I’ve built a lot of collateral for clients at KomsGro, and I’ve watched almost all of it die in a shared drive. That’s not a design problem. It’s an ordering problem: teams build what looks impressive instead of what closes deals, then wonder why the deck they spent three weeks on never gets opened.

So this is the checklist I wish someone had handed me earlier. It’s organized the way deals actually move, and I’ve added the honest version of each item: what it’s for, what it must contain, and when you can skip it.

Start here: what collateral actually is

Marketing collateral is every asset that touches a buyer during the journey: the deck, the one-pager, the case study, the pricing page, the follow-up email, the demo video, the proposal. The mistake I see constantly is treating this as a design project. It’s not. It’s a sales project that happens to need design.

Before you build anything, answer one question: what does the buyer need to believe at this stage of the deal, and what’s the smallest asset that gets them there? Build only that.

The checklist by funnel stage

Awareness: assets that earn attention

  • Brand one-pager. One page: who you serve, the problem you remove, proof, contact. If it takes two pages, it’s a website, not a one-pager.
  • Website and landing pages. The first real collateral most buyers see. Every service or use case needs its own page, written for the buyer’s problem, not your org chart.
  • Blog and SEO content. The compounding asset. Answer the questions your buyers type, and keep it going even when leads feel slow.
  • Social templates. LinkedIn formats you can reuse: quote cards, short video hooks, founder post templates. Consistency here is cheap and it compounds.
  • Explainer video, 60 to 90 seconds. Problem, mechanism, proof, ask. One take, imperfect, done.

Consideration: assets that build preference

  • Solution one-pagers. One per service line or use case. The buyer should be able to forward it internally without explaining it.
  • Case studies. The highest-leverage asset you’ll build, and the one most teams do badly. Structure it: customer context in one paragraph, what changed, the number, the quote. If there’s no number, interview until there is one.
  • Comparison content. An honest “us vs alternatives” page, including when you’re not the right fit. Counterintuitive, but disqualifying yourself once builds more trust than any claim.
  • Demo or webinar recording. Proof in motion. Send the timestamped link, not the whole video.
  • Email nurture sequences. Three to five touches per segment, each one answering a real objection, not congratulating the reader.

Decision: assets that close

  • Sales pitch deck. Ten slides, not forty. Problem, why now, mechanism, proof, pricing, next step. I’ve watched deals stall on slide 23 of an archive deck and close on slide 9 of a rebuilt one.
  • Proposal template. Scoped, priced, structured so the champion can sell it internally without you in the room. If your proposal needs you on a call to explain it, rebuild it.
  • ROI or pricing calculator. The champion’s internal business case, handed to them ready-made. This is the asset buyers quietly love and rarely say out loud.
  • Implementation timeline one-pager. What weeks 1 to 8 look like, concretely. Fear of a messy onboarding kills more deals than price does.
  • Objection-handling sheet. The five objections sales actually hears, each with a sourced answer: a case study, a number, or a demo. Source it from real call recordings, not from what you wish they’d ask.

The five rules every asset must pass

Whatever the format, I hold every piece to five checks before it ships:

  1. One message per asset. If it says three things, it says nothing.
  2. Proof attached. A number, a quote, a named outcome. Claims without evidence read as ads, and buyers have ad-blindness for breakfast.
  3. One next step. Every asset ends with a single clear CTA. Two CTAs is a coin flip; three is surrender.
  4. Current data. Stale screenshots and last year’s pricing quietly kill deals. I audit quarterly.
  5. Visual consistency. Same fonts, same colors, same tone. Buyers can’t articulate it, but they feel the seams.

The assets I’d skip (and why)

Just as important as the checklist is what I tell teams not to build, at least not early:

  • Company culture decks. Buyers care after they like you, not before.
  • 40-slide “master decks”. Nobody reads slide 30. Build the 10-slide version and a leave-behind appendix if you must.
  • Generic brochures. Print collateral for B2B SaaS is dead weight unless you sell at events.
  • Elaborate brand guideline documents. You’re a ten-person company, not Coca-Cola. A one-page style reference is enough until brand is a real problem.
  • Glossary pages that answer questions nobody types. If it doesn’t map to a real buyer query, it’s a hobby.

I killed each of these from client builds at one point or another, and nothing bad happened. The sales team never asked for any of them back.

Getting real numbers for your case studies

Since the case study is the asset I see done worst, here’s the practical fix for the “our client won’t share metrics” problem that stalls most of them. You don’t need their revenue. Any specific number works: hours saved per week, response time cut from days to hours, pipeline added in a quarter, even adoption numbers (80% of the team used it weekly). Ask these three questions in the interview:

  1. What were you doing before, and how long did it take?
  2. What changed in the first 30 days?
  3. What would you tell someone in the same situation?

Question three almost always produces the quote. Question one produces the before-number that makes the after meaningful. And get written approval on the final draft; it protects the relationship and makes the customer comfortable saying yes to stronger numbers next revision.

Where distribution fits

Collateral that exists but never reaches the buyer is decoration, so bake distribution into the build: every asset should have a named moment it gets used. The one-pager goes into the first follow-up email. The case study gets sent after the second call. The ROI calculator belongs in the proposal, linked, not attached. The objection sheet lives where sales actually works (your CRM notes, the call software), not in a drive nobody opens.

One habit that changed results for a client team: attach a collateral question to every deal review. “What asset would have moved this deal forward this week?” The answers become next month’s build list, written by reality instead of by the marketing calendar.

How to know if any of it is working

Collateral rarely gets measured, which is why it stays mediocre. Three checks I run:

  1. Usage rate. Which assets did sales actually send this month? If the answer is “the same two”, the rest is decoration. Ask your CRM data, not the team’s opinion.
  2. Stage-to-stage conversion. Where do deals stall? If the stall sits between demo and proposal, the proposal template is your next build, not more top-of-funnel content.
  3. Forward test. The best collateral gets forwarded inside the buyer’s company without the rep pushing it. Ask on every closed deal: “who saw what, and what did they forward?” The answers map your real funnel.

And a note on honesty inside the assets themselves. The fastest way to upgrade mediocre collateral is to cut every claim that lacks a number behind it. It’s uncomfortable, because half the deck will shrink, but buyers trust a smaller deck that proves itself.

How to organize it so it gets used

This is the part nobody writes down, and it’s where most collateral goes to die. Keep one indexed library: asset name, funnel stage, last-updated date, owner, and a “use when” note. If your team can’t find the asset in 30 seconds, it doesn’t exist operationally, no matter how good it is.

And a rule that hurts: before building anything new, delete or archive two old things. Collateral libraries only grow, and attention doesn’t.

If you’re bootstrapped, build in this order

A young team asked me recently what to do with almost no time and no designer. Here’s the order I gave them:

  1. Pitch deck, 10 slides. Everything else can wait.
  2. One case study with a real number. One is enough to start; it becomes the anchor for everything else.
  3. Solution one-pager per service line.
  4. Objection-handling sheet, written from your last ten sales calls.
  5. ROI one-pager or calculator.

Everything else can wait until the first four are earning their keep in real deals.

The refresh rhythm

Quarterly: stats, dates, screenshots, pricing. Twice a year: case studies and one-pagers. Once a year: the full audit, and be ruthless, delete what’s unused before you create anything new.

The honest truth about collateral: most of it is built for the moment the company felt like building it, not the moment the buyer needs it. Flip that around and your close rate moves.

If you’d rather have this built than maintained, that’s our sales and marketing enablement service: pitch decks, case studies, and one-pagers that move deals forward, built as one consistent system. Either way, work the checklist. The deals you’re chasing right now are probably stuck on a missing asset, not a missing lead.