February 12, 2013
By Kelly Liyakasa,

KnowledgeTree Ramps Up Sales and Marketing Collateral

Presenting the right marketing collateral—such as case studies, white papers, PDFs, and presentation slidedecks—at the right time can be a challenge for salespeople. It's a problem cloud-based document management provider KnowledgeTree is looking to solve with its launch today of a cloud-based suite of tools designed for sales and marketing teams.

For sales teams, the challenge is finding the materials needed to present at any stage of a sales cycle. With KnowledgeTree's collateral discovery tool, reps now have a way to categorize material based on such parameters as product, competitor, geography, and business concept.

"As a result, [they're not] poking around wasting time trying to find content and ultimately defaulting to something less than effective," remarks Peter Mollins, vice president of marketing for KnowledgeTree. In addition to culling relevant marketing material, the KnowledgeTree solution can reveal content that has been used more frequently or to greater success by colleagues.

New reporting capabilities geared for sales and marketing managers are designed to identify content that has contributed to revenue growth, as well as material that needs attention. For example, if a data sheet is circulated but that particular product has been cancelled or recalled, sales and marketing managers are going to want to know about it. "It could be a regulatory issue, but it's definitely a sales effectiveness issue if people are using collateral that's out of date or ineffective."

Marketing teams can also now use KnowledgeTree to take customer feedback and improve upon the content housed in their system.

KnowledgeTree has added an Autotagging functionality, which allows users to see what products are being shared or talked about. Then content is automatically categorized based on keywords or phrases related to industry, product, or geography. "Within the next couple of weeks, we'll be able to tell our customers whether something is a case study or a proposal and categorize content accordingly," comments Daniel Chalef, CEO of KnowledgeTree. Although Chalef says the company is focused on document-based collateral, he adds, "we're working to support video" down the road.