In fact, the right content can enable every member of your sales team to spend more time selling and less time answering the same questions and addressing the same objections again and again. To get your sales team those resources, you need to bring marketing and sales together to create sales enablement content. Sales reps benefit from the right content because it does much of their jobs for them. They interact with prospects on a daily basis, and they know what works and what doesn’t to meet those prospects’ needs. Five steps for putting marketing alignment into action Aligning sales and marketing teams is a commendable objective, but it can also be a lofty one. To bring together your sales and marketing teams, start with these five steps. The sales team has valuable insights that can transform a piece of content into exactly what the prospect (and, therefore, the sales rep) is looking for, so invite your salespeople to collaborate. So, if your sales and marketing teams are comprised of people from different generations, you may need to make an extra effort to understand these preferences so everyone on these teams can keep communication open and effective. This is especially important if you’ve been creating content for a while or you plan to continue consistently producing content. A bank of your team’s best resources for addressing the most common questions and discussions throughout the sales process can save everyone time and make sure your content is being maximized.
Aligning your sales and marketing teams isn’t an easy endeavor, but it’s one that can have profound and lasting benefits.
This story originally appeared on Due
Whether you’re an entrepreneur just starting out or you’ve been leading a business for a while, you understand that sales is key to growth. You don’t have to have all the answers to everything before you start your business, but if you can consistently close sales, you can buy yourself time to figure everything else out and scale for the future.
To do this, your sales reps probably rely on a variety of tools and productivity hacks to help them get more done. But, if you’re not also using content marketing to help, you’re missing out on a major opportunity. In fact, the right content can enable every member of your sales team to spend more time selling and less time answering the same questions and addressing the same objections again and again. To get your sales team those resources, you need to bring marketing and sales together to create sales enablement content.
Advantages of alignment
I’ve heard a lot of different sales speakers over the years, and a trend they all preach is the importance of aligning sales and marketing. When they’re aligned, sales teams see 38 percent higher win rates, and marketing teams see a 200 percent increase in marketing-generated revenue. These are huge wins in themselves — but what’s especially valuable is the fact that both teams can do less work to earn those wins.
Sales reps benefit from the right content because it does much of their jobs for them. If a prospect has a question about your company’s solution, sales can send a blog post or case study that goes into detail. If reps receive common objections or questions about specific parts of the process, they can pass along fact sheets and whitepapers that overcome those objections.
These responses minimize the amount of time members of your sales team have to spend nurturing a prospect, whether it’s on the phone or via email. At the same time, they’re providing helpful, high-value content that their prospects can then send around to promote buy-in at their own organizations.
And by working with the sales team, your marketers can create more specific, effective content that helps their colleagues overcome traditional barriers to conversion. This means less time spent creating content for the sake of publication and more time spent producing high-impact resources.
No matter your industry, sales reps are some of a company’s most informed individuals when it comes to the customer. They interact with prospects on a daily basis, and they know what works and what doesn’t to meet those prospects’ needs. To be effective, your content has to appeal to your audience. With their firsthand experiences and expertise, your salespeople can help marketing create that exact kind of content.
Five steps for putting marketing alignment into action
Aligning sales and marketing teams is a commendable objective, but it can also be a lofty one. Effective collaborative won’t happen overnight, but the sooner you start the journey, the sooner you’ll start reaping the benefits. To bring together your sales and marketing teams, start with these…
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