One important aspect to consider is how your strategy will affect your peers. Your strategy has to satisfy your internal customers, the Sales Leader and the CEO. There are a couple of ways Marketing can help their Sales counterparts be successful. Success for your Sales Leader means your CEO is getting value from Marketing.
Get More Leads
This starts with a demand generation process. This process should:
- Generate demand and inquiries in both new and existing accounts.
- Qualify, score, and grade leads.
- Ensure inquiries are routed appropriately.
- Measure effectiveness – is enough demand being generated to reach your lead goals?
Once your team has successfully generated interest in your offers, the next step is a lead management process. This process should:
- Define leads at each stage of the lead management process. Be sure your Sales counterpart agrees on these definitions.
- Define nurture pathways and offers to be presented.
- Define the role of a lead development rep. How will they manually nurture along the way?
- Include playbooks and job aids to assist in lead management process.
- Ultimately turn inquiries into sales ready leads.
By having these two pieces in place, you will be able to provide Sales with more leads. Not only will this help earn the trust of Sales, it will also prove Marketing’s value.
Enable the Sales Force
A lot of work has gone into generating interest and securing appointments. The last thing you want to do is lose all this work by not enabling the Sales team. The Sales force needs to have the right content at the right time. Marketing can provide these tools.
There are a couple of questions Marketing Leaders need to ask first.
- What does the Sales team actually need? Make sure you understand the objectives of the Sales Enablement team. Talk with your Sales Leader. Find out what is needed most. This will help create content that Sales actually uses, and your contribution will increase.
- How do you make sure the team understands what’s available? You’ve figured out what is needed, and put a plan in place. Now you have to make sure it’s executed. The material will need to be packaged into a playbook, and reps will need to be trained. This will reinforce your sales enablement strategy and ensure success.
Takeaway
The bottom line remains that Marketing must continue to demonstrate their ROI. Helping Sales is one way to do this.
Need more help? Sign up for a 90 min. one-on-one session here. It will help you create a marketing strategy that proves Marketing’s worth.
