Category

Enterprise demand generation

The Rubicon Agency
In Digital lead generation, Enterprise demand generation, Insights, Our industry, Strategic content, Thought leadership

AI visibility in B2B marketing is now a pipeline issue. Who owns it?

AI visibility in B2B marketing thumb

AI visibility in B2B marketing has stopped being a fringe SEO conversation and started behaving like a pipeline one. That shift is easy to miss if you are still treating AI tools as a shiny add-on to search, rather than a place where buyers now define problems, compare vendors and form preferences before they ever land on your site. Resonance’s ‘The New Rules of Visibility 2026’ research says the click is no longer the first signal of intent, and Forrester is now talking openly about a visibility vacuum in answer-engine-led buying journeys.

That sounds dramatic. It is.

Because once ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot or Perplexity starts framing the category for your buyer, you are no longer just competing for traffic. You are competing for interpretation. And if your positioning is muddy, fragmented or absent, AI will not politely wait for your homepage to clarify things later. It will fill in the gaps with whatever signals it can find.

AI visibility is changing where B2B intent begins

For years, B2B marketers were trained to think about early-stage intent in fragments: short queries, category searches, basic education, light-touch comparison. That model still exists, but it is losing its monopoly. Buyers are now asking answer engines to do the synthesis for them, collapsing what used to be a multi-step research process into one loaded question. Forrester describes this as richer, more contextual research happening off-site, often without the behavioural signals marketers used to rely on.

AI prompt screen

What is AI visibility in B2B marketing?

AI visibility in B2B marketing is the extent to which your brand is surfaced, cited and described accurately in AI-generated answers during buyer research. It is not just about appearing in results, it is about being framed correctly when buyers ask category, comparison and recommendation questions.

The difference is not cosmetic. A prompt like ‘Which cloud security platforms are best for regulated enterprises and why?’ is doing far more work than ‘cloud security platform’. It defines the problem, narrows the field and applies buying criteria in one move. By the time the buyer clicks anything, a shortlist may already exist.

That is why this is bigger than a new acronym. Call it AI visibility, AI search visibility, answer engine optimisation or GEO if you like. The terminology is still wobbling around like a shopping trolley with one bad wheel. The underlying issue is much clearer: discovery has moved upstream and outward.

The real problem is not awareness, it’s invisible influence

Resonance found that 81% of B2B marketing leaders see AI visibility as a blind spot, while only 10% can connect it to revenue. That tracks with what many teams are experiencing: they know something has shifted, but the evidence shows up late. It appears in deal velocity, shortlist quality, category fit and the strange sensation that prospects already know what you are before your sales team has said a word.

This is where the conversation gets uncomfortable. Marketers like channels they can count. AI-led discovery is messier. It often influences preference without sending a click, and it can reinforce the wrong narrative at scale if your market signals are inconsistent.

That second risk matters more than many teams realise. Poor visibility is one problem. Mispositioned visibility is worse. If AI repeatedly places you in the wrong peer group, describes your category inaccurately or pulls outdated proof points into current answers, it does not just reduce awareness. It actively distorts demand.

How is AI changing the B2B buyer journey?

AI is changing the B2B buyer journey by compressing research stages that used to happen separately. Buyers now ask answer engines to define the problem, compare options and suggest likely fits in one step, which means preference can form before website visits, form fills or measurable search clicks occur.

This is exactly why Rubicon’s own capability pages around digital services and enterprise demand generation are relevant here. If discovery is now shaped before the visit, then digital visibility and demand quality are no longer sequential disciplines. They are entangled.

Couple looking at AI analytics

Why AI visibility is hard to measure, and easy to misread

Some of the industry response to this shift has been predictable. New tools, new dashboards, new promises, and of course a fresh crop of tactical folklore. The risk is that teams mistake monitorability for control. Tracking mentions across answer engines is useful, but it is not the same as understanding commercial influence.

Forrester’s argument is sharper than that. The problem is not merely falling traffic, it is the loss of visibility into buyer questions, behaviour and intent. When buyers do arrive, they may actually be better qualified, because AI has already done part of the sorting. That sounds positive, and in some ways it is, but it also means your old attribution habits can understate what shaped the opportunity in the first place.

Why is AI visibility hard to measure?

AI visibility is hard to measure because much of its influence happens off-site, before a visit, click or tracked conversion. It tends to show up downstream in higher-intent sessions, better shortlist alignment or faster sales conversations, which makes direct attribution patchy and easy to underestimate.

That is why a pure search lens is too narrow. AI visibility touches traffic, yes, but also proposition clarity, thought leadership, third-party authority, comparison content and the operational handoff between marketing and revenue teams.

AI visibility cannot live inside SEO alone

This is the part many organisations are avoiding. AI visibility sits awkwardly between SEO, content, PR, brand, demand gen and RevOps, which means it often sits nowhere with any real authority. Everyone can see a piece of it. Very few teams own the whole problem.

That is a governance failure, not a tooling one.

If your proposition is weak, no prompt tactic will save it. If your category story is scattered across pages, decks and thought leadership with no shared spine, answer engines will surface that confusion back to the market. AI does not invent your narrative from scratch. It industrialises the one you have already left lying around.

Who should own AI visibility inside a B2B organisation?

AI visibility should have a clear strategic owner, but not a siloed one. In practice, the strongest model is a shared commercial KPI led by senior marketing leadership, with execution spanning SEO, content, proposition, brand, PR and RevOps so accuracy, authority and measurement stay aligned.

Not everyone agrees. Some will argue this is simply SEO with a fashionable haircut. That is too reductive. SEO still matters, obviously, but AI visibility is also shaped by how well your brand is understood, how consistently your claims are evidenced and whether your market position can survive summarisation. That is a broader strategic brief.

The smart response is not prompt hacks, it’s operational discipline

There will be no shortage of vendors selling magic beans here. Some already are. The Verge recently reported on increasingly aggressive attempts to influence AI responses through engineered content and biased listicles. That should tell you two things. First, the market knows this shift is real. Second, low-grade manipulation will become the fastest way to poison trust in the channel.

The better response is less glamorous and more useful. Get clear on what you want to be known for. Make sure your category, comparisons and proof points are consistent across your site and external footprint. Build strategic content that helps answer engines understand not just what you sell, but where you fit and why that fit matters. Then measure AI visibility against downstream commercial indicators, not vanity screenshots.

In Rubicon terms, this is closer to a strategic content and market-shaping challenge than a technical parlour trick.

Winning AI team

The teams that win will treat AI visibility as a commercial capability

The obvious temptation is to treat AI visibility as another channel to optimise. That framing is too small. What is actually emerging is a new discovery layer, one that shapes market understanding before the first measurable hand-raise.

The teams that move fastest will not be the ones chasing the newest prompt superstition. They will be the ones that sort out ownership, tighten narrative control and connect visibility to pipeline with grown-up discipline. Everyone else risks letting answer engines quietly rewrite how they are bought.

That would be an expensive thing to discover after the quarter closes.

By The Rubicon Agency

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The Rubicon Agency
In Enterprise demand generation, Insights, Our industry, Strategic content, Thought leadership

Does AI content rank? Yes. But that is no longer the point

Does AI content rank thumb

Last week, MarTech covered Semrush’s new study on whether AI content ranks well in search, and the headline was about as surprising as rain in Manchester: yes, it can. Google is not automatically punishing AI-written content, and content quality still determines outcomes. Useful, clear, relevant pages can perform whether a human drafted every line or not.

That should calm one debate and intensify another.

Because if AI content can rank, then ‘can it get on the page?’ is no longer the interesting question. The more uncomfortable one is what happens when everyone can produce search-competent material at scale, with decent grammar, clean structure and just enough surface-level usefulness to pass as good.

The answer is not hard to see. More output. Less distinction. More polish. Less real conviction. Search fills up with content that reads perfectly well and leaves almost no mark. It ranks, it nods politely at intent, then it vanishes into the wallpaper.

Does AI content rank, and why the answer is too easy

SEMrush analysed 42,000 blog posts and found that AI content is not inherently blocked from ranking. MarTech’s summary of the study landed on the right conclusion: search engines are evaluating AI-assisted pages the same way they evaluate any other page, by usefulness, relevance and clarity.

Google rank performance

Does AI content rank on Google?

Yes, AI content can rank on Google if it is useful, relevant and clear. The method of production is not the deciding factor. The stronger question is whether the content adds enough original value to compete once many other brands can now publish similarly competent material at speed.

That distinction matters. Ranking has always been a means, not an outcome. Yet AI has made it temptingly easy to confuse technical eligibility with commercial effectiveness. A page that lands on page one but says what fifty other pages already say has achieved something, certainly. It just may not have achieved anything you can take to a revenue meeting with a straight face.

Google does not care who wrote it, it cares whether it helps

Google’s own guidance has been consistent on this point. Generative AI can help with research and structure, but content created primarily to manipulate rankings or mass-produce low-value pages risks falling into scaled content abuse. Google’s ranking systems prioritise helpful, reliable, people-first content, not content that exists merely because a workflow made it cheap to generate.

Does Google penalise AI-generated content?

No, Google does not automatically penalise content just because AI helped create it. What it does warn against is scaled content abuse, where content is mass-produced mainly to manipulate rankings rather than help users. Quality, originality and value still do the heavy lifting.

That is the policy answer. It is also the easy answer.

The harder truth is that search quality and market quality are not always the same thing. A page can be good enough for Google’s systems and still be strategically forgettable. It can satisfy the machine’s threshold for usefulness while doing very little to make a buyer trust you, remember you or choose you.

The real problem is not ranking, it is resemblance

This is where the current AI content conversation remains oddly timid. Much of the trade coverage still circles the compliance question, as though the main issue were whether AI content is allowed into the building. It is. The more pressing issue is what it looks like once everybody gets inside.

AI is very good at improving grammar, smoothing structure and producing broadly acceptable answers. It is much less reliable at generating sharp judgement, first-hand experience or the sort of commercial tension that makes a reader stop and think, ‘Fine, these people actually have a point.’ Left alone, it tends to average things out.

Sensible. Balanced. Safe. Magnolia messaging, to apply a term coined by The Rubicon Agency. Safe enough to offend no one, and persuasive enough to move almost no one.

Why does AI content still fail even when it ranks?

AI content often fails after ranking because visibility is not the same as differentiation. Many AI-assisted pages are readable and technically relevant, but too generic to persuade, be remembered or shape preference. They meet the brief for search while missing the brief for actual market impact.

That is not a small problem. In B2B technology especially, where buyers face complicated choices and long sales cycles, content must do more than answer the query in front of it. It needs to signal judgement. It needs to show that someone behind the brand understands the category, the stakes and the trade-offs. Otherwise, you are just another competent voice in a queue of competent voices.

The Rubicon Agency is already on the record arguing against vague, vacuous content and in favour of more distinctive, proposition-led thinking. We’re not inventing a new belief here – it’s extending an existing one into the AI era.

In the ‘Sea of Sameness’, point of view becomes an advantage

There is a mild irony here. AI lowers the cost of producing decent content, which means decency itself becomes less valuable. The commodity becomes the baseline. What gets expensive again is not production, but perspective.

That does not mean every blog post needs to be a manifesto. Some queries deserve straightforward answers. Some pages should simply help. But even practical content benefits from specifics, original framing and evidence that a human mind has actually interrogated the material rather than merely rearranged it. Real examples. Clear trade-offs. A sentence or two that sounds like it could only have come from this company, not from any company that subscribed to the same model last Tuesday.

The Rubicon Agency already has a useful framing device for this in The Content Spectrum, which positions content according to buyer need, product maturity and sales stage rather than pretending every asset has the same job. That thinking becomes even more relevant now. AI may be good at generating a competent middle. It is much less dependable at deciding when a piece should provoke, reassure, reframe or sell.

person stands out from the crowd

How should brands use AI content without sounding the same as everyone else?

Brands should use AI for acceleration, not authorship by default. Let it help with research, structure and draft momentum, then add what models usually flatten out: clear judgement, first-hand insight, sharper examples, stronger voice and a point of view that reflects the brand rather than the average of the internet.

The commercial point is simple. Search performance still matters. So does efficiency. But if AI makes it easier for everyone to publish acceptable content, acceptable becomes a weak ambition. The brands that win will not be the ones producing the most polished neutrality. They will be the ones that decide what they actually want to say, then say it clearly enough that a buyer remembers who said it.

The winners will use AI for speed, then spend the saved time on judgement

AI content can rank. That debate is settling. Good.

Now for the more useful one.

If production gets faster, where does the saved effort go? Into more volume, more templates and more faintly competent pages that all smell the same? Or into better judgement, tougher editing and stronger ideas that are actually worth surfacing in search? Google’s guidance gives you the minimum standard. The market will demand more than that.

That is where the opportunity sits. Use AI to remove drudgery. Then spend the reclaimed time on the bits that still resist automation: deciding what matters, what is true, what is commercially at stake and what your brand is prepared to stand for in public. If that sounds less scalable than pressing ‘generate’, that is because it is. It is also where the advantage still lives.

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The Rubicon Agency
In Corporate comms, Enterprise demand generation, Programme planning

Is instigating a salesforce feeding frenzy so last season?

Salesforce feeding frenzy blog header

How the rules of engagement are changing.

It’s often alluded that sales teams are ‘coin operated’ and the single biggest motivator are pound/dollar signs. Although this is a very large brush to tar all tech sales teams with, there are clear advantages for marketers who have a very single-minded sales arm that they need to motivate or influence. But the question that has to be asked is, are these types of initiatives past their sell by date with the movement away from volume product sales?

SPIF (Sales Promotion Incentive Fund) campaigns have been traditionally used as a catalyst to boost a specific product, solution or service either to hit end of quarter/year sales targets or to provide stimulated demand for a new offering. Now that buyer sprawl has permeated outside the IT function into other business units such as marketing and HR, and conscious efforts have been made to sell into the boardroom, are product pushes now becoming constrained to traditional IT buyers?

Well in the purest sense, yes. In order to push through last minute deals requires a number of proverbial stars to align:

Product knowledge: The buyer needs to be up-to-speed with the technology and how it can impact the business. Lack of understanding or a more complex offering will increase lead times, size of decision maker groups and will ultimately not be suitable for a SPIF type campaign.

Imminent need: Technology purchases aren’t an impulse buy. The product, solution or service needs to already be on the radar of the prospect and preferably the vendor in question is already on the shortlist for a proposal.

Low risk: This ties into the above 2 points. Large scale, large ticket, transformative solutions are just too risk-laden to be purchased on a whim. Sure, they can tie into a longer term incentive programme but not in the ‘stack ‘em high, sell ‘em cheap’ mould of quarterly incentive schemes.

Funding: Budget cycles may be preventative to purchase so flexible funding or an Opex led model may be required to close the deal when funds aren’t readily available. If this isn’t an option then don’t be surprised if the deal falls flat.
So, if this technique has a captive audience, the traditional SPIF model needs to be re-engineered to reward sales teams that push technology solutions with longer lead times, more diverse and elevated decision maker groups which also have larger associated price tags. As we know figures and pipeline drive sales teams so instigating a programme of this nature needs to encapsulate a number of hooks to ensure buy-in. Failure to do so will result in an unengaged and unmotivated salesforce that defaults back to box pushing.

Accountability

Attribution modelling now allows complete visibility of the sales pipeline and the relevant touch point the prospect has received on along the way. By implementing such a transparent pipeline allows sales teams to be compensated even when lead times span over several quarters.

Short-term reward vs long-term pay-off

Like football managers, sales people are judged on results. Failure to meet quotas or quarterly benchmarks can be detrimental to their job prospects. Being able to change mindsets and focus from quick sales wins to longer term account penetration is no easy feat. But, if positioned correctly and sales teams adopt the vision then the rewards can prove plentiful and frequent.

Championing success

Recognition can be a potent tool on a number of levels. Kudos amongst peers shouldn’t be underestimated, by positioning members of the organisation as sales champions not only demonstrates campaign success, it also embeds a sense of aspiration coupled with a dose of healthy competition amongst co-workers “if they can achieve this then so can I”.

Ownership

Unlike selling point products to IT (with limited emotional attachment associated to them), the boardroom is completely different sales environment altogether. Being able to talk the language of business can deepen relationships, further embed the tech vendor into the organisation and open the door to future opportunities. The golden goose scenario is one where sales teams aspire to be, so once they have a foot in the door ensuring ownership and involvement is paramount.

To understand how to maximise the effectiveness of your internal sales programmes talk to The Rubicon Agency and see how sales enablement can be tailored to your organisation.

The Rubicon Agency
In Enterprise demand generation, Marketing resources, Sales enablement

The tech case study compromise

The tech case study compromise blog header

One content asset that frequently creates frustration for technology marketers is the case study. Often, efforts to pull together real-world examples of use cases are hampered by a number of challenges.

So, why do marketers need case studies and why is it worth overcoming the challenges to make them happen? Case studies can be ‘killer’ content for tech marketers. For sceptical business and technical decision makers they provide the evidence that backs up sales and marketing claims. For sales teams, case studies make great anecdotal material for customer conversations. For some marketers, they can even form the basis of campaigns. And when you can turn a case study into a video, you have an asset that can reach a wide audience again and again.

Amongst other marketing advantages, the case study can be a powerful objection handler but ironically it often fails to materialise because of objections from customers, brand and legal departments or even sales executives.

Possible barriers to toasting your success

Of course, some objections can be valid: it’s too soon after project delivery; results data needs substantiation; the original decision maker has moved on. However, some obstacles to case study production can and should be overcome. For example, schedule an agreed date to complete a case study when the project has matured but lay down the basics in a draft case study with the customer now. If data needs substantiation then leverage the idea that empirical evidence on improvements and benefits are of equal importance to the customer. If the original decision maker has moved on it’s likely that other advocates can be found from the original influencing and decision making group. After all, few technology purchases are attributable to just one person.

Brand and legal guardians on the customer side can also object to case studies but the onus has to be on them to explain their reasons or at least identify the appropriate terms and conditions of the supplier/customer relationship or agreement. It may also be worth a little desktop research into any infringements by other companies that may help to bolster your case.

Whilst case studies can be valuable to marketers, if politics or practicalities preclude their publication, there are some potential get-arounds. These include the more obvious ‘anonymising’ of the customer and careful editing of content that can risk identifying the customer.

Case studies can be difficult to conjure up on demand so the creation of a structured customer advocacy programme with mutual benefits can provide a more strategic and workable solution. Alternatively, a vertical industry case study compiled from a number of anonymous customer examples can be a more tactical solution if time is not on your side.

Even a slightly compromised case study can be better than no case study.

Take a look at our quick guide to discover how content can be more ‘killer’ and less ‘filler’.

The Rubicon Agency
In Digital lead generation, Enterprise demand generation, Marketing resources, Proposition development

Vanilla technology videos

Vanilla technology videos blog header

As a marketing content asset, video can be uniquely powerful and effective. But don’t assume the medium will compensate for deficiencies in the message.

If the plot is thin, the characters are wooden, or the ending is disappointing, your investment in a video production could fail to see a decent return at the marketing box office.

Think of the technology marketing video like a film genre and you can begin to see how best to approach production. As a genre it may not have the mass audience and populist appeal of a romantic comedy or a sci-fi blockbuster but it can follow some similar basic rules for success.

Analyse almost any movie you’ve seen and you’ll realise there’s a tried and tested method to the plot. It begins with establishing ‘normality’ for a single protagonist or a group of people before introducing an event or situation with the potential to change the norm and present the main character with a challenge. From there, we see a journey through events and encounters (with twists and turns for added interest) and finally a resolution which usually changes one or more of the characters and/or their world.

So, how does this have any relevance to a video for a Wide Area Network solution or a cyber security portfolio? Well firstly, characters and protagonists are involved- in the form of business and technical decision makers. These are the people who are about to be presented with a challenge to their ‘norm’. The challenge arises from whatever is being marketed. The plot continues with twists and turns usually in the form of user scenarios, product or solution comparisons, testimonials and cameo appearances from experts. And finally, resolution is offered in the form of a call to action.

Of course, all of this is simply a playful way to say that the plot is critical to any technology marketing video. And without the right content and contributions to support the plot, you can end up with the equivalent of an arthouse movie playing to an empty house.

With a good plot, and production values that don’t try to create Star Wars from a Blair Witch budget, the technology marketing video can educate, motivate and activate influencers and decision makers with an immediacy and clarity that can often be difficult to achieve with other marketing content assets.

And..cut!

Take a look at our quick guide to discover how content can be more ‘killer’ and less ‘filler’.

The Rubicon Agency
In Digital lead generation, Enterprise demand generation, Marketing resources, Thought leadership

White paper: white noise?

White paper: white noise - blog header

The white paper has taken on a ‘grey’ hue since it was first introduced by Winston Churchill in 1922. Apparently, business is to blame - with marketers extending its original remit whilst adding it to a growing armoury of content assets.

Technology marketing can gain real advantages from including a white paper within an integrated campaign or programme. As a content asset, it can fulfil a unique role but only if some basic rules are followed in order to avoid the white paper simply becoming ‘white noise’.

A white paper shouldn’t be a product pitch. Neither should it try to combine the detailed product information of a backgrounder with an industry-wide perspective or thought leadership. It has to be authoritative – with facts, figures, examples, comparisons and quotes.

White papers should be found at the academic end of the marketing content library with a high degree of expertise backed by solid research and fully documented with references. If that means they can be a little bit ‘boring’, requiring two or three reads to fully understand, that usually means the balance is right.

Getting the quality and balance right requires time, especially when you factor in technical, legal and brand approval. Breadth and depth is essential, and anything less than six pages could be deemed lightweight. Tight deadlines and white papers aren’t a good combination but they can be afforded longer lead times if the need is identified early enough in campaign planning and they’re offered as a downloadable fulfilment piece later in the delivery schedule.

White papers perform a unique role in establishing credibility, trust and preference when they help to clarify an issue, solve a problem or help to guide a decision. And as downloaders are usually further into the customer buying cycle, they can be positioned at a critical point in the sales funnel.

Take a look at our quick guide to discover how content can be more ‘killer’ and less ‘filler’.

The Rubicon Agency
In Enterprise demand generation, Marketing resources, Sales enablement

Unenabled sales delivery

Unenabled Sales Delivery blog header

The road to sales nirvana is often a bumpy one. Punctuated with budgetary roadblocks and the occasional RFP speedbump means that coaxing prospects into a sale can prove problematic.

Once these obstacles have been successfully negotiated, sales teams are responsible for steering prospects in the direction of choosing their companies offering as opposed to the competitions. Enter the role of sales enablement materials.

A well-crafted sales toolkit can deepen relationships, increase order value and accelerate the purchase process of prospects. That said underprepared, underequipped and underwhelming sales enablement content can put stop a sale dead in its tracks.

Here we look at 8 common sales enablement mistakes that could side-swipe your best laid plans.

Speed limits apply

By default, there is an over-reliance on product content – the main thread relates to technical features with little/no business value for sales to latch on to. The sales presentation maybe about speeds but the journey towards closing the deal a slows to a crawl.

Roundabout ahead

Understanding of the product/solution is critical to any sales conversation. Lack of crisp articulation and differentiated description of what’s being sold – and to whom, means the conversation goes around in circles without any clear direction about where the technology could take you.

Risk of grounding

Armed with the trusty sales presentation, the pitch to the customer is bound to be ‘on the money’ but with little/no articulation of use cases or product visioning there is a real chance that the sale could end up beached.

Warning low bridge

Lack of aspirational and or business messaging for ‘those upstairs’ could result in your pitch hitting a glass ceiling in terms of value, buy in and ultimately funding which could put the sale in jeopardy.

Dead end

Talking with the product blinkers on could close the sale of point products but failure to express the inherit value of solution within whole portfolio could limit the length of journey you take with the prospect.

Diversion in place

Having a clear engagement roadmap to enables sales teams to structure content depending on the level of relationship with the prospect. Failure to do so will result in unexpected or unwanted diversions out of their comfort zone with irrelevant or premature solicitation of content.

Queue caution

Doing nothing isn’t an option although limited or staccato outreach, conversation and ‘by the way’ communication to prospects may cause the sale to hit a proverbial traffic jam, or worse still take an alternative route with one of your competitors.

No U-turns

Sale opportunities often mature organically, although failing to bridge the messaging gap between your sales conversations and existing/relevant thought leadership material when the opportunity arises could be a missed trick. As the nurture process continues there is no time to throw the conversation into reverse in an attempt to help bolster your credentials.

Take a look at our quick guide to discover how content can be more ‘killer’ and less ‘filler’.

The Rubicon Agency
In Enterprise demand generation, Event & experiential marketing, Marketing resources, Partner marketing, Proposition development, Sales enablement

When the corporate deck is a wreck

When the corporate deck is a wreck

Amongst the many manifestations of content for a technology business there is one asset that can evoke a range of emotions - from frustration to fear.

If content is king, surely the corporate deck should be the jewel in the crown for the field marketing or sales enablement professional. However, more often than not, that jewel simply fails to sparkle. Worse still, it can often be consigned to the equivalent of a ceremonial curiosity cabinet where it gathers dust and rarely sees the light of day – along with a pile of other unused corporate presentations and presenters intended to inspire customers and partners.

On occasions when the corporate deck is revealed by obedient courtiers it tends to be announced with an air of apology. And once revealed to a waiting audience it runs the risk of someone from the assembled crowd exclaiming ‘the king has no clothes!’

The imperative for sales enablement and field marketing

It may sound like a fairy tale but for many technology field marketing and sales professionals the corporate presentation presents a very real challenge. We’ll refer to it as ‘the deck’ because that’s the most common form that it continues to take.

Frequently the problem can be characterised as simply ‘too many hands on deck’. That’s understandable when it’s meant to represent the sum of the parts that a technology company can offer- which means a range of stakeholders find themselves involved in contributing to the content. That can lead to a patchwork assembly that lacks cohesiveness or balance between business propositions and the technicalities of the portfolio. The sales enablement solution requires a level of objectivity that’s unlikely to be found amongst the stakeholders and can’t simply be imposed by the CEO (assuming they are involved).

The solution also requires a hybrid set of skills that blend field marketer experience and sales support mindset with brand sensibilities, in-depth technology knowledge, content expertise and even political astuteness. Together, that can add up to seeking help from a specialist agency with experience in tech sales presenters and marketing presentations.

And as a final thought: in a world where content segmentation is so much easier to achieve perhaps the ambitions of the corporate deck are outdated as it often tries to be all things to all people. Another aspect that a specialist agency can help with.

Take a look at our quick guide to discover how content can be more ‘killer’ and less ‘filler’.