The messaging may be right. The screen shots might be perfect. But the customer isn’t the only audience you have to keep in mind when building that brochure in the first place.
Most marketing organizations fail to include the sales team directly in the collateral development process. And this starts before you have a draft of something.
Before you create or design anything, figure out what the team wants. How do they sell? What do they hear from customers? What do they need to communicate to prospects to accelerate interest and deal velocity?
How do those needs translate into materials – printed, PDF, video, whatever – that the sales team will actually use?
It’s highly likely that the sales team’s vision of what they want is different than yours. But if you build based on your vision alone, and the sales team doesn’t use it, what good is a brochure sitting in a box?
Part of your job as a marketer is to be the voice of the customer. You need to work with the sales team to understand what the customer wants, how to speak to them. But the sales team is in front of customers far more often than you are. Their operational feedback from the front lines (and from their contacts who are gate-keeping the deal) is important and too-often ignored.
Build collateral that speaks to the customer, but more importantly build collateral that the sales team will use. You can’t influence and sell from inside the box.
