You got into marketing for a reason. You’re a free-thinking creative who excels at understanding what people want, and you obsess over what your customers and prospects need from you. You love executing your crazy campaign idea involving a new TikTok dance or drone-delivered mailers. Or some version of that, right?
You’ve probably even watched sales do whatever magic they do at some point during your career and thought, there’s no way I have the personality for sales. Sure, it’s true, there can be a “type” of person that goes into marketing versus sales, but we hate to break it to you: You’re also that type, whether you realize (or like) it or not.
Sales reps, like you, obsess over delivering the best outcome to a prospect or customer. Sales, like you, benefit from your wild campaign ideas. That’s because at the end of the day, we’re all responsible for selling and generating revenue—in many cases, regardless of your role at your organization. It just looks different depending on your title.
We’ve got a couple of ways for you to be able to help support your sales team even more than you already are just by being you. By the end of this post, you even might feel like you can add “and sales” on your LinkedIn profile, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
Be There for Your Sales Team
Hi, Captain Obvious Terminus Blog Post Header. Yes, we already know, and there’s a reason we’re saying it again. You’re already doing this on principle, but are you actually doing everything you can to serve the team? A better question: How do you know if you are or are not?
The answer, again, is a simple and obvious one: Communicate with sales. Over-communicate with them. Call/Slack/Teams/text them and chit-chat about their day. What deals fell through and why? Which ones worked, and why? When/if we all go back to normal, pick up your laptop and sit near a different sales rep one or more days a week.
Once you’ve built that relationship, it’ll come more naturally over time and you’ll begin understanding their needs and delivering them. And once delivered, circle back around to learn if you were successful.
Snoop on Sales Calls
Okay, it’s not quite snooping if you’ve got permission, but it feels more fun to call it snooping…so we’re gonna.
If you’ve done everything described above, you’ve done a lot of listening and responding to what sales has experienced. This will give you the basis for what you need, but sales still serves as the middleman in this scenario.
There’s nothing quite like actually hearing straight from the customer/prospect. Not just what they’re saying, but how they’re saying it. What’s keeping them from pulling the trigger? What pain points do they see on a daily basis, and how can you help deliver those solutions to them? When you can answer these questions, your audience will be able to feel the authentic transparency and personalization in your marketing—because you’ll be responding to real-world challenges. Pro-tip: we use Gong to do this ourselves and listen in on sales conversations.
Turn That Snoopery Into Content
Chances are, the more you communicate with sales and the more you listen in on calls, the more you’ll begin to hear recurring objections, needs, wants. These meaningful connections with sales, clients, and prospects will pay off in the form of high-value content. Our guy Morgan Ingram says it best in the tweet below.
Great outbound marketing isn't possible unless sales and marketing teams communicate and work together.
— Terminus (@Terminus) April 7, 2021
Period.@morganjingram shared more tips in our Modern Guide to Outbound Sales & Marketing: https://t.co/Ql7GJWpJN9 pic.twitter.com/kXYbAVp2pX
Your counterparts in sales often have a single one-on-one shot to make the sale. If they’re not armed with the right proof of value, that sale could end before it begins.
But a white paper, blog post, podcast episode, video, ad, or other collateral will create a proactive — and preemptive — evergreen response to any question or outstanding objective. Not only that, your well-curated content based in real feedback will reach a wide audience and garner real results, too.
For more on how marketing and sales can work together closer in a work-from-home, digital first world, check out The Modern Guide to Outbound Sales & Marketing.
