If your organization uses SharePoint, your team may be convinced that everything should live there. After all, you’ve made a sizable investment in the platform and should use it as much as possible.
But, for RFPs, Security Assessments, and other sales requests that require deep customization and content creation, it misses the mark.
Below, are the 4 main reasons we’ve seen customers move their sales content collaboration and response management efforts away from SharePoint:
Categorize your content with context.
“I know it’s in here somewhere, but I guess I have to Ctrl+F my way through it.”
“Wait, that’s not what I wanted!” *proceeds to download 4 more documents*
Think back to the last time you had to respond to an RFP and had a question you didn’t know the answer to. What was your process?
If you’re like most SharePoint users, your team has likely devised a naming nomenclature so you can find the right folders and documents you need fairly easily. Then, once you find what you think is the right document, you then have to download it to Word, search for the keyword you’re looking for, and then copy + paste into the correct spot in your document and modify formatting...then do that exact process 200 more times to complete an RFP.
With Sales Content Collaboration, you never have to hit Ctrl+F again.
Key benefits of contextual content categorization:
✅ Policing nomenclatures is a non-issue with content categorization on a myriad of categories via tagging
✅ Content segmentation happens all the way down to content sections and individual Q&A pairs
✅ Tagging and categorization cascade to every content level — for easy search of content later on (inside or outside of customer requests).
Clearly assign specific tasks and track progress.
“What review cycle is this on?”
“Why isn’t this done? Who missed a deadline?”
Often, the most taxing part of responding to customer requests is the project management aspect. It’s hard to know when things are “done,” especially without a purpose-built tool for the job.
Precious time can be eaten up because you’re not sure if someone’s done with their part and it’s ready for your review. And with deadlines getting closer and turnaround times collapsing, that’s something your team can’t afford.
Key benefits of clear progress tracking and assignment:
✅ Easy project management with full stats dashboard to see who has completed tasks.
✅ Assignment all the way down to content sections and individual Q&A pairs keep projects organized and the team accountable.
✅ Customized due dates and task types allow for multiple review cycles and a clear delineation of duties.
Collaborate in real-time with full version history.
“I just edited something, why did it revert?”
“I made those edits, but they aren’t showing up in your version.”
When was the last time you responded to a customer request with no assistance from anyone else in your organization? Never? And, those collaborators are rarely synced up to your schedule — whether it’s because of their location or their role.
With a more strict document-based repository for this content, the need to “check out” content can lead to miscommunication, overwriting of content, confusing versioning, and all-around chaos.
Key benefits of real-time collaboration:
✅ Collaborate and provide content concurrently with no interruption for colleagues.
✅ Lock individual pieces of content so you never overwrite information.
✅ Preserve full history to restore previous versions and control the message as needed.
Democratize content creation.
“I don’t have time to update that, I’ll just use the most recent RFP we responded to.”
“Has anyone seen this question before? Where can I find it?”
Within a SharePoint instance, there are typically only a few people that hold the keys to the kingdom. If everyone is able to create and add content, the instance would become a mess of uncategorized and incorrectly labeled content, making it even harder to search.
With a dedicated sales content collaboration system, that’s a thing of the past. With specific spaces for net-new, curated, and opportunity-specific content, respectively, you can create a pool of relevant, quality content, without spending hours updating and putting the lion’s share of the work on a small group of people.
Key Benefits of democratizing content:
✅ Tribal knowledge gets disseminated to the broader group.
✅ New hires onboard and get up to speed quicker with unbridled access to knowledge.
✅ Core team members can spend more time on quality as opposed to quantity.
“I’m convinced, but I can’t just rip out SharePoint.”
Your team may have bought SharePoint a long time ago or has invested a lot of money to implement that in the organization, it can be tough to justify the move.
But, SharePoint may not be serving your content collaboration needs adequately — because it wasn’t built to.
For deep customization and creation of content that can win you 6-figure sales deals, you need a purpose-built solution that scales with you so you can:
- Trust the content clients are receiving
- Gain full transparency into the response process
- Ensure compliance across the organization
- Reduce response time
- Improve and track content effectiveness
Let sales content collaboration be that solution. Learn more here.
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