It’s no big secret that sales and marketing walk a tight line between friend and foe. Traditionally, each has held separate roles with separate goals. That wasn’t effective then and it certainly isn’t now.
Sales and marketing are working towards a closer relationship than they have had in years due to the evolving buying process. Prospects are smarter and more risk adverse, and this has caused sales reps and marketers to work together to create smarter strategies that engage and nurture leads.
Let’s take a look at 3 of the most common misconceptions that sales reps have of their marketing team and how to overcome them.
1. Marketing isn’t producing quality leads.
Marketing is always taking the blame for a lost deal—“It was a poor lead, they weren’t qualified to buy,” etc., etc. Marketing and sales must forge a closer relationship and work together to uncover quality leads. Lead generation is time-consuming and complicated. It takes a number of tools, strategies, resources, and time to target the right prospects. Sales can help marketing in their LeadGen efforts by providing insights into the following:
- Common objections
- Buyer process
- Tools used
- Progression of deals in CRM system
- Definition of a lead at each stage of the sales process
- Types of offers needed to engage with prospects at every stage
- Workflows designed to manage leads in each stage
2. Marketing doesn’t know anything about our target prospects, because they don’t work face-to-face with them.
That last part might be true—your marketing team might not work directly with prospects. But they certainly work indirectly with them in just about everything they do.
The evolved buying process we find ourselves in today has created a greater need for high quality, informative, helpful content in every stage of the buyer’s journey. And where does that content come from? You guessed it. Your marketing team.
Marketers are involved in the research and strategy around targeting prospects. Just because they don’t always interact with them, doesn’t mean they aren’t doing their job. Here are a few questions that marketing and sales can work on together to better understand your ideal prospect:
- Define our ideal prospect.
- What are the major pain points for our ideal prospect?
- How does every prospect measure up against our ideal prospect profile?
- What is the cost to acquire each new customer?
- What is the lifetime spend of each customer?
3. Creating content is easy.
False. Creating content is not easy, and creating remarkable content certainly isn’t easy. Marketers are constantly struggling to produce content that engages and nurtures prospects throughout the various stages of the buyer’s journey. The struggle is made harder by a lack of insights and cooperation with sales. Again, marketing and sales need to come together and work through content needs together. Here are some key questions to answer:
- What are the content goals for sales and for marketing?
- What types of content are our ideal prospects consuming?
- Where do our prospects find content online?
- What types of content are ideal for each stage of the buyer’s journey?
- How will we track and measure how our content performs?
Answering these questions brings your sales and marketing team one step closer to creating a cohesive ROI.
If the state of buying is any indication, navigating through a traditional sales process just won’t work anymore. Your sales reps have to be inclined to work closely with marketing to achieve their goals and generate more revenue.
Learn more about LeadGen and how sales and marketing can work together to achieve it. Download our eBook below!
{{cta(‘d561c4e2-b6da-4cb8-8c34-9df61f48abaf’)}}
