Marketing and sales fit together like Michael Bolton and his mullet. Sure, individually they’re pretty good – Michael’s got a decent voice, and mullets have a special place in culture and history – but together, their combined power is a hit-maker.
Here’s how your marketing team can support the sales team to reach new heights:
1. Arm your sales team with resources
Marketing is as much about communicating with your in-house team as it is to the outside world.
Your marketing team most likely has a wealth of information and research used to understand their customers and build the brand.
Equally, sales teams are equipped with specialist knowledge about a brand’s customers, and may be more aware of a prospect’s common questions and challenges.
The key here is to open the communication lines between your marketing and sales teams so they can share valuable information that can be turned into useful resources.
Resources can help a sales team identify what stage a customer is at and what information or encouragement they may need to move forward.
You might start with a simple resource such as a ‘frequently asked questions and answers’ fact sheet or informative company blogs. You could also create graphs, diagrams and technical explanations that can be used as resources.
Make sure the resources are available via mobile so your sales team can access them on the go instead of waiting to get back to the office to follow up with customers.
2. Align marketing with buying cycle
Content is important for bringing prospective customers into the sales funnel, but research has shown that content marketing works best when it is targeted to particular stages of the buying cycle.
Articles on innovation and industry trends, for example, are often successful for creating awareness and bringing users into the sales funnel, while case studies or solution-specific content are better for leads toward the middle/bottom of the funnel.
The marketing department needs to create content for particular stages of the sales cycles so that efforts from both teams can align with overall business objectives.
3. Generate qualified prospects
The aim of targeted marketing is to generate leads or prospects, but it is important that these are qualified leads so that the sales team can respond quickly and effectively.
Marketers should always use the data available to them to ensure high quality leads for the sales team.
Leads should also include as much detail as possible, such as the lead source, campaign, event or web page they converted from, and any known demographic data from advertising.
With a good customer relationship management (CRM) program and marketing automation tools in place, you can also capture and include customer behaviours, such as surveys completed, content downloaded, and events attended.
All of this information provides the sales team with a better picture of what the prospect wants, their needs and challenges, and will enable the sales team to better tailor their conversion strategies.
Need marketing to support your sales?
At Assemblo, we tailor marketing activities and campaigns to support sales functions within a business.
Talk to us to find out how we can create a bespoke solution for your business. Phone (03) 9079 2555 or send us a note via the contact form below.