TL;DR In this article I explain the real reason most sales enablement materials sit unused, share the framework I use to build enablement programs that stick, and walk through a case study that achieved 86% adoption across three global regions.
Your sales team has a new deck. They’ve also got one-sheets, battle cards, and a shiny new sales hub. Six weeks later, you check usage analytics and find they’re still using the old materials. Sound familiar?
I’ve seen this pattern at every company I’ve led product marketing for. The problem isn’t that sales enablement is a bad idea. The problem is that most PMMs build enablement in a vacuum, without considering how sales teams actually work, what information they need right before a call, or why they should change their habits. That’s why adoption tanks.
The good news: fixing this doesn’t require starting from scratch. It requires a different approach to how you build, package, and measure enablement materials.
Why most sales enablement materials get ignored
The typical enablement rollout goes like this: PMM builds a bunch of content, makes an announcement, holds a training session, then wonders why adoption is 12%.
Here’s what actually happens on a sales team. Your reps are juggling active deals, responding to inbound messages, prepping for back-to-back calls, and trying to hit quota. When they need information fast, they don’t have time to dig through an intranet. They grab whatever is closest – usually that deck they’ve been using for six months, even if it’s outdated.
Adoption fails because:
- Content is built without talking to sales first. You create what you think they need. They need something different. You’re solving the wrong problem.
- Materials sit in places reps never look. A beautiful enablement hub is useless if nobody knows it exists or how to find what they need. Email announcements get buried. Training sessions fade from memory.
- There’s no reason to switch. You gave them new materials, but the old ones still work well enough. Why change?
- Content is generic instead of contextual. A battle card about pricing is useful. A battle card that pops up when a rep is about to lose a deal to a competitor is actually used.
The fix is to build enablement backwards: start with the moments when reps actually need help, then build content that fits into those moments.
The enablement framework I use
At every company I’ve led PMM for, I follow the same three-step framework:
Step 1: map the sales process and identify decision points. Where do reps struggle? When do they lose deals? What questions come up repeatedly? What objections do they hear? Don’t guess. Sit in calls, read Slack threads, review lost deal feedback, and talk to the sales leaders. This research takes two to three weeks but it saves you from building the wrong thing.
Step 2: build materials that match the decision points. If reps struggle to close in the first 30 days of a contract, build a “post-signature success deck” that shows expected value faster. If they lose deals to a competitor, build an objection guide that addresses that specific competitor’s messaging. If they don’t know how to open an enterprise conversation, build a high-level positioning document. Make each piece of content solve a real problem.
Step 3: distribute materials where reps naturally look. Don’t just put things in the hub. Integrate materials into the tools reps use every day. Slack reminders before certain call types. Email templates with battle cards embedded. One-sheets saved in the CRM. Sales decks ready to go in a shared folder with clear naming conventions. Make it easier to use your materials than to create their own.
Then measure adoption at each step. Track what gets opened, what gets used, when it gets used, and if it correlates with better outcomes.
What goes in an enablement hub
Your hub should be the single source of truth for all customer-facing content, but it shouldn’t be overwhelming. I organize hubs around buyer stages and use cases, with clear naming and easy search.
Core hub structure:
- Positioning and messaging. Company positioning, elevator pitch, value drivers for different buyer personas, competitive positioning, key messages by vertical or use case. This is the foundation everything else is built on.
- Sales decks. Executive overview deck (15-20 slides), technical deep-dive deck (for technical buyers), use-case-specific decks, and vertical-specific decks if you operate across multiple industries. Every deck should have a clear purpose and a note about when to use it.
- One-sheets and leave-behinds. Product overview, feature/benefit sheets, use-case sheets, ROI sheets, customer stories. These should be 1-2 pages max. Keep them scannable.
- Battle cards. Competitive battle cards for major competitors. Objection-handling guides for the top five objections you hear. Market situation cards for your most common deal scenarios. These are reference materials reps pull out in the moment.
- Customer evidence. Case studies organized by industry or use case. Customer quotes and testimonials. ROI calculators or metrics. Social proof matters in sales.
- Frequently asked questions. Build this as you go. Every time a rep asks the same question twice, add it to an FAQ document. Organize by topic.
- Sales resources. Sales call frameworks, qualification questions for different buyer roles, email templates, follow-up sequences, negotiation talking points.
The hub works when it’s clean, searchable, and kept current. Outdated materials hurt credibility, so assign someone to review content quarterly and remove anything that’s no longer accurate.
Building the hub that achieved 86% adoption
At an enterprise digital workplace platform, I worked with a sales team spread across EMEA, APAC, and the US. They had materials scattered everywhere – old decks on personal drives, outdated one-sheets in email signatures, inconsistent messaging across regions.
We started by interviewing sales leaders and reps in each region. The problems were clear:
- Regional inconsistency. The EMEA team was positioning one way, APAC another, US another. Customers saw different stories depending on which team contacted them.
- Materials were outdated. The most recent sales deck was from six months ago. Reps were updating it themselves, creating multiple versions.
- No single source of truth. When questions came up, reps asked each other instead of checking documentation. Information got lost or distorted.
We built a centralized hub organized by use case and buyer persona. We created battle cards for the top three competitor comparison scenarios. We built positioning documents that aligned all three regions. We created regional variations of materials where they mattered but enforced consistent messaging everywhere.
We trained over 140 field team members on the new positioning and materials, but the training wasn’t a presentation. It was interactive sessions where we walked through deal scenarios and showed exactly when to use each material.
We also made the hub accessible. M365 Teams integration with quick links to relevant materials. CRM integrations so reps could pull one-sheets without leaving the system. A weekly “newly updated materials” email. Regular feedback loops so reps could request new content and ask questions.
The result: 86% of the sales organization actively used the hub within the first quarter. More importantly, deal velocity improved and regional messaging became consistent. When a customer transferred from one team to another, they heard the same core value proposition.
How to measure enablement effectiveness
Adoption metrics matter, but they’re not the whole story.
Track the full funnel:
- Awareness. How many people know the materials exist? Track email open rates, Slack click-through rates, and training attendance.
- Usage. How many people are actually using the materials? Track hub logins, document downloads, and material views in your CRM.
- Adoption. Are materials being used in actual customer interactions? This is harder to measure but more important. Survey reps, review customer calls (if you record), and track if updated positioning or talking points are appearing in customer conversations.
- Impact. Does using the materials correlate with better outcomes? Track win rate, average deal size, and sales cycle length for reps who use materials versus those who don’t. Compare to baseline metrics from before rollout.
At the enterprise web governance SaaS I worked with, we built enablement for a Southern Europe regional expansion. We ran 17+ field events and created region-specific materials tailored to local market conditions. We tracked usage closely and refined materials based on what was actually landing with customers.
The program drove 33.8% revenue attribution against a 20% target. But the real win was that the sales team had a playbook. New reps came up to speed faster. Deals moved through the pipeline more predictably. Content worked because it was built for the actual sales process, because it solved real problems in the sales process.
FAQ
How do I get sales to actually adopt new materials if they’re happy with what they’re using?
The answer is to make it easier to use new materials than old ones. Don’t just announce new content and hope for adoption. Integrate it into the tools they use every day. Put templates in email for them to copy. Add battle cards to the CRM so they’re there when they need them. Remove friction. Then track which reps are using them and recognize them. Sometimes adoption follows visibility and ease of use, not directives.
What’s the most important material to build first?
Start with battle cards and positioning documents. These answer the questions that come up most often in sales conversations. Competitive battle cards especially drive immediate usage because reps pull them out mid-deal. Once reps see those materials work, they’re more likely to use other enablement content.
How often should I update the enablement hub?
Review content quarterly and update based on what’s changing in the market and what reps are actually asking about. If competitors release new products, update battle cards immediately. If you’re hearing the same objection repeatedly in deal cycles, create a guide for it. If a sales narrative isn’t landing, refine it. Real-time responsiveness beats perfect-but-stale content.
Questions about building your sales enablement program? Let’s connect, always happy to talk through what’s working.
