If you’re tired of guessing which sales decks actually work, you’re not alone. Sales leaders, marketers, and reps all want the same thing: proof their content makes a difference. This guide is for anyone who needs to measure, prove, and—most importantly—improve sales content performance. We’ll focus on practical steps, honest pros and cons, and what you can safely ignore.
Let’s get into how to use Buyerdeck to actually move the needle with your sales materials.
Why Even Bother Measuring Sales Content?
Before you spend time setting up another tool, get clear on what you want out of it. Here’s the simple truth: most sales teams have no idea which collateral helps close deals and which is just noise. If you’re sharing slide decks, PDFs, or product one-pagers and hoping for the best, you’re basically flying blind.
What can measuring content actually help with? - Stop wasting time on stuff nobody reads. - Double down on collateral that gets shared and read by decision-makers. - Give sales reps hard data to back up (or challenge) their gut feelings. - Make marketing look like heroes by proving their work leads to real results.
But don’t expect magic. No tool will tell you exactly why a deal closed, but you can get a lot closer to knowing what helped.
Step 1: Set Up Buyerdeck the Right Way
You can’t measure what you haven’t organized. Here’s how to get the basics right:
1.1. Centralize Your Content
Put all your sales decks, case studies, PDFs, and leave-behinds in Buyerdeck. Don’t cherry-pick—if reps use it, upload it.
Pro tip: Don’t let reps keep rogue versions on their desktops. If it’s not in Buyerdeck, you won’t see what’s working.
1.2. Map Content to Stages
Assign each piece of collateral to a sales stage or use case. This will help you later when you want to know, for example, if your “Why Us” deck actually moves deals from consideration to proposal.
- Use whatever pipeline stages make sense for your team.
- If you don’t know, start simple: “Awareness,” “Consideration,” “Decision.”
1.3. Connect to Your CRM
If Buyerdeck offers CRM integration (it does for most major platforms), connect it early. This lets you tie content engagement to actual deals, not just clicks and views.
Reality check: Integrations are rarely seamless. Plan for a few hours of setup and some IT back-and-forth.
Step 2: Share Content Through Buyerdeck, Not Email Attachments
If your reps keep sending files as email attachments, you’ll never get good data. Make it clear: all sales content goes out as Buyerdeck links.
- Every share gets tracked: who viewed it, when, and for how long.
- You can see if a deck was passed around internally or ignored.
What not to worry about: Don’t obsess over 100% compliance. You’ll always have a few holdouts, but the more reps send content through Buyerdeck, the better your numbers will be.
Step 3: Track the Metrics That Actually Matter
Buyerdeck spits out a lot of data. Focus on what counts:
3.1. Buyer Engagement
- Views: Did they open it? If not, your email might need work.
- Time spent: Did they skim for 10 seconds or stick around?
- Pages viewed: Which slides or sections get the most attention? Which get skipped?
3.2. Sharing & Forwarding
- Did your contact share the link with others? If so, you’re probably reaching more stakeholders.
3.3. Deal Correlation
- Are deals where content was viewed moving forward faster?
- Which pieces show up most in closed/won opportunities?
Ignore: Vanity metrics like “number of downloads” or “email opens” that don’t tie back to actual buyer behavior.
Step 4: Review and Interpret the Data (Without Fooling Yourself)
Here’s where a lot of teams go wrong—they drown in dashboards and never take action. Here’s a simple way to get insights that matter:
4.1. Look for Patterns, Not One-Offs
If one deck gets lots of views in a single deal, that’s nice—but not meaningful. You want to see patterns over multiple deals.
- Which decks consistently get shared with more than one stakeholder?
- Are there slides everyone skips? Maybe they’re not needed.
4.2. Talk to the Sales Team
Don’t just trust the numbers. Ask reps what they see on the ground. Sometimes a deck gets a lot of views because it’s confusing, not because it’s persuasive.
Reality check: Data tells you what happened, not why. Use it to start conversations, not end them.
4.3. Tie Content to Real Outcomes
The gold standard: find out if deals where a certain piece of content was viewed are more likely to close, or close faster. It’s not always a straight line, but over time, patterns emerge.
Step 5: Improve Your Content—Don’t Just Admire the Data
All the tracking in the world is useless unless you change something. Here’s how to use what you’ve learned:
5.1. Kill or Fix Underperforming Content
- If a deck never gets viewed, or always gets skipped, archive it.
- If one section is always ignored, cut or rework it.
5.2. Double Down on What Works
- If a one-pager gets shared in every closed/won deal, make sure every rep knows about it.
- Consider creating variants for different buyer types if you spot clear patterns.
5.3. Test and Iterate
- Treat your sales decks like landing pages—try new formats, headlines, or order of slides. See what changes the numbers.
- Don’t change everything at once. Small tweaks are easier to track.
Pro tip: Don’t get caught in endless “optimization.” Sometimes “good enough” content is fine if it’s doing the job.
What Works, What Doesn’t, and What to Ignore
What Works
- Centralizing content: One source of truth beats endless versions floating in email threads.
- Tying engagement to deals: Use real data to inform content strategy, not guesswork.
- Regular reviews: Block time monthly or quarterly to look at the numbers and make decisions.
What Doesn’t
- Obsessing over every metric: Most of the data is noise—focus on real buyer engagement and deal impact.
- Assuming views = interest: Sometimes buyers open content out of obligation or curiosity, not intent.
What to Ignore
- One-off anecdotes: “This deck closed a $1M deal!”—maybe, but was it the content or the rep?
- Surface-level sharing metrics: Just because something got a lot of clicks doesn’t mean it moved the needle.
Common Pitfalls (and How to Dodge Them)
- Overcomplicating setup: You don’t need a perfect taxonomy to start. Get your main decks in, map them loosely, and refine later.
- Lack of buy-in from reps: If they don’t use Buyerdeck, you get junk data. Show them how it helps their pipeline, not just “for reporting.”
- Analysis paralysis: Too many dashboards, not enough action. Schedule time for a quick review and move on.
Keep It Simple—And Iterate
Measuring sales content performance isn’t rocket science—but it does take discipline. Start by centralizing your decks, get reps sharing through Buyerdeck, track what matters, and use the findings to prune and improve. Don’t chase perfection. Small, steady tweaks beat grand, complicated plans.
Bottom line: Most sales teams are still guessing. With a tool like Buyerdeck, you don’t have to. Use the data, keep your process simple, and keep improving as you go. That’s how you turn sales content from a nice-to-have into a real driver of results.