Sales collateral is dying. Not because it’s useless, but because most of it is terrible.
Your sales team has folders of PDFs nobody opens. Decks that haven’t been updated since 2023. Case studies written in corporate speak that put buyers to sleep. And somehow, marketing keeps producing more of it.
Meanwhile, 65% of content created for sales goes completely unused, according to Forrester. That’s not a workflow problem-that’s a relevance problem.
In 2026, buyers don’t want your brochure. They want proof you understand their world. They’re doing 19% more research, involving 27% more people in decisions, and they’re allergic to generic sales pitches.
So what sales collateral actually drives revenue? Not the stuff collecting dust in your Google Drive.
Why most sales collateral fails
Let’s talk about what’s broken first.
Your marketing team creates collateral based on what they think buyers need. Your sales team ignores it because it doesn’t match real conversations. Buyers never see it because your reps default to forwarding random PDFs and pasting bullets into Gmail.
The disconnect is everywhere.
The accessibility problem
Your rep is on a call with a prospect asking about security compliance. They know there’s a document somewhere. But where? Was it in Slack? Google Drive? That Notion page someone made six months ago?
By the time they find it, the call’s over and the moment passed.
When sales collateral is buried across five different systems, it might as well not exist. Your reps will either waste time hunting for it or just wing the conversation. Neither option helps close deals.
The relevance problem
Most collateral treats every buyer the same. One deck for everyone. One case study. One whitepaper that tries to appeal to technical buyers, economic buyers, and end users all at once.
That’s not how buying committees work. The CTO cares about architecture. The CFO wants ROI numbers. The VP of Operations needs to know about implementation timelines. Sending them all the same generic pitch deck is lazy.
But here’s the thing-creating persona-specific collateral is hard. So marketing sticks with generic, and deals stall because nobody’s getting the information they actually need.
The measurement problem
How do you know if your collateral works? Most teams don’t.
They track vanity metrics like “downloads” or “views.” But what does that tell you? Someone opened a PDF once doesn’t mean it helped close a deal.
Without real data-what content correlates with closed deals, which pieces prospects share internally, what gets read versus skimmed-you’re flying blind. And you’ll keep investing in materials that don’t move the needle.
What buyers actually want from sales collateral in 2026
Buyers changed. Your collateral probably didn’t.
In 2026, nearly one-third of buyers view genAI tools as meaningful when making purchase decisions. That’s almost double who say the same about talking to product experts.
Think about what that means. Buyers trust AI to help them research and make decisions. They’re not waiting for your sales pitch-they’re already 70% through their buying journey before they ever talk to you.
So what do they need from your collateral?
Validation, not persuasion
Buyers don’t need you to convince them they have a problem. They already know. What they need is proof that your solution actually works.
That means third-party validation matters more than your marketing copy ever will. Analyst reports. Customer testimonials. Case studies with real numbers. Reviews. Anything that says “other people like you chose this and it worked.”
Content featuring third parties is inherently more credible than vendor-generated content, according to Gartner. Stop trying to be the hero of your own story. Let your customers tell it.
Context-specific information
Generic doesn’t cut it anymore. Buyers want collateral that speaks to their specific situation.
If you sell to healthcare, they want healthcare case studies. If they’re a 200-person company, they don’t care about your enterprise customer success stories. If they’re evaluating your product for a specific use case, they want content about that use case-not a tour of your entire platform.
This is where most companies fail. They create one master deck and try to use it everywhere. That’s efficient for marketing but useless for sales.
Self-service resources
Buyers don’t want to wait for your sales rep to send them information. They want answers now.
That means your collateral needs to be publicly accessible. Not gated behind forms. Not locked in your CRM. Available on your website for anyone researching you at 11 PM on a Tuesday.
Trust centers, technical documentation, pricing information, integration guides-all of it should be findable without filling out a form. When you gate everything, you’re not generating leads. You’re annoying people who are trying to evaluate you.
Sales collateral examples that actually drive revenue
Enough theory. Let’s talk about what works.
Not every piece of collateral serves the same purpose. Some build awareness. Some nurture consideration. Some close deals. The key is matching the right asset to the right stage.
1. Customer case studies (but make them good)
Everyone knows case studies work. But most case studies are terrible.
The bad ones read like press releases. “Company X implemented Solution Y and saw ‘significant improvements’ in ‘key metrics.'” That tells buyers nothing.
Good case studies are specific. They name the customer (when possible), explain the exact problem, detail the implementation process, share real numbers, and acknowledge what didn’t work smoothly.
71% of B2B researchers start with generic searches rather than looking for brands. That means when they find your case study, it needs to immediately answer: “Is this relevant to my situation?”
Format matters too. Not everyone wants to read a 10-page PDF. Create multiple versions: a two-page summary, a video interview with the customer, a detailed technical deep-dive for engineers evaluating you.
And for the love of everything, don’t bury case studies on a “Resources” page nobody visits. Put them everywhere. In your pitch decks, in follow-up emails, on product pages, in your sales rooms.
2. ROI calculators and business case templates
CFOs don’t care about your features. They care about numbers.
An ROI calculator lets them plug in their own data and see projected value. Even better-give them a business case template they can customize and present internally.
This isn’t just helpful for the buyer. It’s strategic for you. When a prospect builds a business case using your template, they’re more invested in your solution. They’ve already done the work to justify it internally.
The best ROI calculators are transparent about assumptions. Don’t hide the math. If buyers can see how you calculated savings, they’ll trust the output more.
And make them easy to access. No forms, no demos required. Just a public tool anyone can use.
PS: Lovable and Claude’s artifacts are great for these.
3. Battle cards and competitive comparisons
Your buyers are comparing you to competitors. You can either let competitors control that narrative, or you can shape it yourself.
Battle cards aren’t just for your sales team-create buyer-facing versions that honestly compare your solution to alternatives. Yes, honestly. If a competitor does something better, acknowledge it. Then explain why your approach matters more for the buyer’s specific use case.
Buyers appreciate transparency. They’re going to find competitor information anyway. Might as well be the one providing clear, credible comparisons.
Third-party comparison reports from analysts work even better. If Gartner or Forrester has compared your category, use that data. It carries more weight than anything you say about yourself.
4. Technical documentation and integration guides
For technical buyers-and there’s at least one in every B2B deal-documentation is sales collateral.
If your API docs are garbage, developers won’t trust your product. If your integration guides are vague, IT teams will assume implementation will be a nightmare.
Make your technical docs public and comprehensive. Detailed architecture diagrams. Step-by-step integration walkthroughs. Code samples. Video tutorials showing actual implementation.
This serves two purposes: It helps technical buyers evaluate you independently, and it reduces the “let me check with our technical team” delays that add weeks to sales cycles.
Companies like Stripe and Twilio built developer love partly through excellent documentation. Your technical collateral is a competitive advantage if you do it well.
5. Trust and compliance documentation
In 2026, compliance and security aren’t nice-to-haves. They’re dealbreakers.
19% of buyers using genAI for purchasing feel less confident in decisions due to inaccurate information. Trust is fragile, and data security concerns are everywhere.
Create a dedicated trust center on your website with: your security certifications, compliance documentation, privacy policies explained in plain language, incident response procedures, and third-party audit reports.
Make it public. Don’t make prospects request this information through sales. Security and compliance officers are part of buying committees now, and they’re evaluating you early. If they can’t find what they need quickly, you’re out.
6. Product demos and recorded walkthroughs
Live demos are great, but they require coordination, scheduling, and someone’s time. Recorded demos let prospects evaluate you on their own schedule.
The best product demo videos aren’t feature tours. They’re use-case specific. “How to use [Product] for [Specific Problem]” performs better than “Complete Product Walkthrough.”
Create multiple demo videos for different personas and use cases. Let technical buyers see the platform depth. Let business buyers see the workflow improvements. Let end users see the actual user experience.
And keep them short. Nobody’s watching a 45-minute demo video. Break it into 3-5 minute segments focused on specific capabilities.
7. One-pagers and leave-behinds
Sometimes simple is better. A well-designed one-pager that summarizes your value prop, key benefits, and how you’re different can be more useful than a 50-slide deck.
One-pagers work because they’re shareable. A buyer can forward it to their team without asking them to review a massive presentation. They’re scannable-busy executives appreciate that.
Create role-specific one-pagers. One for CFOs focused on financial impact. One for CIOs focused on technical architecture. One for VPs focused on operational efficiency.
And don’t gate them. Put them on your website as downloadable PDFs. No forms, no barriers.
8. Video testimonials
Written testimonials are fine. Video testimonials are powerful.
When a real customer talks on camera about results they achieved, it’s harder to dismiss than a quoted blurb on your website. Buyers can see facial expressions, hear tone, judge authenticity.
56% of consumers believe testimonials help them decide, and two out of three are more likely to purchase after seeing video testimonials.
Keep them short and specific. “This product is great” means nothing. “We reduced costs by 40% in the first six months” is concrete.
And interview customers who look like your prospects. If you sell to enterprise, feature enterprise customers. If you sell to startups, feature startups. Relevance matters.
How to organize sales collateral so it actually gets used
Creating good collateral is half the battle. The other half is making sure your team can find and use it.
Most companies fail here. They create amazing assets and then bury them in folder hierarchies nobody understands.
Sales rooms and digital deal spaces
The old model: email prospects a bunch of attachments and hope they open them.
The new model: create a digital deal room where everything lives in one place. Case studies, pricing, technical docs, recorded demos, next steps-all organized and trackable.
Tools like Dock and similar platforms let you bundle collateral into buyer-specific microsites. You can see what prospects view, what they share internally, and what they ignore.
This isn’t just convenient for buyers. It gives you visibility into engagement. When you know a prospect spent 10 minutes reviewing your security documentation, you can follow up intelligently.
CRM integration
If your collateral isn’t integrated with your CRM, your sales team won’t use it consistently.
The best sales enablement platforms connect directly to your CRM. Reps can access and share collateral without leaving their workflow. Marketing can see which assets correlate with closed deals. Everyone has visibility.
This also solves the version control problem. No more reps using outdated decks because they saved a local copy two years ago. Everyone always has the latest version.
Tagging and searchability
Your rep needs to find a case study about healthcare customers in the Northeast who implemented in under 60 days. Can your system surface that in five seconds?
If not, you have an organization problem.
Tag everything. By industry, company size, use case, buyer persona, deal stage-whatever makes sense for your sales process. Make search actually work. Natural language queries, filters, instant results.
If finding collateral takes longer than 30 seconds, reps will give up and improvise. And improvisation leads to inconsistent messaging.
The AI collateral question
Everyone’s talking about using AI to create sales collateral. Should you?
Carefully.
AI is great at first drafts, reformatting existing content, and creating variations at scale. It’s terrible at nuance, authentic voice, and anything requiring real customer insight.
Use AI to: create persona-specific variations of core messaging, reformat long-form content into different formats, generate first drafts for case studies (then heavily edit), and analyze which collateral performs best.
Don’t use AI to: replace real customer stories with fabricated ones, generate technical documentation without verification, create compliance or security content, or write anything where accuracy is critical.
The teams winning with AI are using it as an assistant, not a replacement. Human oversight still matters-especially when trust is on the line.
Measuring what actually matters
You can’t improve what you don’t measure. But most teams measure the wrong things.
Vanity metrics like downloads and views tell you almost nothing about revenue impact. What you should track:
Collateral-influenced deals – Which assets appear in deals that close? Track what content prospects engage with before converting. This tells you what’s actually working.
Engagement depth – Did someone download your PDF or actually read it? Time spent, pages viewed, sections expanded-these matter more than a single open.
Internal sharing – When prospects share your collateral with colleagues, that’s a strong buying signal. Track it.
Sales adoption – Are reps actually using the collateral you create? If adoption is low, either the content isn’t relevant or they can’t find it.
Time to close – Does certain collateral correlate with shorter sales cycles? Those are your high-value assets.
Stop celebrating “1000 whitepaper downloads” and start tracking “78% of closed deals engaged with this case study.” That’s the metric that matters.
Sales collateral is a revenue strategy, not a marketing project
Most companies treat collateral as a marketing deliverable. Create it, publish it, check the box, move on.
That’s backwards.
Sales collateral should be a continuous revenue strategy. You create assets based on real buyer needs, deploy them strategically throughout the sales process, measure what actually drives deals, iterate based on data, and retire what doesn’t work.
This requires collaboration between marketing, sales, enablement, and customer success. Everyone needs to contribute insights about what buyers are asking for and what’s actually closing deals.
In 2026, the companies winning on revenue have stopped treating sales collateral as an afterthought. They’ve built it into their GTM strategy from the ground up.
The buyers changed. The buying process changed. Your collateral needs to change too.
Because at the end of the day, collateral that doesn’t drive revenue isn’t collateral. It’s just content taking up space in your Google Drive.
