Survey: 66% of Sales Pros Proceed Without Marketing Collateral They Need

Nearly Half (48%) of Salespeople Believe They Could Gain 30% in Sales By Having Customizable Content Templates

Customizing marketing or sales collateral is a significant pain point for sales professionals, according to a new study commissioned by Santa Cruz Software that surveyed over 200 sales professionals. When relying on team members to create their requested collateral, 63% say it takes several days to receive the collateral they need, and an additional 14% say it takes weeks or longer. As a result, 66% often proceed without the customized marketing materials they need because the materials are too difficult to create or find.

An overwhelming majority (90%) use custom collateral for their role, indicating the importance of customization in the sales cycle. As a result, a majority of respondents (59%) say they lose business when they don’t have the customized marketing collateral they need.

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Further, 88% of respondents create custom sales collateral as part of their role, spending significant time each week customizing materials. In fact, 54% spend three or more hours weekly on custom collateral. Similarly, 80% create five or more pieces of custom marketing material each month. On the high end, 10% of respondents create more than 20 pieces monthly.

The solution in the opinion of most respondents is branded, customizable templates. An overwhelming 89% say it would make their life easier if they had branded, easily customizable templates to create sales materials. Nearly half (48%) of the respondents reported that they believe they could gain 30% or more in additional sales by having branded, customizable content templates to create sales collateral.

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“We find that the back-and-forth approval process between sales, creatives and marketing teams is causing a significant choke point in the sales process,” said Mark Hilton, CEO of Santa Cruz Software. “We designed BrandingUI from the ground up to eliminate this friction and to make it simple for sales and on-site marketing teams to customize materials, all while maintaining brand compliance. The admin interface makes it simple for creative and marketing teams to upload well-designed, branded marketing and sales materials. Then the user interface empowers sales and on-site marketers to customize collateral for their specific needs. This enables salespeople to have the collateral they need, when they need it, eliminating this pain point.”

Interestingly, when asked what kind of materials they create, 72% said social media ads, 53% said promotions, 42% said event fliers and 34% said brochures.