3 Critical Areas Of Sales & Marketing Collaboration: Two Sides Of The Same Coin

Prospects today, especially those involved in higher ticket purchases, have longer decision-making cycles because there are more individuals involved in the purchasing decision and they need to build an airtight business case before purchases are approved. As a result, you need to allow the purchasing cycle to evolve as opposed to an aggressive “push” effort driven by the sales team.

Marketing Sherpa’s latest CMO Benchmarking Report states that 95% of the prospects who visit a landing page through an incentive-based demand generation campaign are there to research not to buy. That said, about 70% of those who do visit will eventually buy but not necessarily from the site they first visited. Therefore you need to make sure that these non-sales ready prospects are nurtured through content, not aggressive sales tactics because today’s buyers don’t want to engage with sales until the end of the purchasing process.

In today’s post-recession landscape where buyers are in control of the sales process there are three areas where marketing and sales collaboration become critically important:

1. The definition of a sales-ready lead derived from co-defined lead scoring values;
2. The appropriate type of customer communication, associated cues and optimal timing; and
3. The lead profile and history that is most interesting and valuable to sales, especially for recycled leads.

The key to achieving success during this lead nurture process is to provide content that delivers value and keeps the prospect engaged. This means offering personalized information that is timely and relevant to the prospect’s situation. Most of this is delivered by the marketing team using automation tools; however some can be delivered directly by the sales team. The key is coordination between both sales and marketing to keep the prospect engaged not enraged.

At the end of the day, a successful BtoB marketing services company needs to embrace a high-tech, high-touch approach that melds sales and marketing into a cohesive unit that respect’s buyers in terms of their agenda, not just a year end number that has to be met.

Digital Wavefront is a Boston-based marketing services provider with a performance-focused approach to marketing. The company is focused on delivering best of breed technology solutions that empower digital marketing. Service offering includes custom landing pages and microsites, marketing automation, email marketing and e-Commerce & e-Business Portals.