According to recent statistics, salespeople spend less than 30% of their work hours actually selling. In fact, they spend almost 20% of their time creating new sales content or searching for an old one.
Fortunately, platforms like Microsoft SharePoint help salespeople manage their content.
But is MicroSoft SharePoint the best for your sales collateral management?
SharePoint is a content repository that stores digital content in files and folders with little call-up support. This means that sales teams relying on these platforms must leave the platforms they are working in to manually find the content they need
In this review, we’ll explore Microsoft SharePoint's features and also highlight the top alternatives to Microsoft SharePoint.
What does Microsoft SharePoint do?
Microsoft SharePoint offers file storage, sharing, and content management with offline viewing and editing on Mac OS or any PC.
As a Microsoft product, SharePoint integrates with other Microsoft product suites, leveraging the features of other apps. For example, SharePoint and Microsoft Outlook integration would allow users to automate emails to notify team members when a new file is added or updated in Outlook.
Microsoft SharePoint vs Microsoft OneDrive
SharePoint and OneDrive are Microsoft products for collaborative document storage and management.
OneDrive focuses on simplicity in delivering file storage and sharing features. Its usage is straightforward, but the capabilities are limited, so it works best for personal file storage or small teams. If you want a shared storage repository for an entire organization, then OneDrive will fall short.
SharePoint is designed for more complex content management. It has more features and allows for collaboration across collaborative platforms. But both SharePoint and OneDrive have little call-up support and sales teams relying on these platforms must manually find the content they need when they need them.
Microsoft Sharepoint Review
Here’s a quick review of Microsoft SharePoint’s features, pros and cons, focusing on how it supports sales teams and sales performance.
Microsoft Sharepoint Features
- Customizable team sites: Streamline teamwork by collaborating with team members on team sites virtually on PCs, Macs, and mobile devices
- Home pages and portals: Sharepoint offers an intranet where you can share news updates and common resources with home sites and portals
- SharePoint lists and libraries: Create complex operational workflows from simple sites with SharePoint lists and libraries
- Search functionality: Discover information and insight with SharePoint’s search feature
- Integrations: Integrate with other Microsoft applications from Viva to Power Automate and Power apps
Microsoft Sharepoint Pros and Cons
Some of the benefits users enjoy from using SharePoint are:
- SharePoint has a mobile application for easy user access and flexible document management.
- Users can create complex operational workflows with SharePoint
- Seamless integration with Microsoft 365 product suite
However, based on SharePoint user reviews on G2, an independent app review website, there are some limitations of SharePoint, which include:
- Complex user interface
- Users have to tag and organize their content on SharePoint manually
- Ineffective for sales teams
- Some users experience difficulties when sharing information with people outside their organization
- Users still have to leave the apps they're working in to search for the documents they need on SharePoint
Sharepoint Reviews
According to user reviews on G2, an independent app review site, SharePoint users are impressed by its collaborative features and secure cloud storage. They also enjoy the accessibility and ease of finding information with SharePoint.
However, some users feel it is not user-friendly and can be unnecessarily confusing. Also, some users experience difficulty sharing files with people outside their organization, which may be a drawback for sales reps who mostly share collateral with prospects and buyers outside their organization.
The Bottom Line on Sharepoint
SharePoint can be a good option platform if you only want to securely store and share information across teams and maybe create portals and news sites for specific projects.
However, the Microsoft Sharepoint platform is more of a content repository than a Sales enablement platform, as sales teams still have to dig through multiple files and folders on SharePoint to find the content they need. Also, SharePoint doesn’t automatically tag and organize files once uploaded, so users have to manually tag files, which still takes extra time that salespeople could spend on actual selling.
Microsoft Sharepoint Alternatives
Let’s take a look at some Microsoft SharePoint alternatives for sales teams.
1. Spekit
Spekit is a just-in-time sales and revenue enablement platform that stands out for accelerating ramp up speed by surfacing bite-sized learning content for reps when they need it and right in the apps they are working in.
But Spekit doesn’t just increase ramp up speed, it also offers tools to enhance the entire sales process–from sales reps training to content creation, and prospecting.
Spekit powers sales content management, knowledge enablement, tools, and process adoption. Its AI sales tool, Spekit AI, generates sales content from scratch, from battle cards to call scripts and sales pitches. Spekit also has more than 100 pre-made sales templates for different sales collateral, making it easy for sales reps to create content that is always fresh and customized to prospects.
In addition to creating sales content, Spekit centralizes content storage with an organized knowledge base accessible to sales teams. This is helpful throughout each sales pipeline stage, from lead generation to closing the sale.
It also allows users to share content easily within and outside their organization with links and track recipients' engagement with the shared content. This way, sales reps get to see which content clients are more interested in and focus on the service and offerings in that content during their pitch, increasing their chances of closing deals.
For businesses who want to complete sales rep training and onboarding in half the time but with optimal results, Spekit has a unique approach that involves reinforcing sales plays and playbooks and sharing training content with sales reps in bite-sized rather than lengthy documentation right in the apps that reps use.
Key Features:
- Spekit AI: Spekit AI instantly creates sales content from scratch in minutes, leaving more time for sales reps to focus on the actual selling
- Speks: Surface quick answers and bite-sized training content for reps in the tools they use with Speks
- SmartSend: SmartSend empowers reps with analytics on buyer engagement with the content they share with them
- Browser extension: Access and manage your Spekit Knowledge Base from anywhere with Spekit’s browser extension
- Spotlights: Share real-time updates with reps without disrupting the flow of work with Spekit’s Spotlights feature
- Knowledge checks: Enhance sales reps' retention rate with short in-app quizzes to track their performance and identify room for improvement
- Analytics: Access a knowledge checks dashboard with analytics to see how individual sales reps are engaging with training content and how effective the training is
- Knowledge base: Store and organize all your sales collateral in a central location with Spekit’s knowledge base
- Flows: Create no-code process walkthroughs with Flows by simply navigating through the flows you want to create and saving it
Enhance your sales performance with Spekit.
2. Confluence
Confluence is a knowledge management platform for sales enablement, developed by Atlassian that primarily offers knowledge management and collaboration features. It has sales and marketing content templates, from strategy plans to business status updates. Users can also access Atlassian analytics to build interactive, customizable dashboards with a low-to-no-code editor.
Key Features:
- Whiteboard feature with built-in Jira integrations for team brainstorming and collaboration
- Pages for editing, creating, and discussing the team’s work
- Knowledge base with advanced search and content tree
- Page versioning for tracking document history and comparing versions
3. Google Drive
Google Drive is one of the more popular cloud storage content management platforms. It is designed to provide users with simple file storage and sharing functionalities and integrates with Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides for content creation and storage. However, like Microsoft SharePoint, Google Drive is not a niche app designed for sales, so users don’t get anything more than secure file storage and sharing.
Key Features:
- Integration with Google Docs, Google Slides, and Google Sheets for content creation
- AI-powered search functionality
- Access to other products in the Google Workspace, such as Gmail, Meet, and Google Calendar
- Up to 2TB content storage (paid)
4. Dropbox Business
Dropbox Business is a content management platform that allows users to store and share large amounts of data. It has features to protect documents and track changes to them, including version history, to give users access to different versions of each document. Dropbox Business also provides some content analytics, since users can share documents with others and track how the recipients interact with the documents.
Key Features:
- Up to 15 TB content storage
- Content protection features such as password protection, file recovery, watermarking, and viewer history
- Trackable links for real-time documents analytics
- eSignature templates for contracts
5. Zoho Workdrive
Zoho Workdrive is a content management platform that gives teams a unified virtual workplace. It supports role-based access to limit team members' access to documents to only what they need. WorkDrive supports preview for over 200 file formats, so you can always preview files without opening or downloading them. Zoho WorkDrive also has searchability features so you can find documents when you need them, including scanned documents and images with an OCR feature.
Key Features:
- Role-based access control for document security
- OCR and object detection features are enabled for image searchability
- Integration with Zoho Chat, Zoho Sheet, Zoho Show, and Zoho Writer
- Analytics to view who made changes to documents
Use the Best Sharepoint Alternative
SharePoint can be a solid platform for digital content storage, but for sales teams looking for fast content creation and content accessibility, it’s not going to be the best fit.
If you want a niche sales collateral management platform that focuses on salespeople, works within the apps your sales teams use, and has the tools and features to enhance your sales performance, then you should try Spekit.
Spekit’s sales enablement solution integrates with your existing processes rather than the other way around. The platform doesn’t require you to change your existing sales methodology, so whether you are using MEDDIC sales methodology or another methodology.
With Spekit, reps don’t need to go through several folders to find the sales information they need. They can just use Spek and sit back while the exact information they need is surfaced right in the app they are using.Empower your sales team with the right collateral management platform they need to exceed their targets.
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