How Marketing Can Help Sales Achieve These Three Outcomes

Whether you are new to the marketing role or already an experienced marketing leader, you have probably built an overwhelming list of marketing duties and responsibilities.

On top of that, you have to make sure the marketing efforts are aligned with those of your sales team. It is crucial that the sales and marketing teams are on the same page before you start any marketing activities, so that you know your efforts are setting up the salespeople for success, not failure. 

Wondering where to start and how your team can help sales? Read on to learn about three outcomes every salesperson is striving for.  

Start with your highest order objective

For most marketing leaders, the highest objective is to identify and qualify prospects for your company’s solution. Every decision should align with that goal to ensure that your marketing team, the sales team, and the overall company are successful.

Once your main driver is clearly defined, consider these important steps to build a marketing system for prospecting to your target market. Following these steps will help your team better target prospects and qualify more leads for the sales team to convert into customers.

Salesperson is Striving for 1 of 3 Outcomes

When you are building your marketing system, you need to understand the mindset of a salesperson. This way, you can build your system to generate leads that give the sales team a greater chance of success.

Essentially, a salesperson is looking for one of three outcomes when engaging with a prospect.

Secure a meeting

After the SDR has set the meeting for your sales rep, the sales process can actually begin. However, there may be other circumstances that prevent this from occurring. Maybe your prospect needs to reschedule the meeting, and that is understandable. Things come up from time to time, and if that happens, the sales reps need to make sure they follow up with the prospect to reschedule the meeting for a more convenient time. If they don't, what can happen is that the meeting never gets picked back up and they lose the prospect. Sales reps should try to secure the meeting by staying in touch with the prospect, and more importantly, showing that they care. Don't leave it up to the SDR - call or text the prospect yourself. It is more personable, and the prospect will feel like they really matter to you because you reached out personally. This way, you have a better chance at actually meeting with a prospect that might otherwise fall through the cracks. 

The same goes for a prospect that simply didn't show up for the meeting. Pick up the phone, call or shoot them a text - maybe something came up and they weren't able to attend. Even if they never intended to meet with you, your text might make them change their mind. 

Nurture actionable leads

We hear very often that a prospect is a good fit, but it's just not the right time for them. Once the prospect has been qualified for your solution, but the timing is off, the individual should be handed back to the marketing team to be placed in a nurturing campaign. Marketing efforts should focus on staying top-of-mind with periodic outreach calls and emails. Then, when the timing is right, the sales team can re-engage with the prospect.

Disqualify the prospect

Unfortunately, the salesperson determined that the prospect is not a fit for your company’s solution and no longer needs to be pursued. Perhaps your team did not gather enough information to make this determination before handing off the individual to the sales team. It’s important that your team note this information in your marketing database to ensure that you build complete profiles.

For the sales process to flourish in your company, you also need to understand the sales team’s process for reaching out to prospects. Do they like to make phone calls before sending emails? Do they prefer to get an email response, before attempting a phone call? Do they like to send industry information or case studies as an ice breaker before attempting a call? This way, you can help support the sales function when building your marketing system.

If you need help with you sales process, contact us today and see how we can help you.