Reviewing 2019: A Year of Integration
The new year is in full swing and so far the sales and marketing tone seems to be set. Our clients are all driving for positive growth and talking about how our sales and marketing efforts MUST be integrated; both in terms of operation but also in terms of the channels we use to generate leads.
The Sales Growth Challenge
The addressable pipeline is always a challenge when driving for business growth. There are so many target prospects out there but how do you find the ones that are ready to consider your solutions or services? Everyone is busy, time is valuable and few of us have much to spare. So ensuring that the Lead Generation campaigns are optimised to identify active and relevant prospects is more critical than ever. Wading through databases of contacts and poorly profiled “leads” is damaging, demoralising and a sure fire way to burn any marketing budget.
The solution: a well documented Sales Enablement plan that brings together the sales and marketing teams is the answer. An integrated Direct & Digital Marketing campaign working to support a sales team that operates a professional Sales Methodology will deliver the qualified leads required to support the sales team, and they will have the correct approach to ensure the success required to hit their revenue targets.
So what is Sales Enablement? It is many things to many people, however broadly speaking it is the strategy, tasks, technology and activities that are required to provide the sales team with the addressable pipeline, information and tools they require to achieve their revenue goals. It incorporates a blend of outbound lead generation with inbound demand generation designed to engage the sales team with their ideal prospects. A professional Sales Enablement program will include:
- Defining Your Target Market by Industry and Geography
- Building A Key Target Account database
- Documenting who your Key Buyers are – Buyer Personas
- Value Proposition developed for communication to the prospect at Awareness, Consideration and Decision stages in the buyers journey
- Multi-Channel Marketing Strategy to be defined including-
- Social Media Strategy
- Website – The Hub of your sales efforts. Your Digital Front Door!
- Content Marketing
- Blog
- E-books
- White papers
- Case studies
- Landing pages
- Tracking & Analytics – Using HubSpot platform or a similar solution true sales enablement becomes possible.
- Business Development & Inside Sales
- Professional Engaging Outreach to a targeted validated prospects
- Highly knowledgeable follow up based on intelligence from tracking and analytics
- Basho Emails
- Compelling Digestible Content for use in the lead generation telemarketing
To succeed all businesses must have a Sales Enablement strategy that is focused on achieving the end result…..revenue growth. Our wide range of Technology and Consulting clients each have a Sales Enablement program to varying degrees. Most businesses undertake some of the above best practice steps, however few achieve them all. The ones that do, enjoy year-on-year profitable growth and really see the fruits of their sales and marketing investments.
