The line between sales and marketing is increasingly blurry. Marketers are being asked to do traditionally sales oriented tasks like interact with leads, send price quotes and even analyze sales data. Salesmen and women are being asked to prospect via social media, creat content, and insert themselves into the lead scoring and lead gen process.
The lines between marketing and sales are gone. Here are 6 things every salesman should know about marketing
1) How to use LinkedIn
For BtoB salesmen, LinkedIn should be core to your prospecting strategy. Effective use of LinkedIn could honestly remove the need to get leads via your marketing team and/or cold call. Here are a few ways to use LinkedIn effectively:
– Get involved in LinkedIn groups. Within groups you can post content, interact with other group members, and even directly email fellow group members. That’s powerful stuff.
– Buld out your network of connections. You can directly email connections.
2) How to engage with prospects via other social media
Some of our best prospects have fallen in our lap as a result of Twitter.
– Simply follow a people you want to sell to. Most of them will follow you back.
– Then post good content.
– Mention prospects in your Tweets and reach out to them directly
– Monitor when people are talking about your company/product/industry. Reach out to them.
3) How to navigate basic analytics tools
Sales professionals need to have a Google Analytics log in and a log in your call tracking application. You should be aware of analytics trends. Don’t spend all day digging around, but at least know what marketers are so worried about.
4) Content marketing strategy
An increasing number of organizations are including their sales teams in their content marketing strategy. Sales professionals are being asked to write content for blogs, White Papers, and to post on social media platforms.
This is good.
The sales team is on the front lines. You know what prospects and customers are worried about. You know what they fear. You know what makes them take action. You know what their objections are and what their risks are.
These are perfect blog topics!
In many ways a sales person is more equipped to produce content than is a marketing guy.
5) Basics of the lead scoring and lead gen process
When does marketing send a lead to sales? What’s the process for that? How is a lead determined to be sales ready or not? Can this process be improved? When are leads falling through the cracks?
The sales team should be accutely aware of this process and have input into it. The old refrain of, “This isn’t my job,” doesn’t apply anymore.
