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As you consider the benefits of the new sales team, you’ll find endless ways marketing and sales complement each other in our digital age. Though salespeople are experts on human connection, they may not be used to staying updated on every new digital trend.
This is the 21st century marketer’s wheelhouse. They’re familiar with the need to know and understand every new online development. Traditional salespeople can borrow hints from your marketing team when it comes to staying savvy.
We’ve got five ways you can stay ahead of the digital curve in sales:
- Understand that while every new app won’t become the next most effective marketing tool, some of them will. That’s why it’s important to know what’s happening, even if you don’t employ a tool until its power is proven.
- The blogosphere is your best friend. Follow marketing blogs to hear what’s new on the scene and what users think about it from a sales-marketing perspective.
- Be active on Twitter. This is an easy way to see what marketers you respect think about new tools and online developments. For example, when Google changes keyword search algorithms, it’s helpful to see the news and how people respond.
- Subscribe to helpful newsletters. Getting on the email list of companies or marketing firms you admire provides lots of insightful information from different perspectives. It’s worth a little inbox clutter.
- Make certain magazines a habit. Reading articles from publications like Fast Company and Inc. that are design and tech focused keeps marketers ahead of the game.
The marketer’s secret formula is often just staying engaged and doing the research to stay afloat. Share this insight with your sales team, and soon your salespeople will be just as digitally savvy and ready to go as your marketing squad. Enter the new sales team.
How do you stay in-the-know?
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As we continue to explore sales-marketing integration, what we’re sharing today might be the biggest lesson marketers can learn from sales managers. B2B and B2C marketers alike know that every brand worth its salt is making efforts to humanize their brand voice.
Customers want to feel important and understood. Lucky for us, this is a salesperson’s specialty!
Tested and Perfected
The human, emotional connection is what sales teams have been using for decades. They have been the ones to know when a client is getting married, having a child graduate or struggling with health. Salespeople have connected with customers during those moments, making their company more personal and relatable. They listen to the customer and sometimes even act as a friend. Efforts like these make customer relationships stronger and yes, eventually increase sales power.
Why You Should Care
This need might seem counterintuitive, since fewer face-to-face conversations are happening in sales than ever before. The truth is, though, that social media and email provide constant opportunity for human connection. Marketers are called upon to engage in a human way with customers over the internet and respond in kind. They are the people with the digital prowess necessary to figure out how to do the impossible – make the internet feel more human. Sharing and storytelling tips from salespeople will help them get there.
Especially for B2B
B2B companies are usually highly complex and technical, making brand humanization even more important. B2B companies who can do both – provide a niche product and be personal – will stand out from the crowd.
These friendly, age-old sales techniques are a safe bet for marketers. Some things never go out of style.
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The new sales team takes an integrated approach to sales and marketing that makes sense to today’s customer. If your company is relatively new, you can build a joint team from the beginning and everyone will be happy. However, if your company has been around a while, merging marketing and sales teams might pose a challenge. Change can be hard to adjust to when your teams are used to certain divisions of work.
If putting your marketers and salespeople in the same room sounds unpleasant, here’s a tip:
Gradually show each side how their expertise helps the other.
Sales Tips for Marketers
Today’s marketer has to be able to engage customers in a two-way dialogue over social media networks, which is exactly what the traditional salesperson has been doing for years over the phone or at the front door. Have your sales team brainstorm ways to address these points:
- Making every exchange personal and meaningful
- What personal conversation is appropriate and what’s not
- Discovering key needs of the customer
- Relating products or services to customer pain points
Marketing Tips for Sales Teams
The new salesperson has to engage customers in new, tech-savvy ways that used to sit squarely in the marketer’s lap. No longer is door-to-door visiting or picking up the phone enough. Have marketers share their expertise in these areas:
- Social media best practice according to platform
- Making all social media efforts strategic and organized
- Understanding how numbers and analytics relate to online customer engagement
- Email marketing in a personal way
Proactive Action Steps
After the teams prep their expertise, schedule two half-day meetings – one devoted to customer service goals and one devoted to marketing goals. Have each team present their strategies, and as the leader, conclude the meetings with your vision for integration.
Onwards and upwards! Alignment is easier than you might think.
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On Wednesday, we introduced what we think is the best way to reach 21st century customers, the new sales team. Like many marketers, you might be wondering whether marketing and sales are a natural fit. Digital age or not, some companies have sales and marketing so deeply divided that a fusion of the two just doesn’t seem practical.
We think it’s worth it. Here’s why:
The days of discord are over.
Traditionally, sales and marketing teams haven’t gotten along. The end goals for both are the same, but marketers tend to think the sales team can’t complete a conversion. Likewise, salespeople often believe marketers just don’t understand a good lead. Today’s handoff isn’t as clean, thanks to the new sales funnel. This gives both sides a better understanding of the other.
Inside sales paved the way.
Reports in recent years indicated exponential growth for inside sales positions, resulting in diminished field sales teams. Though the internet and social media have changed the landscape even since 2009, inside sales paved the way for the new sales team through its emphasis on remote and cost-effective selling.
Deep integration means success.
Today’s most successful companies are thinking ahead of the customer. They have mastered the art of social media engagement and often employ sales and marketing switch-hitters. This approach makes sense. Building an integrated team ensures that at every step in the sales cycle, the people interacting with customers know exactly how to proceed. Nothing slips through the cracks when the whole cycle rests in the hands of one team that is deeply informed.
Has your company aligned its sales and marketing teams? Tell us how it worked for you.
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Marketers and salespeople all agree that the 21st century consumer has changed rapidly in recent years. The digital revolution has changed the game. The basic steps of selling a product or service remain the same – obtain lead, nurture lead, close deal and increase bottom line, but the path to get there is completely different. And to most of us it feels like it’s changing all the time.
This month, we’re talking about the new sales team.
Sales marketing alignment. Integration. Whatever you like to call it. Though marketing and sales departments have a history of not getting along, the digital age calls for a fusion of the two.
Seem impossible? We understand why.
Your company is used to the days when the marketing team simply obtained the lead, handing it cleanly over to a salesperson to never have contact again. Now things are a bit messy. Customers want to be constantly engaged, and the sales funnel looks totally different. Marketers are required to exercise their customer service skills more than ever before.
Today’s customer requires an integrated approach.
We’ll tell you how to get there. Follow us this month to find out what marketers and sales teams can learn from each other and how to know what degree of alignment best suits your company. We’ll discuss ways to encourage integration and make it easier for all parties involved.
Join us! Your customers will thank you.
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After a whole month of diving into best practice for each social channel, how are you feeling? Hopefully, you are equipped to tweet, pin, like and share your company to social success. Every marketer has to keep up with the social arena, but it can be challenging to stay on top of tools that constantly change.
To wrap things up, we’ve put together a social cheat sheet. Here are some key points to focus on for each network:
Pinterest & LinkedIn
Though you might associate them with completely different demographics, Pinterest and LinkedIn share some key principles. Be sure to join or create groups to form useful connections. As always, engage and interact with others’ content before promoting your own.
Facebook
Facebook is, above all else, visual. Photos and images are Facebook’s bread and butter. Take advantage of this by showing your followers a slice of day-to-day life at your company. They wouldn’t have access to this inside scoop – or the parties and special events – without that Facebook connection. Hey, B2B marketers are humans, too!
Twitter
Twitter has one overarching mantra: conversation. Being chatty is your golden ticket. There’s no other social network that allows for such individual attention, and nowhere else where it’s as easy or natural to reach out to others – so make it happen!
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Not unlike last week’s post on LinkedIn, groups are important on Pinterest – especially when it comes to business accounts. Joining popular group boards will be your biggest avenue to getting your company’s name out there and engaging potential leads.
Pinning, at first thought, seems like it could be somewhat aimless, but it doesn’t have to be. Be strategic with your group board activity by joining groups that contain individuals you know you want to reach. Perhaps they are thought leaders in your industry or leaders at large companies that you know could benefit from your product. Next, spend some time in the group and engage those people in a few shared interactions, eventually following them when it feels natural and comfortable.
Group boards will also afford you the opportunity to collaborate with popular Pinterest users or like-minded companies. Engaging with popular users provides the chance to have your brand distributed to their wide follower bases, and collaborating with other companies in your niche helps build relationships that are mutually beneficial. Best of all, if you share values or cultural trends with a certain company, it’s likely that their followers could be interested in your product or services. With that in mind, taking the time to engage in visual exchanges with those companies could really pay off for you in the long run, and eventually, impact your bottom line.
As you’re conducting Pinterest outreach, engaging new followers that might prove useful to you, do be mindful of your collaboration partners. Be discerning, just as you would with a new business partner or colleague, because the types of content they post will reflect on your brand image after you have aligned yourself with them creatively.
Group boards are one of the fastest and most efficient ways to make progress in outreach and new connections.
Have you tried collaborative pinning? How did it work for you?
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As a B2B marketer, you might not consider Pinterest your go-to social medium. But take it from us, Pinterest is a surprisingly effective way to gain leads. Collect followers, gain traction by engaging them visually, and get them to your subscription page. Here’s how:
Post quality content
This starts it all. Without quality content, you have no way of collecting followers, much less engaging them. Pin images that are related to your industry in fresh, unexpected ways, and pin products that your employees love, or their favorite recipes to share at the office. Integrate the people who work for you with the customers who buy from you, pinning things that help bridge the gap between the two. Demonstrate your company’s quirks and interests, and followers who like similar things will come. Finally, be an educational resource for your community by sharing information you know they’ll find useful.
Stimulate visual engagement
Here’s where the two-way street comes into play with Pinterest. Take note of your followers behaviors; what are they repinning, and what times of day do they like to pin? Provide them with more of the content they like, and pin at strategic times of day to catch them. At the same time, follow others who are connected to you, and repin their content, or give it a “like” or a comment. Participating in this visual dialogue will pull your followers in, and at this point, you almost have a lead.
Link directly to your newsletter
After you have established a strong,engaged follower base with your high-quality content, make a graphic you know will appeal to them – perhaps a much-loved infographic – and have it link directly to your newsletter subscription page. People who click through the subscription pin are probably much warmer leads than someone who simply visits your site and signs up, because they are already invested in your company’s culture and work, thanks to your Pinterest presence.
Have you ever gained leads through Pinterest? Share your story with us in the comments below or on Twitter.
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Today’s guest post comes to you from Angela Costanzi, Vice President of Creative Services at Movéo.
From recipes and weddings to fashion and dream destinations, Pinterest makes it easy to find, organize and access areas of interest. The personalized media platform has become one of the fastest-growing social networks online. While the site is used mostly by women searching for the latest tips and tricks, its use in the business world is growing.
The pinboard-style, photo-sharing site has proven to be a reliable resource for those in the creative profession. Aside from using it to promote visual portfolios, designers around the world are using this tool to get inspired. Whether you choose to follow and browse the work of other designers or use Pinterest to create and house your own style boards, inspiration abounds.
Sure, you’ll likely see cupcakes, cute puppies and crafty knickknacks, but anything appealing has an interesting way of inspiring the creative mind. Like the color used for frosting? Find a PMS match. Think a puppy could serve as a brand mascot? Maybe. How about a polka-dot laundry basket? Could make for a cool die-cut on a print piece. Or a little DIY? Repurpose an old pallet to build a room divider for a creative space.
Pinterest makes it easy to find what you’re looking for. Designers can search by category (print, typography, digital design, etc), project type (logos, packaging, websites, etc) or even by agency to get creative juices flowing before diving into their next project. Re-pin brilliant examples to boards you can reference later.
Here are some tips to using Pinterest for professional purposes:
Create individual boards to keep pins organized
- Color
- Typography
- Graphic design
- Photography
- Infographics
Make an industry-centric board
Keep knowledge close at hand by creating a board to bookmark websites and industry articles — all your info will be in one place.
Try using Pinterest to create a private project style board
Upload color palettes, photographers or illustrators, typefaces, patterns, animation effects, etc. The digital format, which maintains associated links, will not only serve as a great visual guide, but also keeps contact info and design details handy. Plus, you can share this link with your client to ensure you’re heading in the right direction. The comment feature makes it easy to keep your notes where they belong — with the project.
Whether you decide to narrow your search or browse the whole enchilada, you’re sure to find something you like. And who knows, 12 cool ideas for a black-and-pink teen girl’s bedroom just might serve as the inspiration your next assignment needs.
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When it comes to advertising, LinkedIn is the B2B marketer’s perfect match. Unlike other types of online advertising, LinkedIn allows marketers to reach individuals within a specific professional network, no matter how complex. Given the highly technical, niche nature of many B2B companies, it’s reassuring to know that advertising dollars have the potential to directly reach a prospect. Other online advertising relies on search history and website usage, which can be ambiguous in the B2B world, but LinkedIn accesses individuals who have self-identified into a targeted industry.
When you advertise on LinkedIn, you really get to know your target. You can explore profile information of prospects and trends within your niche to better understand your customer’s needs, allowing you to reach them with ads that will resonate — and ultimately provide a product to solve their problem.
Perhaps advertising intimidates you, because your B2B product is intended strictly for enterprise-level C Suite executives – or someone equally as targeted. LinkedIn is a great answer to this problem. And perhaps investing there will lead to insight that helps you better advertise elsewhere.
LinkedIn advertising isn’t necessarily always to sell your product. It can be an ideal place, for example, to post job openings. Responses tend to be attractive, because you can automatically access more professional information about an applicant than other third-party job sites allow. Interviews become more successful and time efficient when this type of screening happens before the first round.
Both in the product marketing and human capital departments, LinkedIn is worth the investment. Have you tried it? Let us know how it’s worked for you.
Image via (cc) A Name Like Shields Can Make You Defensive
