Marketing for Sales Enablement

According to Tech Marketing Blog, there’s a fundamental shift happening in technology marketing around the globe today.  The formerly adversarial relationship between sales and marketing is being replaced by a new level of collaboration driven by the need to achieve shared goals.  Marketers face increasing pressure to provide sales with content that meets a specific need at a specific point in the sales cycle.  This means that marketers need to shift from supporting, to enabling the sales team.

So wouldn’t it be great to run a campaign that exhibited good brand adherence, a compelling message, was industry relevant, client specific and even role specific for every recipient?… Of course it would, but can it be done cost effectively in a timely manner without compromising our brand?… Yes It Can!!

You just have to keep 3 key things in mind:

• What do you want to say?
• To whom do you want to say it?
• Pulling it all together 

Here’s an outline of how to approach a targeted, one-to-one marketing effort that will help support sales enablement:

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO SAY?

• How can you impact a business and how will that impact translate into value? 

1. Will it help your customer to grow? (Be specific)
2. Will it help reduce costs? (Be specific)
3. Will it make more efficient use of resources? (Be specific)

• Include references where possible 

1. Who have you already helped with this?
2. Do you have different references for different industries?
3. Quotes are better than stories

TO WHOM DO YOU WANT TO SAY IT?

• Will the message work in multiple industries or geographies? 

1. Plan on multiple versions of the central message that can be applied to different industry verticals or geographies
2. Your collateral can be assembled later, but the message and the industry provide the basis for a template 

• What about roles? 

1. Would you have the same conversation with a COO or a CFO?
2. You should plan on a template version for each role within each industry

 PULLING IT ALL TOGETHER

The goal here is to create an industry relevant, client specific and even role specific marketing piece with good brand adherence and a compelling message that can be used to really support and enable the sales rep to have meaningful discussion with the prospective client.  THIS IS WHAT CUSTOMERS WANT… a meaningful discussion about how YOUR solution can HELP solve their issues. 

by: Binita Patel, Director of Marketing @ Stratascope (binita_patel@stratascope.com)

Market Intelligence: Your customers and prospects expect you to know them

I like telling the “Stratascope story” to my prospects and customers.  I don’t like telling it to sales people that are calling on me.  It is a waste of my time, because so much of the information is readily available.  In the last two days, I have been called on by two sales people and I need to commend them both.  Christopher Harkness of Sentry Insurance called on me regarding our insurance and 401k needs.  He already knew who our 401k was with and what type of fees we were paying.  He had clearly done his homework.  He has earned the right to work with us.  Leslie Sweeney of TechTarget called on me this morning to talk about marketing programs.  She had reviewed our website, and came into the call with specific questions about our lead generation process and the type of content that we were working with.  I appreciated her directness.  She spent 90% of her allotted time learning the specifics of our marketing plans and success rates.  I am sure that she will get back to me with some interesting possibilities.

Study after study from IDC and Forrester show that the biggest disappointment that C-level executives express about engaging with sales reps is the lack of preparedness and knowledge of their business.  They clearly expect more than they are getting from their sales experience.  It is up to you to provide it.

Do you know what your client’s are thinking about?  You should, and it’s not like there hiding it.  The amount of information available on most organizations can overwhelm you if you don’t know how to work with it.  Where should you start?  What do you need to know?  How do you filter through it all?  Obtaining market intelligence on your prospects and customers is critical to forging a long lasting partnership with them.  As I said, they expect you to know their industry, market conditions, and specific business environment.  They also expect you to come to the table with very specific questions so that no one’s time is wasted.  The “not so insignificant” side effect of your preparedness will be a marked reduction in your sales cycle time, a reduction that your prospects have been asking for.  The same IDC study referenced above concluded that sales cycles are up to 40% longer than buyers want them to be!  That’s right, it’s not the buyer that’s holding your deal up; it’s you!

So, assuming that you’re convinced or no longer reading this, what should you do next?  You have got to get organized, based on your goal.  What is your goal?  To ask the right questions in your “early stage” client interactions so that you can launch a productive sales cycle.  So you need questions or discussion topics, but where do you find them?  I usually tell my clients to start with the business problems that they solve.  Building this list should not take too long, but the list can get pretty large and may differ by industry and offering.  Once you have the list, take a step back and ask yourself why it would be valuable to solve each of the issues.  What areas of the business will it impact?  What roles in the business will care about the issue and its solution?  Will it be different by industry?  Once you have this information gathered, you can start looking for companies that exhibit an interesting profile with respect to your offerings.

Now that you know what you need to know, you can organize your findings and your research.  You should create some categories in which to put the information that you uncover.  Relevant information should be stored based on your categorization while irrelevant information can be ignored.  Some basic categories that you should consider are as follows:

1. Basic Company Information (business description, contact information, business and financial profile)
2. Market performance information (Where are the opportunities to improve? As related to their peers)
3. Relevant News (including financial disclosures, management discussions, earnings calls, press releases, law suits, and articles)
4. Relevant Executives (those that hold the titles that identify roles that you can impact)
5. Industry Knowledge
   1. Trends
   2. Outlook
   3. Recent News
   4. Critical business issues
   5. Operating practices
   6. Industry Vocabulary
6. Initiatives where available

Search the internet for information on your prospect, their industry, and their competition.  Filter out the relevant from the irrelevant and categorize the relevant.  Based on the profile that you build, identify the business issues from your previously developed list that make the most sense to talk about given the current set of circumstances for your prospect.

If your still reading and you are still intrigued, reach out to us at Stratascope, we can help you do all of this.

The next blog will focus on the final piece of sales enablement, Competitive Intelligence.

-Bruce A. Brien, CEO, Stratascope Inc.