It is a very common business Conundrum.
How can Marketing managers and Leaders win Sales team’s Trust?
Trust in what Marketing is doing to create opportunities and drive interest in a company’s products and services is a critical requisite for any Sales team’s engagement and support.
More Marketing campaigns don’t work to drive Trust as this only means even more Sales team commitment required to action and follow up on campaigns and leads.
Trust in what is Marketing “Value” can be a long and ever-changing journey. There are several levers that Marketing can look to apply, including Sales Incentives, Marketing Brochures, and Event Invites. Still, ultimately the one lever that consistently works is to win the Sales team’s “Hearts” [1].
That’s not so simple, I think you would agree, but what’s most important for both Sales and Marketing? Its Customers.
So the secret to solid Sales team collaboration is demonstrating that the Marketing Team know more about their customer’s future buying behaviour, intent and ecosystem of undiscovered buyers and influencers than they currently do.
OK, So how do I do that?
Through and going beyond multiple short terms awareness, brand and engagement campaigns to a precious Service provider to the Sales organisation to provide “always-on” Customer Insight, Intelligence, Intent and ongoing opportunity Pipeline.
“As a Service” has increasingly grown as a standard business platform and model for many organisations’ external customers and clients. One only needs to think of Cloud as a Service or Software as a Service.
Here we call Customer Insight, Intelligence and Intent and ongoing opportunity Pipeline Customer Leads and Opportunities as a Services. (ClaaS). This is a model built around bringing together the Sales and Marketing team’s objectives and current and focused customers. Then it becomes a platform that Marketing can easily manage with Sales teams.
Start with increasing Sales team “Trust” through Data that drives a unified Sales and Marketing Strategy.
- Havard Business Review (2010). To Win the Sales, Win Your Customer Heart. To Win the Sale, Win Your Customer’s Heart (hbr.org)
Posted on Thursday, July 14th, 2022.
