Document management is a critical aspect of sales and marketing initiatives. When it’s ineffective or doesn’t follow a process, it can lead to higher costs, wasted time, noncompliance, and general frustration. This can erode productivity and cause friction between sales and marketing. Thus, it’s not something you want to ignore or implement inconsistently.
Let’s break down the common mistakes of document management within sales enablement and how to avoid them.
Think about digital document management the same way you would hard copies. If what you need to use every day was in 10 different file cabinets scattered throughout your organization, you would feel like you were running around all day looking for what you need.
The same concept applies when documents and content live in multiple digital places. You aren’t running with your feet but instead with your mouse. If there’s no centralization, there’s also no governance. That means if you find what you need, you might not be confident it’s the latest and greatest version.
Such a scenario is frustrating for sales teams. They already have full plates with time-consuming activities. They don’t need one more thing to drain their productivity.
In addition to this chaos, not centralizing can also be a hidden cost of document management if you’re paying for numerous file-sharing platforms.
If you store documents in different places, then sales reps need multiple logins, links, and so on. There may be permission issues that trip them up. Additionally, they’re only able to retrieve documents while online.
When there are barriers to access, users may begin to download versions and keep them on their physical computers. This can be troublesome for several reasons. First, they may not be using the approved version. Second, items on a physical computer can be accessed by unauthorized people, modified, or even stolen, which could mean a risk to your intellectual property.
Sales and marketing teams develop and use many types of content: product information, presentations, content marketing materials, rich media, and training. Organizations often think they need to keep it segmented. They keep training in a learning management system, marketing content on a shared drive, and video in a special repository. That’s not sustainable at scale and can be expensive.
With this complex system, consider how hard it is to onboard new employees. They’ll need a cheat sheet to find content to help them do their job.
In highly regulated industries, compliance is a key part of content. It needs the correct
disclosures and notations; otherwise, you could suffer a noncompliance fine. If you can’t track this automatically, then you may be relying on spreadsheets or other inefficient means that are open to the risk of being forgotten.
If your documents live in standard repositories, you’re not collecting any data on their usage. While tools such as Dropbox or Google Drive can manage multiple formats and organize, they don’t have any analytics features. These tools are clunky, aren’t a sales solution, and anyone with access to them can delete a file.
You could be missing out on valuable information for both marketing and sales to understand what’s resonating with buyers.
One of the biggest threats to effective document management is a lack of sales and marketing alignment. The teams are at odds about what should go where, and problems continue to arise.
Sales may think it’s solely the responsibility of marketing, while marketing says sales reps don’t follow the rules. The reality is that both groups should work together to have a streamlined document process that serves all needs.
The best way to avoid the most common document management mistakes is to employ a sales enablement platform that delivers functionality and features in one system. With vablet, you can enjoy:
You can learn more about the power of sales enablement software by downloading our e-book, Secrets Revealed: How Marketing Can Help Increase Sales Using a Sales Enablement Platform.
After reviewing, you can experience all of vablet’s capabilities by requesting a demo.