The Forms of Content & the Modular Document

Each day, a typical Sales organization produces and distributes to its customers and prospects a wealth of information in the form of e-mails, standard marketing collateral, and customized selling documents. But rarely is Sales the actual producer of the information it uses.

Instead, multiple individuals and departments are responsible for producing critical sales information—and more often than not, in the form of a document. Producing a customized deliverable in response to a customer request is often an exercise in hunting down source materials, copying and pasting relevant points into a new document, then cleaning the whole thing up: a burdensome task in terms of time, quite often beyond the reaches of the typical salesperson’s desktop publishing skills, and consistently inconsistent.

While speaking specifically to technical communicators, Mott and Ford (Managing Objects…)(Creating Objects…) echo the perspective common in information architecture circles around information granularity and portability:

To deal most effectively with information tools over the course of the next generation, technical communicators know they must break out of the genre-motivated concept of communication. Instead of focusing on end-products—the traditional deliverables of brochure, annual report, user manual, or Web site—technical communication professionals must now manage, create, and present pliant chunks of information that will be integrated into a wide variety of communication products.

Thus, a hierarchy of object levels emerges. At the Highest level, you have large objects such as letters and quotes. At an Intermediate level, you have components objects such as paragraphs and illustration.  At the Lowest level, you have the objects inside those objects, such as product names, prices, and individual company or contact names.

When viewed as modular dynamic objects rather than frozen, maintenance-intensive end products, every stakeholder on the content lifecycle continuum—from creator to end user—can benefit from robust customization of deliverables and single-sourced (rather than redundant and fallible) content maintenance routines.

Writing self-contained chunks of information requires the ability to write modularly and to ensure that the language used will be appropriate for various audiences, genres, and purposes. One distinct advantage is that the same text base can serve multiple audiences and multiple purposes for reading. When texts are composed in screen-size chunks, the same modular text fragments can be used to build different documents or different paths through a document.

An argument against single-sourcing content objects is that “mass produced” document deliverables will lack cohesiveness, will not flow for the reader, will resemble an RFP with the question prompts removed. In response, one need only step inside a well-apportioned modular home. Add the customization of furnishings and personal effects, and each becomes uniquely identified with the needs of the occupant.

That significant cost was removed from the home’s construction is a non-issue to the homeowner—but a market differentiator for the builder, who can service more customers in less time at less cost.

A modular selling document, by the same token, is a starting point—featuring components selected by its creator for an intended audience. Furnish with opportunity-specific talking points, company specifics, and individualized messaging, and the modular document is indistinguishable from one created from scratch. Development times for larger documents go from days to hours. Shorter documents take only minutes.

The salesperson now has the power to incubate targeted prospects to the next level of opportunity, and can leverage time savings in servicing more pressing deals.