Good salespeople know the importance of relationships to sales and long-term success. Good marketers know the importance of messaging and the brand that supports that message.
There is a reason it’s called marketing and sales. They are two different things. Marketing needs to create a message Sales believes in. Sales needs to help convey the message that is reflected in Marketing. In addition, Sales should also share input as to what the marketing message is, so that he can reinforce the message. Each department needs buy-in and the sharing of internal marketing needs to occur to get companywide buy-in. When the system is working correctly, Marketing generates leads and Sales follows up and closes.
With a cohesive email marketing campaign and marketing automation tools, B2B (business-to-business) companies can close the gap between marketing and sales by consistently nurturing prospects with helpful content and creative, concise branding. Buyer behaviors are changing. B2B marketers must communicate with buyers in new ways and create content marketing that answers questions, provides market insight and is personalized to the customer’s role, needs and level of interest.
One major change is that buyers do more research on their own. They investigate solutions on their own and discuss with peers before engaging vendor sales reps. Sales cycles start with the email campaign of the marketing department, and the message is key. The marketing team is tasked with developing a message and content that educates while it sells.
Too many times, marketers use existing content to power lead-nurturing campaigns but find that the content consists mainly of product brochures, technical white papers and press releases. Pushing this kind of technical content that does not have an underlying message pushes prospective clients away. Buyers have a low tolerance for commercial messages that sell first. The key is to engage buyers with a creative, cohesive message before selling your wares.
Marketers need to create a relationship, just like sales, between their brand and the leads they want to nurture. They need to create email campaigns that entice clients to open and click through for more information. New, educational content for these marketing campaigns can be culled through resources within the company. Sales, engineers, estimators and customer service personnel can add valuable, raw content for marketing to craft into a cohesive message.
Once the brand and message has been established, sales can use this as a starting point, engage these nurtured leads and continue the relationship and sales cycle. One needs the other. Neither Sales nor Marketing should be operating alone. When married, the “whole is greater than the sum of its parts.” When Marketing and Sales are working toward the same goal, that synergy drives motivation, company culture and sales. It also increases more than the bottom line. It creates a culture of customer service, client relationship and client loyalty.
The marriage of both departments proves that while every company needs sales to drive revenue, they need marketing, too.
Stephanie Woodcock is president of Seal the Deal Too, a St. Louis-based marketing, creative & communications firm. She can be reached at stephanie@sealthedealtoo.com.