Content committees: Aligning messaging across GTM teams

Cohesive messaging across an org is what makes a brand shine and what drives revenue. Misaligned messaging from your go-to-market (GTM) team can be a major business risk. Sales reps pull outdated decks from their cloud drive. Marketing creates sleek sales assets that never get used. Enablement builds messaging playbooks that gather digital dust. Sound familiar? Without a shared process for collaboration and control, messaging becomes fragmented, inconsistent, and hard to trust.  

At our annual sales conference, Unleash 2025, powerhouse speakers Allyson Bean, from Alight Solutions, and Emma Andrews, from Red Hat, led a session called “Winning Words: Content Committees” that explores how content governance in sales can bring clarity, consistency, and cohesion across teams. Their strategies revealed not just how to fix fragmented go-to-market content, but how to build systems that support message consistency across teams. 

This post breaks down their insights into four actionable sections, from why messaging breaks down in the first place to how building a unified messaging framework can drive measurable impact. Let’s explore how sales enablement leaders can replicate their strategies.  

Why messaging falls apart across GTM teams 

Lack of sales and marketing alignment is often a symptom of deeper structural issues. Key messaging might be defined in a product launch deck but never adapted for sales conversations. Or individual reps rely on content they’ve stored on their desktop and recycle outdated slides, diluting the brand and reducing effectiveness.  

Allyson shared, “When I started, content was decentralized. Our sellers would grab old, outdated content that was completely off-brand and scattered in various places.” 

Her solution? A full-scale audit, followed by archiving old content and locking down cloning capabilities to prevent duplicating and creating new content in their sales outreach platform. This messaging governance reset provided a clean slate—and a path toward message consistency across the team. 

Similarly, Emma emphasized the operational chaos that can arise without structure, recalling that their data was all over the place. That’s why Red Hat launched an “Outreach Sequence Lockdown,” consolidating low-performing sequences and implementing a formal request process to refine content. The result: a 15% increase in positive response rates, driven by cleaner, more effective messaging.  

These stories illustrate a shared problem across GTM teams: without content governance in sales or a true enablement content strategy, even the best brand messaging framework can fall apart. 

Structuring content committees for success 

So how do you prevent chaos and foster sales and marketing alignment? Enter the content committee. A content committee structure brings together stakeholders from across departments including marketing, sales enablement, sales leadership, and individual contributors like frontline sales reps for the purpose of collaboration through cross-functional communication. Their responsibility is to meet to review content with a regular established cadence, as well as audit, optimize and create new go-to-market content.  

These groups aren’t meant to be governance gatekeepers, but rather advocates for brand communication alignment. Here’s how each of their roles breaks down: 

• Marketing: Defines brand and product positioning and supplies core content
• Sales Enablement: Translates assets into useable messaging playbooks, training, and sequences 
• Reps: Provide field feedback on what’s resonating, or falling flat 
• Operations: Supports tooling, tagging, and performance tracking 

Red Hat’s committee implemented a sequence request form that allowed any rep to suggest ideas, ensuring visibility and evaluation by stakeholders. A/B testing is built into the process, creating a culture of experimentation that surfaces the best ideas through data-driven decisions.

“We A/B test everything. No ideas are turned down,” Emma shared. “There have been plenty of times where I thought something would perform well and it didn’t - and vice versa, where I was shocked at what actually resonated. So it’s really important to drop your opinion and be data-driven. If you can do that, then the best idea always wins.”

They also put in place best practices to ensure the committee wasn’t just built, but thriving: 

• Establish recurring meetings to review requests, performance, and feedback 

• Centralize asset storage on one sales execution platform like Outreach 

• Create approval workflows that balance control with agility 

• Define ownership for updates, review, and audits to avoid bottlenecks 

This cross-functional approach prevents silos and ensures every piece of content is aligned to a shared messaging governance framework.

Building a unified messaging framework 

It’s not enough just to build a committee. Its true power lies in shaping and scaling a unified messaging strategy. This means creating shared documents, tools, and processes that guide how messaging is developed, distributed, and used. 

At Red Hat, top-performing sequences are identified and tagged as part of their monthly reporting and deeper audits. Over time, the team started to notice some key structural patterns that contribute to their effectiveness. These outreach sequences typically include elements like: 

• A short, personalized introduction email with a standalone call to action 

• A concise follow-up reply to bring the message back to the top of the inbox 

• An optional third touch offering more background on their business solution 

• An ask for a referral to the right decision-maker or objection-handling email 

• A final thank you, designed to leave a positive brand impression, without a sales ask 

The team also emphasizes version control. They use tagging conventions like “don’t archive” for evergreen content, month and year tags for time-sensitive assets, and rep name tags for content tied to individual sellers. These practices can help make managing a large volume of content less overwhelming.

Bonus tip: Incorporate these tools and techniques into your unified messaging:  

• Messaging playbooks outlining key narratives per persona and stage 

• Snippets and info snacks with ROI stats and timely proof points 

• Intent-based triggers that feed into specific sequences 

• Content distribution frameworks to ensure sellers know what to use, when, and why 

“Think of snippets as your ticker tape across the bottom of an email,” Allyson explains. “We give the team bite-sized metrics and ROI points that sellers can rotate through based on their message.” 

The business impact of messaging alignment 

When sales and marketing alignment is operationalized through messaging governance, the results show up across the funnel. 

Efficient onboarding & training alignment 

With consistent, centralized assets, new reps in training can ramp up faster and avoid searching through mountains of outdated content. Weekly tagging, monthly audits, and performance-based reviews keep the content system current and relevant. 

Improved sales conversations 

By identifying best practices, Red Hat’s team was able to boost booked meetings for underperforming reps. “We’ve seen reps go from hitting under 50% of their goal to reaching up to 90% within a month - just by using the tagged high-performing content,” Emma shared. 

Faster feedback loops  

Alight’s team uses real-time collaboration platforms like Microsoft Teams for “always-on training” with content tips, tricks, and success stories, as well as quick answers to questions.  

Brand messaging consistency 

With shared content tagging, snippet libraries, and clear content review processes, sellers can deliver the same high-quality message, whether they engage with small and medium-sized businesses, mid-market companies or enterprise customers. 

Create messaging harmony with content committees 

The takeaways from Emma and Allyson are clear: scalable content governance in sales doesn’t happen by accident. It requires intentional collaboration, content review processes, and shared accountability. Content committees made up of cross-functional stakeholders are the key to unlocking this kind of message consistency across teams. 

If that was a lot to digest, then focus on these five steps: 

• Form a cross-functional team of marketing, enablement, sales, and operations stakeholders. 
• Audit existing assets and implement tagging and archiving systems. 
• Create a feedback-driven request process that encourages idea sharing. 
• Build and document your messaging framework with playbooks, sequences, and snippets. 
• Establish regular content reviews and reporting to iterate on what’s working.