How to Build a Content Strategy That’s Truly Aligned With Sales

Content and sales are supposed to be best friends, but in most organizations, they barely wave in the hallway.

Sales teams ask for case studies. Marketing delivers top-of-funnel blogs. Sales wants materials for the proposal stage. Marketing is writing SEO guides. Everyone’s working hard, but the message feels fractured, and deals don’t move faster.

The solution? Build a content strategy that’s actually aligned with how your buyers make decisions. At Borrowed Pen, this is how we do it:

Step 1: Map your content to the customer journey, not just the funnel

Funnels are useful. However, sales don’t live in a neat three-stage diagram. Instead, we start by asking:

• What questions do prospects ask in early meetings?

• What objections do they raise right before signing?

• What information does the sales team repeat in every call?

Then we build content to solve those specific moments.

Examples:

• A first-call explainer deck

• A “How We Work” article sales can send after intro calls

• A comparison matrix for buyers deciding between vendors

• A detailed FAQ on your process or implementation steps

If your content isn’t helping sales have better conversations, it’s not doing its job.

Step 2: Interview your sales team like they’re your customer

They are. They have the clearest window into what your buyers actually care about. So we treat them as primary sources in our research process. What we ask:

• What resources do you wish you had?

• Where do deals slow down?

• What’s hard to explain clearly?

• What makes a buyer say, “You’re the one”?

The answers become your content roadmap.

Step 3: Blend brand storytelling with tactical tools

A lot of content strategies are heavy on either:

• Fluff: Big brand storytelling pieces that don’t help close

• Salesy Decks: Dense PDFs that don’t reflect brand clarity or tone

We build middle-ground content. We’ll help you create sales enablement pieces that educate, persuade, and position you well, like

• Blog posts written to answer sales questions

• Case studies structured to mirror the buyer’s industry

• Short, smart articles that reinforce your approach (not just your product)

These become reusable assets that work across touchpoints, including social media, email, and proposals.

Step 4: Treat sales enablement as part of your content calendar

If you wait for sales to “ask for content,” you’re too late. We treat sales enablement as a core content stream, not an afterthought. For every pillar post or campaign asset, we ask:

• How will sales use this?

• What format would make it easier to share?

• Should this be gated, ungated, or client-facing only?

Sometimes we even write “ghost docs”, aka internal summaries or slides that help reps understand how to talk about a new offer or process.

Step 5: Align around one clear message

Sales and marketing alignment fails when multiple narratives are floating around. A strategic content plan starts with unified messaging:

• One value proposition

• One positioning framework

• One tone of voice

Multiple ways to say the same thing, not multiple things

Our strategy engagements almost always include a messaging framework. Once you have a clear map, everything else becomes easier to write and easier to sell.

We believe a good content strategy is a business tool, not just a branding exercise. When content and sales are aligned:

• Conversations go deeper, faster

• Buyers feel more confident

• Teams stop wasting time making things from scratch

Want to build a content engine that supports your sales team? We can help you map the plan, build the tools, and write the pieces that close more deals. Let’s do it.