Making Content Work for the Sales Force Carla Johnson, President Type A Communications @CarlaJohnson
The Good, The Bad and The Ugly: Making Content Work for the Sales Force
Jan 20, 2015
If content marketing supports the sales cycle, why are so many companies bad at it? It’s not a shortage of technology. It stems from sales and marketing not having walked the proverbial mile in each other’s shoes. This lack of understanding causes friction between what sales teams want and what marketing delivers—and when.
This session will help B2B marketers understand the sales side of the house, how the new customer journey impacts sales, the financial cost of misalignment between marketing and sales, and how to create content that not only resonates with customers, but also engages and excites your sales team. This presentation covers:
- How to uncover different expectations sales and marketing have around the customer buying cycle and sales enablement
- Find out why marketing and sales have such a different approach for a common goal – getting customers and bringing in revenue
- Learn the new rules of responsibility for sales and marketing as it relates to content marketing
- Understand how marketers can speak the language of sales in order to develop more relevant content during each step of the buyer’s journey
This session will help B2B marketers understand the sales side of the house, how the new customer journey impacts sales, the financial cost of misalignment between marketing and sales, and how to create content that not only resonates with customers, but also engages and excites your sales team. This presentation covers:
- How to uncover different expectations sales and marketing have around the customer buying cycle and sales enablement
- Find out why marketing and sales have such a different approach for a common goal – getting customers and bringing in revenue
- Learn the new rules of responsibility for sales and marketing as it relates to content marketing
- Understand how marketers can speak the language of sales in order to develop more relevant content during each step of the buyer’s journey
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Transcript
Making Content Work for the Sales Force
Carla Johnson, President
Type A Communications
@CarlaJohnson
@CarlaJohnson
ABOUT CARLA JOHNSON
@CarlaJohnson
ABOUT THIS PRESENTATION
This presentation focuses on how marketers can start to understand sales reps, what questions to ask to uncover their true needs and help them better engage with prospects and convert them to customers. It’s not about technology, which is a huge component of the sales enablement process. Instead, it’s about how marketers and sales reps can better understand each other and connect as people and achieve goals together.
@CarlaJohnson
CONTENT MARKETING
Content marketing is a marketing technique of creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire, and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience – with the objective of driving profitable customer action.
- Joe Pulizzi, Content Marketing Institute
@CarlaJohnson
SALES ENABLEMENT
Strategic processes that align marketing and sales goals to inspire valuable conversation in the right time, place and format to move a sales opportunity forward.
- Carla Johnson, Type A Communications
@CarlaJohnson
CONTENT MARKETING + SALES ENABLEMENT
Marketing and sales integrating to tell the same story to defined personas with purpose of engaging, nurturing, converting and retaining customers with the ultimate goal of driving long-term revenue.
THE UGLY
1 @CarlaJohnson
@CarlaJohnson
WHY IS THIS A PROBLEM NOW?
Misalignment between sales and marketing causes the typical company to underperform by 10-20% in annual revenue. (IDC)
Best-in-class organization that integrate sales and marketing outperform those that don’t by as much as 24% in average revenue growth. (Sirius Decisions)
The seller no longer controls the process; the buyer does
@CarlaJohnson
THE SALES MACHINE
Sales concentrates on a linear process and outdated expectations of customer behavior.
Managers focus on fine tuning the machine to improve results.
No room for creativity and novel information from sales reps.
@CarlaJohnson
TODAY’S CUSTOMERS
Customers aren’t linear. They go through a web of information that sales can’t control.
Complex B2B sales require greater internal consensus.
Customers want insights that “go beyond” and talk about business impact.
@CarlaJohnson
Source: CatapultWorks
THE CHANGING BUYING PROCESS
THE CHANGING BUYING PROCESS
Source: B2Beacon
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@CarlaJohnson
THE HIDDEN SALES CYCLE
THE BAD
2 @CarlaJohnson
@CarlaJohnson
Source: Better Lead Yield in the Content Marketing Field, CMO Council, June 2013
B2B marketing organizations now spend more than 25% of their budgets on developing, delivering and promoting content to drive business leads, influence customer markets and grow brand presence and authority.
50% TO
90%
of collateral
created by
marketing is
never used
by sales
@CarlaJohnson
@CarlaJohnson
“Sales is rigid, egotistical and uninspired. They
don’t care about customers. They only care
about selling.”
MARKETING SAYS…
@CarlaJohnson
“I poured my heart
out to marketing and
all I got back was a
truckload of shame.”
SALES SAYS…
@CarlaJohnson
Extremely Prepared
16%
Very Prepared 27% Somewhat
Prepared 31%
Not Prepared 26%
Source: IDC Customer Experience
CUSTOMER CONVERSATIONS
Thinking of your initial meeting, what percent of reps were:
Basically, the overwhelming majority of executive level buyers tell us that how a vendor engages with them differentiates them a lot more than what their products and services are or do. Scott Santucci Forrester Analyst
@CarlaJohnson
@CarlaJohnson
Sales Enablement: Fulfilling the Last Frontier of Sales-Marketing Alignment, Aberdeen Group
Improved Differentiation/Story
Better Understanding of What Content to Use, When, Who and How to Present It
Increase Marketing's Visibility into the Sales Pipeline and Deals Closed from Marketing-Generated Leads
53%
36%
27%
SALES & MARKETING ACTUALLY AGREE
Move away from helping sales people sell and instead, help buyers buy. Michael Brenner Vice President, Marketing and Content Strategy, SAP @BrennerMichael
@CarlaJohnson
THE GOOD
3 @CarlaJohnson
@CarlaJohnson
SALES REPS ARE LIKE CUSTOMERS
• If it’s hard, they won’t engage
• They want to know what matters to them
• They need education
• They connect through stories
• They need consistent, relevant communication
@CarlaJohnson
Product Marketing
Give ‘em everything
Marketing
Only the important stuff
Sales Reps
No time. No attention.
@CarlaJohnson
TALKING WITH SALES
Sales teams are like customers. The problems they say they have aren’t the real problems.
What questions do they really need answers to?
Go 5 deep with “why?”
@CarlaJohnson
WHO TO TALK TO
20% of an organizations’ sales people generate 60% (or up to 80%) of its revenue.
Focus on the performers.
This group can help identify top priorities.
@CarlaJohnson
EXPLORE MOTIVATORS
Identify what’s really motivating them.
People who buy high-end bikes don’t want a better bike. They want to be a better cyclist.
Create content that expands on these motives.
@CarlaJohnson
BE WILLING TO LEARN
• Your company’s specific sales process
• How and when conversations evolve with prospects/customers
• What kind of engagement communications sales prefers for them
• What sections they want to tweak and edit within tools and why
@CarlaJohnson
HELP SALES UNDERSTAND
• Sales conversations are business conversations
• What behavior do they want to influence?
• What action do you want them to take? When?
• The pillars of your story so they can tell it in their way and in different circumstances
• What your brand story is and how to tell it consistently
@CarlaJohnson
ASK SALES
• What story do you tell? How can marketing and sales tell it more consistently?
• Why does your audience have these interests and challenges?
• How can you tell your story so it solves a future problem?
• How can we create disruption in our customers’ minds?
@CarlaJohnson
“Marketing absolutely hit
the mark. I feel like they
now know the customer as
well as we do.”
THE GOAL
People will forget
what you said,
people will forget
what you did, but
people will never
forget how you
made them feel.
- Maya Angelou
Carla Johnson, President Type A Communications (720) 344-0987 [email protected] www.goTypeA.com
Type A Communications @carlajohnson Carla Johnson
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