It is always interesting to examine the evolving and ever-tense relationship between sales and marketing. And as far as tension goes, nothing quite beats the tension in product oriented companies. In these product-oriented and B2B companies, the sales team expects marketers to provide them with highly qualified and sales-ready leads, that have expressed a specific need and interest in the products, have the budget to spend and are ready to make a transaction.
Poor marketers – expected to perform faster, smarter and boost the sales pipeline more than ever before. Though we live in a hyper marketing era, with numerous supporting products, automation tools, and analytics to support every move – the marketer’s job does not get any easier.
The resulting tension has marketing teams standing on their toes to create great content, get creative with distribution, nurture leads passionately and get personally acquainted with each automation platform on the market. However, automating every touchpoint in the journey will only take sales and marketing so far. Why? Because what generates great results are great salespeople – men and women who connect with their prospects on a personal level, far beyond the scope of any platform, product or feature. A connection that is based on mutual values (i.e. sports). Nowadays, marketers are expected to create that magic, preferably in a no touch or low touch journey.
At Growthanomics, we believe that alignment between sales and marketing is a crucial ingredient for boosting conversion. When it comes to automating a sales process, we reverse engineer the face-to-face sales engagements that sell. We then align these engagements with the marketing plans we so artfully craft and execute. The most successful outcomes? Surprisingly, when we don’t promote the company’s products until the very last stages of the funnel. We do, however, promote mutual values. These values are the common ground and the essence of all the sales and marketing efforts we run. Once there is alignment between the values of the customer and those of the company, then the sales funnel can mature and breed awareness, interest, intent, consideration and conversion.
How do you best engage your contacts and leads? Learn more about connecting with customers through mutual values in this short read on INC magazine. It will also lead you to a mutual value mapping canvas, that will help you run the ‘mutual value’ exercise internally.
