Alignment of sales and marketing 2022

From Aferdita Kadriu

“The new reality: marketing needs to know more about sales, sales needs to know more about marketing, and we all need to know more about our customers.” (Jill Rowley)

To back up Jill Rowley’s statement, the sales and marketing team should have a clear flow of information about customer needs and knowledge, thus making collaboration more efficient and focused.

Consequently, it can be said that silo thinking between the two departments still exists in some companies today, resulting in many misunderstandings such as:

• Information and campaign flood for sales – marketing content does not reach the customer
• Marketing does not know what sales and customer needs and uses
• Lack of support for sales target achievement
• Customer data is underutilized
• Marketing has too little knowledge about sales needs and processes

Sales Enablement is a tool that bridges the gap between the sales and marketing teams with the goal of making collaboration and communication more efficient. Sales enablement is a strategic continuous process that provides employees with integrated content, training and coaching. So that selling is more efficiently and effectively focused on customer needs.

According to Marketo, ”when sales and marketing teams are in sync, companies become 67% better at closing deals.”

In the context of sales enablement, it is recommended to use a platform such as Salesforce or Showpad. On this platform, all customer-relevant data is collected and at a glance, the most important stakeholders will be able to define the to do’s or the further procedure.

During the group discussion, it was noted that some employees see such tools as a control and are therefore reluctant to use them. To change the mindset and focus on the benefits of sales enablement, support from management is required.

The following advantages can be noted when using such a platform:

• Productive coordination marketing and sales teams
• Increased efficiency / clear process flows
• Further development of the sales team
• Promoting the relationship between the customer and the sale

Conclusion of Alignment Sales and Marketing:

• Information exchange between sales and marketing is improved by the Sales Enablement bridge
• Efficiency is increased and thus the possibility in deal closings is increased
• The further development of the sales staff is ensured
• Mindset adjustment, breaking away from the old

From the Sonova example, it was clear that the sales and marketing teams struggle at the beginning, but it takes both teams communicating and defining such a process together.

According to a customer survey conducted by Showpad, those already using the tool resulted in the following facts:

• 40% cross-sell and upsell increase
• 60% shorter training periods for new sales employees
• 30% time savings in administrative tasks and preparation
• 17% increase in sales within the first month of program implementation

Social selling

Under social selling, the focus is on a real person and their needs, problems and expectations through one-to-one communication. The focus is on establishing a trusting relationship with decision-makers and positioning oneself as a problem-solver. This leads to the result on social media of following people to people rather than people to business.

According to the Edelman Trust Barometer 2017, it was stated that people in positions of authority are less trusted, which would imply that CEO’s or the higher level of employees are given less credibility than, for example, other employees or customers .

For this purpose, a study was conducted by the University of Lucerne on the topic: which product information is more credible? guided.

The result was as follows:

1. Friends
2. Online evaluation
3. Known
4. Partner
5. Parents
6. Sales consultants
7. Company websites
8. Influencers on social media
9. Product information (advertising, newspaper)
10. Advertising search engines
11. Ads Social Media
12. TV advertising
13. In-app advertising
14. Email Newsletter

It can be deduced that Earnd Media (position 1-5) friends, online reviews, acquaintances, partners and parents are more credible than Paid Media, which is often used by companies (position 8-13).

LinkedIn, with its 3.4 million users, found that 60% more content was created in 2020 during the pandemic. Not every posted article is successful because a good article with good content arouses interest, builds trust, is inspiring, informative and entertaining. This social selling approach can be used to convince potential customers in the earlier stages of the buying process.

When creating content, the following question should be answered:

1. How detailed do I need to get to get the message across?
2. What does the content give visually?
3. What do I want from readers?

LinkedIn has expanded its formats to offer users not only the classic post, but document posts, blog posts, surveys, videos and events.

Here are a few format recommendations:

• Story: with or without interaction possibilities
• Image post: Single image or image series for carousel posts
• Video post: classic landscape format 16:9, feed format 4:5 or 1:1
• Link post: with automatic image preview and gray box for title
• Livestream: with Q&A function
• Surveys: directly as a function on the respective platform

Conclusion Social Selling:

• Potential customers can be acquired in the earlier stages of the buying process
• Social selling is about the individual (people vs people and not company vs people)
• Successful posts are, inspiring, informative, entertaining
• Credibility is weighted higher with individual employees than with CEOs

A good example of social selling is represented by our class comrade M. Hunziker, who is very active on Linkedin and Whatsapp. He came up with the idea of marketing the indoor climate products of the company TCA Thermoclima AG, where he works, under his own name as MH, and this with success. The important thing here is the support of the company.