If you’ve ever spent weeks developing a sales presentation, product sheet or messaging framework only to discover that sales has quietly stopped using it, you’re not alone. It’s one of the most common frustrations I come across when working with marketing teams.
The usual reaction is to assume sales are ignoring the official material or simply refusing to follow the process. In reality, that’s rarely what’s happening. Most salespeople don’t wake up in the morning looking for ways to make marketing’s life difficult. They’re under pressure to win business, and if the collateral they’re given doesn’t quite fit the conversation they’re having with a customer, they’ll change it.
I’ve seen it countless times over the years. Sales presentations get rewritten. Product messaging is simplified. New customer case studies appear from nowhere. Someone creates a one-page summary because the official brochure is too long. Before long, there are three or four versions of the same presentation circulating around the business, and marketing has no idea which one customers are actually seeing.
It’s easy to see this as a governance problem. I think it’s something far more interesting than that.
Why does this happen?
Marketing and sales work to very different deadlines. Marketing has the opportunity to plan campaigns, refine messaging, secure approvals and produce polished assets. Sales doesn’t have that luxury. A customer meeting has been booked for Thursday morning and the prospect has asked three awkward questions that the current presentation doesn’t answer. Waiting two weeks for a revised version isn’t an option, so the salesperson does what they have to do.
That’s not a breakdown in process. It’s someone trying to keep a deal moving.
The important thing to understand is that every change sales makes has a reason behind it. They aren’t rewriting content because they enjoy redesigning PowerPoint slides. They’re trying to make the conversation easier, clearer or more relevant for the customer sitting across the table.
How do you recognise the problem?
Sometimes the signs are obvious, but they’re surprisingly easy to overlook because everyone assumes it’s normal.
You notice different account teams using different presentations. Product sheets exist in half a dozen versions. Sales asks for editable PowerPoint files because PDFs are too restrictive. Marketing proudly reports that fifty new assets have been produced, while sales quietly carries on using the same handful of documents they’ve trusted for years.
One of the biggest clues is when customer presentations contain slides that marketing has never seen before. Somewhere along the way, someone decided the official material wasn’t enough and filled the gap themselves.
Rather than asking why sales are changing your collateral, it’s worth asking what problem they’re trying to solve.
What causes it?
In my experience, there usually isn’t a single cause. It’s more often a combination of small issues that gradually encourage sales to create their own material.
Sometimes the content explains the product perfectly but doesn’t answer the questions customers actually ask. Marketing talks about features, while customers want to understand outcomes, implementation, cost or risk. Sales naturally fills those gaps.
Sometimes the content is simply too generic. A presentation designed to work for every customer often works brilliantly for none of them. Enterprise buyers, technical specialists and procurement teams all want different conversations, so sales adapts the story accordingly.
I’ve also seen situations where the collateral is technically excellent but almost impossible to customise. Locked PDFs, rigid templates and strict controls mean the quickest solution is often to create a new document rather than modify the existing one.
And then there’s the market itself. Customer expectations change. Competitors change their messaging. New objections emerge. Sales hears those conversations every day, while marketing may not become aware of them until much later.
What should marketing teams do differently?
The biggest shift is one of mindset. Instead of asking why sales aren’t using the collateral, ask what they’re using instead.
Those unofficial presentations and one-page summaries are often the most valuable research material you have because they’ve been shaped by real customer conversations. Rather than trying to eliminate them, spend some time understanding why they exist.
Talk to your sales teams. Ask which slides they always remove and which ones they always add. Find out what questions customers keep asking that your official material doesn’t answer. Look for the patterns rather than the exceptions.
You’ll often discover that the same changes are being made repeatedly across different teams. That’s usually a sign that your collateral needs to evolve.
Good marketing isn’t about producing more content. It’s about producing content that people genuinely want to use.
What does good look like?
The best marketing collateral doesn’t need to be enforced because sales naturally reaches for it.
It’s easy to find, easy to customise and built around the questions customers actually ask. It gives sales enough flexibility to adapt a conversation without starting from scratch every time they meet a prospect.
Perhaps more importantly, there’s a continuous feedback loop between sales and marketing. Sales shares what’s changing in the market. Marketing updates the content. The revised material makes the next customer conversation easier, which creates more feedback and further improvements.
That’s when marketing collateral stops being a library of documents and starts becoming a genuine sales tool.
Your sales team may be telling you something
One of the biggest mistakes organisations make is treating edited presentations and unofficial documents as evidence that people aren’t following the rules. In many cases they’re actually evidence that people are doing their jobs.
Every rewritten slide, every new customer example and every document someone creates at eleven o’clock the night before an important meeting tells you something about the conversations your customers are having.
Ignore those signals and you’ll continue producing collateral that looks impressive but rarely gets used.
Pay attention to them, and your next version is likely to be better than the last.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why do sales teams create their own marketing collateral?
Usually because the official material doesn’t quite fit the conversation they’re having with a customer. They’re trying to make the content more relevant, easier to understand or better suited to a particular audience.
Is it a problem if sales changes marketing presentations?
Not necessarily. If the same changes keep appearing, they’re often highlighting weaknesses in the official collateral. Those changes can provide valuable insight into what customers actually need.
How can marketing discover which collateral sales really uses?
Spend time with your sales teams, review the presentations they take into customer meetings and compare them with the official versions. The differences often tell you more than any usage report.
Should marketing stop enforcing brand guidelines?
No. Brand consistency still matters, but collateral also has to be practical. The best assets strike a balance between maintaining the brand and giving sales enough flexibility to have meaningful customer conversations.
How often should marketing collateral be reviewed?
At least every quarter, but ideally whenever customer feedback, competitor activity or changes in the market suggest your messaging is becoming dated.
What’s the biggest mistake marketing teams make?
Assuming that beautifully designed collateral is automatically effective. Sales judges content by one simple measure: does it help move the conversation forward? If the answer is no, they’ll create something that does.
Key Takeaways
If your sales team isn’t using your marketing collateral, don’t assume you’ve got a sales problem. More often than not, you’ve uncovered an opportunity to learn something about your customers. The next time you find an unofficial presentation doing the rounds, resist the temptation to ask who created it. Instead, ask why. The answer might tell you exactly how your marketing needs to improve.