Every business needs a marketing function and a sales function to succeed.
It doesn’t matter if you’re a small business or a multinational corporation with thousands of people, a successful business today needs to clearly define both their sales and marketing roles. But most importantly, they both need to work symbiotically together.
Whether sales and marketing are performed by the same person, different people, a team or an external contractor, if these two functions are operating independently, then you’re going to struggle.
So, how do you get sales and marketing to work more closely together?
Sales and marketing are both changing
They’re rapidly evolving due to:
- More empowered customers
- Greater tech advancements
- Evolving client demands
However, one surprising fact is that many marketing and sales teams have no idea how to improve their processes and technology to keep up.
For example, marketers today face an unprecedented number of requests to create content that enables the sales team to move prospects and customers through their buying journey. Yet, many marketers still struggle to adequately fill the content-demand gap and align their work to the specific needs of the sales team.
The marketing and sales divide is real
This content-demand gap is deeply rooted in the broader reality that 9 out of 10 marketing and sales leaders admit that there’s a misalignment between the two functions.
We all know how marketing teams mostly focus on strategy, positioning, and creating demand. However, the sales team’s lack of alignment with those initiatives along with the inconsistency of messages delivered during customer conversations are just some of the growing issues that need to be addressed in order to achieve business goals.
While marketing needs their strategies to be efficiently implemented, sales also needs to have compelling conversations and the right training to help them do that.
And in order for businesses to keep up with the rapid changes, we need what’s called: “marketing enablement”.
What is marketing enablement?
Marketing enablement is a structured approach to boost the productivity of teams in different departments – specifically the sales team. It involves ensuring marketing teams have sufficient insights and technology to maximise the quality of their research, projects and efficiency. Through strategic insights, marketers can then create content that resonates and orchestrate campaigns that drive buyers to act.
This approach breaks down the barriers between the sales and marketing teams and helps everyone work together for the good of the company.
Too often, marketing and sales teams are out of sync with each other and use different digital content and brand assets to sell the same products to customers.
That causes confusion and unnecessary waste.
Marketing enablement, however, can drive greater results when businesses unite it with a sales enablement strategy and solution – making upstream marketing activities more efficient while enabling downstream sales activity to become more effective. Whether it’s giving both teams easy access to up-to-date materials or bringing your sales team’s valuable perspective into the content creation process, there are many benefits to bridging the gaps between sales and marketing.
The importance of marketing enablement for your business
While this is not an entirely new idea, the need for a dedicated marketing enablement function is now more important than ever.
Marketing enablement gives your team the resources they need to provide a more personalised experience to prospects. That personalisation is key as it adds the human touch you need to really connect with potential customers and close the deal.
We all know it – data is the lifeblood of any marketing initiative. And where does reliable information come from?
It’s from the sales team.
You can produce value-adding and relevant content from all the data sourced from the sales team that ensures you’ll keep your audience engaged.
Having this approach in your organisation can also have a measurable impact on the business. Once you learn how to leverage marketing enablement to align with your GTM (Go-to-Market) sales teams, you are able to create personalised experiences for your customers that:
- yield a faster time to close
- higher lead conversions and
- increase revenue.
When evaluating a marketing enablement strategy, consider the following factors first:
- Scalability – Make sure that the solution can be scaled up or down as needed.
- Flexibility – Ensure your solution is easy to use and adaptable to the business’ changing needs.
- Automation – Look for solutions that are automated so that tasks can be completed more quickly and with less effort on your part.
How to build a winning marketing enablement strategy
Truth is, there’s no one-size-fits-all answer to this question, as the best way to come up with a great marketing enablement strategy will always vary depending on your business and the specific needs that you’re addressing.
Here are our 5 tips on how to build a successful marketing enablement strategy include to get you started:
1. Have a collaborative mindset
Although marketing and sales may be on different teams, both have the same objective – to make the sale. Implement frequent, direct communication between the two departments and define common goals.
Even if joint workshops and informal in-person gatherings are not possible, the key is to find ways to always share valuable information. Establish performance metrics and track against them.
2. Clarify your most effective messaging
Marketing and sales teams can sometimes clash on brand messaging. Your sales team might have a tried-and-tested message that works over the phone or in person, but your marketing team might have a different approach. Working together to clarify these messages is a win-win for everyone.
Remember, it’s difficult to align your story if everyone is using different content or struggling to find the right content.
3. Personalise at scale
Make it easy for your sales team to discover and personalise content at scale for prospects. Ensure that the right mechanisms exist for users to discover content that will resonate with the buyers they are targeting, while still complying with brand standards and other regulatory requirements.
4. Create high-quality content
Content like blog posts, podcasts and videos can allow you to deliver value to a lot of buyers in a scalable, controllable way. Some marketers and salespeople prefer to let high-quality content do the talking, so provide a lot of high-quality content that maps to the buying process.
If you need assistance in producing valuable materials, a trusted copywriting and message marketing agency like Melotti Media can help you with your industry-related content.
5. Leverage engagement analytics
In-depth engagement analytics can provide you with insights into how prospects are engaging with content shared by sales. Intelligent content management helps answer important questions, like:
Which content moves sales further down the pipeline?
What marketing pieces are sellers using the most and why?
Knowing what works tells the sales team what to do more of — and what not to. And marketers are able to make data-driven decisions about how to optimise every piece of content they create.
Marketing enablement is critical for any organisation that wants to achieve overarching success
Marketing enablement should always be part of your corporate culture.
This strategy can help your teams work together more effectively to qualify new leads, build customer loyalty, and drive revenue. With the right technology and insights, everyone will have a cooperative and reliable way to discover the most effective materials for a specific application, need or buyer.
As always and in all ways, businesses that understand all employees are involved in sales are the ones that truly recognise the meaning of marketing enablement and use it to their advantage.
How can Melotti Media help?
Like us, we understand that you want to achieve business success – and a powerful way is using content marketing that will offer customer value and support the sales team.
However, you may find that you’re time-poor and spread thin or you still have a lot of unanswered questions.
You don’t need to worry!
At Melotti Media, we can assist with all your content marketing and copywriting needs while you focus on what matters most to you – growing your business.
Let’s start earning the results your business deserves!
To speak to your trusted message marketers and copywriters, email us at enquire@melottimedia.com.au
We can sharpen your words to achieve your goals today!
The Melotti Media Team
Melotti Media | Copywriting & Message Marketing Bureau
www.melottimedia.com.au
