Good salespeople can sell anything, in virtually any situation.
That doesn’t mean selling is the same today as it was 25, or even five, years ago.
The art of selling has changed dramatically. More precisely, there’s been a fundamental shift in the way we buy.
People don’t want to be sold. In fact, they have a pretty negative reaction to anything that even feels like pressure to buy.
With social media, Google, and online reviews, today’s buyers are well-informed. When they begin to explore a purchase, the first thing they do is turn to the Internet.
As a result, successful salespeople take on more of an expert consultant role. It’s less about being the sole source of information, and more about building relationships and recognizing the right time to offer a tailored solution that fits.
More than ever, sales and marketing must be in synch.
The buyer drives the journey
In the pre-Internet days, the salesperson’s job was to propel people through the buying journey. Selling was so central to the whole process; it was called the sales funnel.
Now, buyers drive their own journeys, seeking information well before they’re ready to engage with a salesperson. Research shows that today’s buyers spend more than half of the buying process online doing research and seeking input from others. Nine in ten buyers say access to online information has changed their expectations of the companies they buy from.
<Related Resource: The case for content marketing: How to make it work for your small business >
To influence the early stages of the buyer journey, companies must create relevant content that provides answers customers are searching for and anticipates questions they don’t even know they have. Finding and engaging with credible, informative content makes consumers 131 percent more likely to buy. (I know I’m biased, but don’t you love that stat?)
But, creating strategic, compelling content is only half of the equation. When you can pair content with complementary lead generation, qualifying, and nurturing, you become a force to be reckoned with in the buyer’s journey.
How do you do it? (Successful Smarketing)
It’s not a good use of sales resources or marketing dollars to have salespeople cold calling a list of prospects who don’t match up to who you’re targeting with your digital marketing and content strategies.
When you see that sentence in writing, it seems SO obvious. But in real life, it’s exactly what happens when sales and marketing operate separately.
The latest trend is to combine sales and marketing teams into one. Just like any celebrity couple, this practice has been given a combined name. Smarketing.
To achieve successful smarketing, I don’t think you need to go as far as changing your organizational structure. But adopting the principles behind it is critical. To close more sales in today’s search-first world, sales and marketing teams must integrate their efforts.
5 secrets behind successful smarketing
1. Be clear about why you’re marketing.
Marketing is about sales enablement. Period. Brand awareness? You’re building a brand to drive sales. Customer retention? Yes, you’re reinforcing sales already made. But you’re also looking to create long-term relationships (and additional sales… and referrals).
2. Agree on who your target is – and who it’s not.
Today’s buyers may be driving the journey, but well-integrated sales and marketing can offer a best route suggestion like any good GPS.
First, you have to know your target audience inside and out. That means sales and marketing have to agree upon it. It can’t be based on gut feelings or change on a dime. Dig in and do research. Quantify the opportunity and create detailed buyer personas. When you know what makes your ideal targets tick, marketing knows how to create content that catches their attention. And sales knows just what to say when following up on leads.
<Related Resource: Don’t assume: Why buyer personas are essential for your business and how to create them>
3. Respect the buyer’s journey.
The days of the linear sales funnel that starts with a prospective customer becoming aware of your solution, progressing to interest, then desire, to a sale is outdated. A better way to envision it is as a cycle. Here’s the depiction I like best from Express Writers. It shows the different stages your prospects go through on the way to becoming a customer. Plus, the stages aren’t linear, ending when the prospect becomes a customer. Instead, it’s shown as an ongoing cycle, which is a contemporary and customer-focused way to think about engaging potential customers.
Integrated sales and marketing strategies need to effectively meet buyers along their journeys and offer assistance at each stage that is both credible and appreciated. That can be marketing content like blogs, lead generation campaigns, or case studies. It’s also webinars, consultations, and proposals. Successful smarketing means these elements are working together, not in spite of each other.
4. Collaborate. Collaborate. And, collaborate some more.
To succeed, smarketing needs a sincere commitment from both sales and marketing. It’s not about the sales team playing along just to get the promotional materials they want from the marketing team. And it’s not about marketing doing research on their own and informing sales who the target audience is.
Optimizing the prospect’s interactions with content and seamlessly handing leads off to sales for the right follow-up at the right time is both art and science. And it takes the combination of marketing insights and front-line sales experience to test and evaluate different approaches, and ultimately get it right.
Even when sales and marketing are separate organizationally, they should be BFFs. Regular smarketing meetings to communicate, share results, and refine the strategy are a must. Working collaboratively in real-time on a daily basis is the ideal.
5. Share the objectives.
The sales goals shouldn’t belong just to the sales reps. Likewise, objectives for qualified leads and conversion rates aren’t all on the marketing team to achieve. When viewed as a cycle, with each contributing to the other, they become shared smarketing objectives that define success for all.
Is it time to amp up your company’s smarketing success? Write Hand Ann can help you create and execute content marketing and lead generation campaigns that pair perfectly with your sales outreach.
