Leveraging synergies between marketing and sales
Everyone of working age has encountered a joke about sales and marketing at some point, even if their role has nothing to do with either functions. At the heart of these jokes, however, is the idea that these are two departments that are actually supposed to make work easier for each other rather than not. The jokes work precisely because they subvert this expectation. They mirror and exaggerate the ground reality. Therein lies the comedy and, well, the tragedy. Because when sales and marketing truly work hand in hand, your organization is able to unlock growth like never before.
Sales enablement is a discipline where sales and marketing can actually come together to further an organization's growth. Sure, not all businesses have the resources that large enterprises do in devoting entire teams to this function. But it is nevertheless something every business should leverage in whatever capacity they can, regardless of the size of their business. In this blog, we'll look at sales enablement through the lens of marketing.
What it is
So what is sales enablement? Sales enablement is all about equipping your sales teams in order to maximize their efficiency when engaging prospects. It's only common sense that teams work better when they receive the right tools and support to do their work. And you'll see that when these things are in place, the average success rates for your sales teams will be higher overall. And since profit generation is the whole point of running a business, it only makes sense that you go all out in supporting the people that make the sales.
Who should own sales enablement? The name suggests that it's not sales. Should marketing own sales enablement entirely? No, this isn't recommended either. Ideally, it should be a collaborative effort between the sales and marketing departments, since it requires the expertise of both groups. Sales lives the practical reality of engaging with customers on a daily basis so their inputs on optimizing engagement is key. They can ensure that the marketing materials developed are practical and usable. Having sales be a part of sales enablement is also important from the point of buy-in from sales teams. Marketing on the other hand researches the business landscape and creates the assets that customers and prospects see. So their inputs on how to use these collaterals is important.
Sales enablement ensures that sales excellence is not restricted to a handful of star players but crystallized in scalable processes with helpful tools benefiting the entire organization. A sales person having great sales aptitude and charisma is fantastic, but your sales teams and processes should be so well-developed that your company should never have to depend on that x-factor.
Product positioning to asset creation
Left to their own devices, sales people might go with their gut when it comes to the way they pitch your products. This isn't ideal. What is required is to zero in on the most effective pitch for your product and then have every sales person reap the benefits of this. Marketing has the ability to lay the foundation for this switch.
This starts with working with the product team to decide on the target market, and framing broad value propositions. Marketers analyze the product and its features in the context of the overall market and use these insights to position the product. This requires deep market research and analysis of the competitors and market trends. The positioning statement that is crafted as a result of this process allows the product to distinguish itself from other alternatives and claim mind-share among the target market. This clarity is key, and should be reflected in all collaterals that marketers create for sales. Every engagement that sales people get into will benefit as a result of integrating the positioning statement into its core.
In addition to the higher success rates that such an approach will lead to, it also means more consistency in messaging. It narrows the talking points to what is important, and avoids negative cues and self-defeating contradictions. This consistency is great for customer experience and makes for a smoother buyer journey.
Marketers also bear the responsibility of identifying buyer personas. These are the broad clusters into which your potential customers fall, based on demographic patterns, common goals, and a range of other factors. A solid understanding of the personas should inform sales teams in the messaging for different customers at different stages of the buyer journey. Sales staff should be aware of what assets are available to target these different personas, and should be trained to understand the competitive landscape thoroughly. Marketing might also equip the sales teams with different versions of the same asset for different personas. For example, the sales team for a voice AI company cannot approach finance and telecommunication companies with the same pitch or content since the use-cases of the product will be drastically different.
In case your prospect is switching from a competitor to you, that buyer's journey also requires different assets depending on the competitor. Why are buyers more likely to choose your competitor X instead of your brand? What is the perceived advantage that X has over you, and how does a sales person counter this thinking? How is your business better positioned to serve that specific user persona in a better way than X? This will have to be different from the way the salesperson engages with a prospect currently served by competitor Y. Content that compares the advantages of choosing your product vis-a-vis your competitors will be a powerful tool in converting prospects.
Product and pitch training
Sales people need to truly understand the product in order to engage properly with prospects and to answer practical queries about various nuances of its functionality. They need to be able to talk from a position of expertise so that what they say doesn't sound like empty spiel. Video demos are one of the most effective and scalable ways of developing this expertise. Marketing can work in tandem with the product team in order to create them. While it's possible for the product team to do it on their own, only marketing will be able to make demos time-efficient and sticky so that a maximum amount of info is transferred in a minimum amount of time in an engaging and memorable way.
In addition to the training sessions about the product, sales teams also need training on using assets. Without the right training, sales people may commit a range of mistakes including using a particular asset in a situation it was not intended for, or using an older outdated version of an asset instead of the newer version. Creating a framework of best practices for how sales people leverage content and tools, and how they engage with leads, is vital. We will explore some of these issues in the next section.
Training isn't a one-and-done situation. It is an iterative process that adapts to changes in the organization and the broader business landscape. Collaterals need to evolve to reflect the organization, its products, and its features as conditions change. They also need to reflect the ever-changing competitive landscape. This means that a person trained on a particular collateral in 2018 probably needs re-training on using the updated version of the same collateral in 2022. Four years is plenty of time for the context for many of the talking points to have changed significantly.
Monitoring mechanisms should be put in place to ensure that sales people are using collaterals. This ties in with ideas we will explore in the next section.
Asset awareness and adoption
You use your marketing acumen to create a whole host of collaterals that address your key personas' buying objectives in an intelligent way. You make sure it has great copy and enticing design. It aligns with your strategy and you know you nailed it with the messaging. You can't wait to hear how sales used it to convert a whole bunch of leads. But it never happens. You wait and you wait, and still, not a peep. Turns out that your salespeople don't even know about the collaterals.
Churning out marketing material is pointless when people are not aware of their existence. This is why marketing teams need to create an organized repository of assets that sales personnel can access when they are getting in touch with prospects or attending events - battlecards, brochures, case studies, you name it. Marketers must make it their responsibility to make the process of accessing required collaterals as smooth and seamless as possible. It means creating a system that's intuitive and hassle-free, and setting clear expectations as to what collaterals are to be expected and utilized by the sales people for specific situations. Creating checklists is an effective way to go about doing this.
Your collaterals need to be a reflection of the present, not the past. This is why marketers should make it easy for people to access the most updated material with the latest stats for your organization or its products at any given time. As a first step, marketers should put in place proper folders and file naming conventions. Sales teams must then be trained to find the latest assets at any time, and marketers need to update the latest versions of these files without creating version control confusion. Cloud-powered work drives are especially well-suited for this task.
Feedback loops
Feedback should be collected from sales people about how marketing assets are used and are performing across the sales pipeline. This can be done through surveys and by monitoring key sales KPIs. Both qualitative and quantitative information are helpful. Get insights into which assets are helping accelerate sales cycles, which assets are most usable, and so on. These learnings will help you optimize other assets along these dimensions in the future.
Sales teams should relay the feedback (be it direct or indirect) from prospects to marketing teams. Marketing teams can then understand how to optimize their assets for higher conversions and shorter sales cycles. These insights help marketing to improve the training programs and assets that they develop for sales teams. This, in turn, enables sales teams to perform better. As a result, prospects get better customer experience with more relevant information and a smoother buyer journey.
Customer advocacy
Customers are not just a source of revenue; they are also great assets for marketing your business. Case studies and testimonials are one of the best ways to demonstrate value to prospects, as any sales or marketing professional will tell you. By identifying customers from across a wide range of industries, niches, and use-cases, you can create more relevant and customized marketing assets.
Room for growth
Sales enablement is never finished, and that's good news! There's always room for improvement and optimization, meaning that you can always use it to grow your revenues. By working in close collaboration, sales and marketing can unlock new growth trajectories for your business.
