Sales Content Reference Library: A Salesperson's Best Resource

Providing relevant, factual, and on-message information to your prospect is imperative to a sales cycle’s success. This builds credibility, trust, and rapport with your prospective customers, all stacking the deck in your favor of winning you the business. 

But where do you find this content? Within your CRM? Past RFPs? Generic marketing materials? 

For most teams, this answer can vary wildly—which is a problem when you’re in the middle of a demo and just need a quick answer or when you’re responding to a high-value RFP.

Enter the Reference Library. 

What is a Reference Library?

Much like in academia, where you’d draw from reference material to create a research thesis, you utilize a Reference Library to respond to external stakeholders—showcasing your best content.

Your Reference Library is a carefully curated pool of content your team can trust. Instead of re-using past RFP responses or proposal content that only lives in that moment of time, you can create and curate a whole library of content sales reps can use at a moment’s notice. This content is also intentional in that it is approved as your very best, gold-star content.

How does a sales content library work?

Reference content is categorized by subject matter and assigned to specific subject matter experts. For instance, you may have a “Product Reference” and assign the product manager for that product line. That way, as releases happen and the product evolves, the person who holds the knowledge (the SME) can update the relevant content. Then, the next time you have an RFP or questionnaire for that product, you can pull the most up-to-date content instead of relying on past responses that may or may not still be accurate. 

If you use a Sales Content Collaboration platform like Ombud, a whole host of functionality is also specific to this type of content. You can set custom expiration dates for every piece of content, and users can nominate content for inclusion in the Reference Library, as well as flag out-of-date content. These functions create a positive feedback loop to inform SMEs what information is being used most to support sales cycles allows sales to keep SMEs accountable for updating content promptly. 

Why is it a salesperson’s best friend?

Better relationship with your SMEs.

Sales probably isn’t your SMEs’ day job. So, engaging them every time you need their expertise for an RFP response is likely to cause friction. These individuals may have no idea how important the deal you’re currently working on is or understand the pipeline needs. By assigning them to a Reference, you ensure you always have the correct content available to your team. And in turn, you’re protecting the SME’s valuable time by allowing them to update and maintain their content on their schedule, not the schedule of sales. 

If you want more tips on engaging your SMEs in the sales process, check out our guide!

Quick and easy content searching all in one place.

Less back and forth. Less last-minute requests. More knowledge enablement. 

This content is searchable from anywhere, not just when filling out an RFP. This means your sales team has access to this curated content at any time—on a demo, answering a question over email, or if you’re just curious. 

The best of the best content at your fingertips.

Salespeople are resourceful, and, in the absence of accurate and readily available content, they will typically improvise. Can you afford to have less than stellar content or messaging being put in front of your best prospects? Enable your sales executives with reference content and increase overall confidence in your sales processes and responses.

Start making sales content creation a breeze.

With a Sales Content Collaboration platform like Ombud, you can create, manage, and assign out a Reference Libraries in a snap. The platform is purpose-built to manage content like this, and our flexible pricing structures make it easy to get your SMEs up and running.