Many companies tend to keep their departments separate. Marketing, sales, customer service, PR, HR, management, (etc.) pros don’t interact with each other nearly as often as they should. The truth is, a business is only as strong as the sum of its parts, and the success of one area is nothing without the success of the whole. After all, what good is it for a marketing team to generate a massive amount of leads if the sales deptartment is unable to close on any of them?
To help improve that very scenario, we’ve devised a few ways your sales team can help you market better (i.e. more precisely). Consider trying these four tips out at your workplace:
Hold Cross-Dept. Meetings
The first step toward aligning your marketing and sales efforts is, unsurprisingly, to communicate. However, there’s a subtle art to holding productive meetings that actually yield results. Indeed, the sad reality is most corporate meetings don’t solve the problems they aim to address. Make it a point to allow all pertinent parties to speak their mind at your get-togethers, and never leave a meeting without a new plan to try out.
Specify
Lead generation that doesn’t contribute to sales revenue is a problem most commonly associated with poor collaboration between departments. To expand on our last point, ask your sales team to be very specific about the type of leads they’re currently receiving, and the type of leads they need to close deals. It may be that your marketing department is casting too wide of a net when creating campaigns. For instance, rather than optimizing content for a general term like a POS system, it may be a wiser play to market toward a specific niche product that your company sells like a point of sale system for pharmacies, or POS software for restaurants. Reducing the number of leads you draw in shouldn’t affect your ability to make money. Remember, when it comes to lead generation quality almost always trumps quantity.
Get Ready for Round Two
Ideally, all marketing qualified leads will be ready to convert when your team encounters them. Obviously, that isn’t always the case. In many instances, B2B businesses only make major purchases once or twice a year (if that) and it’s impossible to predict when you’ll engage with a qualified lead. As such, poor timing can sometimes spoil a potential sale. The good news is, you can always reach out to an old contact later on. And the best businesses let their sales team collaborate with the marketing dept to craft personalized emails and newsletters based on previous customer interactions. Anything you can do to move away from cookie-cutter follow-up emails will enhance your chances of recapturing an old lead’s attention.
Write Marketing Content to Answer Sales Questions
Marketing qualified leads should understand plenty about your business by the time they speak to a salesperson. Still, vague marketing content can muddy the waters and misinform leads to the nature of your company. Though most sales professionals are comfortable answering questions about their products/services, they shouldn’t have to explain basic concepts to supposedly qualified leads. Instead of forcing your sales staff to play the role of educator, focus on creating marketing content that answers common FAQs. In-depth marketing content will eliminate unqualified leads. That way, your sales staff can hold productive discussions with informed consumers who are ready to make a purchase before they even pick up the phone! .
