Consider who, what, when, where and how for best outcomes
When it comes to sales engagement, alignment and a cohesive strategy are key. How well aligned are your sales and marketing departments? Is your sales team getting the qualified leads they need from marketing? Is your marketing team getting the kind of valuable customer insights that only sales can provide? If the gap between the two feels too wide for comfort in your organization, it might be time to sharpen your focus the who, what, when, where and how of sales and marketing integration. Let’s break that down:- Who? Your marketing department needs a clear picture of the audience(s) they’re addressing. Beyond ideal customer profiles (ICPs), they need to get more information about the buyer. Buyer personas—fictional characters who represent ideal customers— will include the buyers’ pain points, key motivations to purchase, interests and where they get their (sources of) information. With input from departments across the organization, create personas for each customer type (audience) in your organization. Next, share your personas unilaterally to ensure that your customers are getting a cohesive message at every touch point that they have with your organization.
- What? Now that you’ve identified your customer, what is it that they want, and need, to hear from you? Your customers, both current and prospective, are on a journey. Your content must resonate with them at every stage in their customer journey, from considering a purchase, to evaluating companies’ offerings, to selecting the best company to meet their needs, to celebrating their great choice by making a referral. At every step of the way, new key purchase motivators can take precedence over earlier ones. Craft messaging that addresses their fears and concerns, and makes them the hero of the stories you tell at each stage of their journey.
- When? After your marketing content has generated qualified inbound leads, it’s often up to the sales team to nurture and/or close them. This is accomplished through both persistence and patience. But how much follow-up is too much? Research shows that nearly 50% of salespeople give up too soon. Through trial and error, you must find a cadence that gets results while making sure your sales team is utilizing best practices and following through to the end on every qualified lead.
- Where? As you create sales cadences, be mindful of where and how today’s consumer gets his or her information. According to techjury.net, 51% of the time spent online in the U.S. is on mobile devices. Because your customers are constantly on the move and getting their information from their mobile devices, your sales cadence must consist of multimedia content that meets them where they are at various times in their day, whether it’s Facebook, LinkedIn, emails, phone call or direct mail.
- How? With so many moving parts to wrangle in your cadence + content formula, it’s essential to have the right tools to keep the train on the track and ensure that nothing falls through the cracks. That’s where an intuitive and agile sales engagement platform comes in. It will help you create consistent strategies and messaging across your sales team and give you the data you need to determine what’s working and what’s not.
Subscribe to Funnel Vision
Get the latest and greatest right in your inbox
