Why Sales Development Is Really a Marketing Issue in B2B
If your brand’s message is important to your company (which it should be) then the sales development should be directly aligned with marketing.
If your brand’s message is important to your company (which it should be) then the sales development should be directly aligned with marketing.
Bad pitches ruin good products. That much has been true since the dawn of sales and isn’t changing anytime soon. What has changed, though, is that the average salesperson can’t rely on their conversational skills alone to close a deal. They have to translate those compelling pitches into writing.
Everything you need to know to create a sales funnel that converts like crazy.
It used to be the day and life of a sales person was defined by how many sales calls they made. Productivity was king. If a great sales person could get a prospect on the phone, it was highly likely that a deal would get done. Having been a sales rep, who ‘dialed for dollars’, a manager who pushed my teams to constantly be working leads to someone who is constantly on the lookout for sales best practices – I was pleasantly surprised to find some compelling new research tackling the topic of what makes a winning sales discovery call.
A strategic plan demands strategic execution across the whole of your business. Plans are just paper until leaders getting people to implement them. Here’s how.
Sales and marketing must embrace these principles to stay relevant with customers and close more deals as our inboxes get even more crowded.
Sales professionals are a rare breed. Most are self-starters, personable, inquisitive, intuitive and passionate about their craft. They enjoy selling and revel when they are in contact with prospects or customers. They thrive on challenges and relish the benefits of being the CEO of their territory. When faced with a constant change, they welcome the freedom to design a roadmap to make their monthly, quarterly and yearly sales number. For most of them their customers become their friends and they enjoy seeing the value their products or services bring to their customer’s business.
If there is one consistent complaint we hear from frontline sale managers, it is that they are always short on time. This isn’t surprising given the numerous responsibilities sales managers have, including recruiting and hiring new sales professionals, day-to-day management tasks, sales coaching, and administrative duties. Additionally, they face the challenge of managing sales professionals who are typically independent, strong willed, and often have little day-to-day contact with their managers. And in many organizations, sales managers are required to both sell and manage.
Choosing a branding firm can be a nightmare. Ask branding agencies for quotes and you will get prices ranging anywhere from $1,000 to $50,000 and up, and sometimes this includes only the design. On Craigslist a designer might offer a logo design for less than $300, or even $50. And there’s even a website where you can crowdsource the design of your logo for free before you choose to pay.
Email is the most valuable tool for any content marketer – and our research proves it. 93% of B2B marketers use email to distribute content, and of those, 91% consider email to be critical.
Email can do so much to help you build better relationships with your audience, understand individuals’ behaviors, and even maximize the reach of your paid social content.