type of content, industry, customer role, stage in the buyer’s journey, and other key criteria.
• Rapid sharing: It should be very easy for reps to select and send content to a prospect (and since it’s natively embedded in Salesforce, it takes advantage of the CRM features you already use.)

You don’t want to settle for any digital content management solution that lacks these key features. That’s why we designed Prolifiq ACE. It is a 100% native Salesforce digital content management app built by sales and marketing pros for sales and marketing pros.

You can learn more about ACE here, and if you’re feeling extra froggy and want to take a leap, you can even request a demo (it’s a lot of fun, we promise). 

Regardless of what you choose, though, it’s important to give Salesforce the extra oomph it needs. 

You can’t use it to share a great book (yet…). But that great piece of digital content that will make buyers want to buy? Absolutely. 

P.S. We also offer account planning solutions as well.