Market In-House
One of the first steps this company took to resolve this, when overhauling their Internet technology, was to make sure that they had the right tools for real-time updating. Not only could marketing change their Internet and Intranet/Sales Portal on the fly, enabling them to post materials directly to the website, but a tiered administrative system held content in an unpublished queue until a manager approved it. This gave marketing people a direct buy-in to seeing their materials disseminated.
The company surveyed its sales personnel about what they wanted and thought they needed to be more successful. The result was a sales portal and partner extranet that looked like a major news channel. The format capitalized on sites like CNN that their sales people and partners were already reading. Headlines, subheads and dynamic materials were used to convey the urgency and value of the resources on the site. Stories were changed out on a daily and weekly basis, while links to the most important sales tools were on the front page.
The bottom line is give people information in a way that it will be read and appreciated. This is much different than the sites that list content for people to search through like a file listing. The way that content is packaged is very much a part of what has an information or sales portal be effective.
What are your experiences? What sort of sales portals do you have? How did you gain user adoption? share your success stories by posting a comment!
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