If content marketing supports the sales cycle, why are so many companies bad at it? It’s not a shortage of technology. It stems from sales and marketing not having walked the proverbial mile in each other’s shoes. This lack of understanding causes friction between what sales teams want and what marketing delivers—and when.
This session will help B2B marketers understand the sales side of the house, how the new customer journey impacts sales, the financial cost of misalignment between marketing and sales, and how to create content that not only resonates with customers, but also engages and excites your sales team. This presentation covers:
- How to uncover different expectations sales and marketing have around the customer buying cycle and sales enablement
- Find out why marketing and sales have such a different approach for a common goal – getting customers and bringing in revenue
- Learn the new rules of responsibility for sales and marketing as it relates to content marketing
- Understand how marketers can speak the language of sales in order to develop more relevant content during each step of the buyer’s journey
3. ABOUT THIS PRESENTATION
This presentation focuses on how marketers can
start to understand sales reps, what questions to
ask to uncover their true needs and help them
better engage with prospects and convert them
to customers. It’s not about technology, which is a
huge component of the sales enablement
process. Instead, it’s about how marketers and
sales reps can better understand each other and
connect as people and achieve goals together.
@CarlaJohnson
5. CONTENT MARKETING
Content marketing is a marketing technique
of creating and distributing relevant and
valuable content to attract, acquire, and
engage a clearly defined and understood
target audience – with the objective of
driving profitable customer action.
- Joe Pulizzi, Content Marketing Institute
@CarlaJohnson
6. SALES ENABLEMENT
Strategic processes that align marketing
and sales goals to inspire valuable
conversation in the right time, place
and format to move a sales opportunity
forward.
- Carla Johnson, Type A Communications
@CarlaJohnson
7. CONTENT MARKETING + SALES
ENABLEMENT
Marketing and sales integrating to tell
the same story to defined personas
with purpose of engaging, nurturing,
converting and retaining customers
with the ultimate goal of driving longterm revenue.
@CarlaJohnson
9. WHY IS THIS A PROBLEM NOW?
Misalignment between sales and marketing causes
the typical company to underperform by 10-20% in
annual revenue. (IDC)
Best-in-class organization that integrate sales and
marketing outperform those that don’t by as much
as 24% in average revenue growth. (Sirius Decisions)
The seller no longer controls the process;
the buyer does
@CarlaJohnson
10. THE SALES MACHINE
Sales concentrates on a linear process and
outdated expectations of customer
behavior.
Managers focus on fine tuning the machine
to improve results.
No room for creativity and novel
information from sales reps.
@CarlaJohnson
11. TODAY’S CUSTOMERS
Customers aren’t linear. They go through
a web of information that sales can’t
control.
Complex B2B sales require greater
internal consensus.
Customers want insights that “go beyond”
and talk about business impact.
@CarlaJohnson
16. B2B marketing organizations now spend more than
25% of their budgets on developing, delivering and
promoting content to drive business leads, influence
customer markets and grow brand presence and
authority.
Source: Better Lead Yield in the Content Marketing Field, CMO Council, June 2013
@CarlaJohnson
18. MARKETING SAYS…
“Sales is rigid, egotistical
and uninspired. They
don’t care about
customers. They only care
about selling.”
@CarlaJohnson
19. SALES SAYS…
“I poured my heart
out to marketing and
all I got back was a
truckload of shame.”
@CarlaJohnson
20. CUSTOMER CONVERSATIONS
Thinking of your initial meeting, what percent of reps were:
Not Prepared
26%
Somewhat
Prepared
31%
Source: IDC Customer Experience
@CarlaJohnson
Extremely
Prepared
16%
Very Prepared
27%
21. Basically, the overwhelming
majority of executive level
buyers tell us that how a vendor
engages with them differentiates
them a lot more than what their
products and services are or do.
Scott Santucci
Forrester Analyst
@CarlaJohnson
22. SALES & MARKETING ACTUALLY AGREE
Improved
Differentiation/Story
53%
36%
27%
Better Understanding of What
Content to Use, When, Who and
How to Present It
Increase Marketing's Visibility into the
Sales Pipeline and Deals Closed from
Marketing-Generated Leads
Sales Enablement: Fulfilling the Last Frontier of Sales-Marketing Alignment, Aberdeen Group
@CarlaJohnson
23. Move away from helping sales
people sell and instead, help
buyers buy.
Michael Brenner
Vice President, Marketing and Content Strategy, SAP
@BrennerMichael
@CarlaJohnson
25. SALES REPS ARE LIKE CUSTOMERS
• If it’s hard, they won’t engage
• They want to know what matters to them
• They need education
• They connect through stories
• They need consistent, relevant
communication
@CarlaJohnson
27. TALKING WITH SALES
Sales teams are like customers. The
problems they say they have aren’t the real
problems.
What questions do they really
need answers to?
Go 5 deep with “why?”
@CarlaJohnson
28. WHO TO TALK TO
20% of an organizations’ sales people
generate 60% (or up to 80%) of its
revenue.
Focus on the performers.
This group can help identify top
priorities.
@CarlaJohnson
29. EXPLORE MOTIVATORS
Identify what’s really motivating them.
People who buy high-end bikes
don’t want a better bike. They
want to be a better cyclist.
Create content that expands
on these motives.
@CarlaJohnson
30. BE WILLING TO LEARN
• Your company’s specific sales process
• How and when conversations evolve with
prospects/customers
• What kind of engagement communications
sales prefers for them
• What sections they want to tweak and edit
within tools and why
@CarlaJohnson
31. HELP SALES UNDERSTAND
• Sales conversations are business conversations
• What behavior do they want to influence?
• What action do you want them to take? When?
• The pillars of your story so they can tell it in
their way and in different circumstances
• What your brand story is and how to tell it
consistently
@CarlaJohnson
32. ASK SALES
• What story do you tell? How can marketing and
sales tell it more consistently?
• Why does your audience have these interests
and challenges?
• How can you tell your story so it solves a future
problem?
• How can we create disruption in our customers’
minds?
@CarlaJohnson