When I hear about oft-lamented conflicts between marketing and sales, it always reminds me of the occasional struggle between a designer and a marketer while building content. They both want the same outcome, but somehow they can find themselves caught in combat over different yet valid aspects of success and are so driven by their efforts they can’t/won’t figure out how to weave them together.
It really doesn’t have to be this way. The breakthrough comes when an individual steps outside of the situation, and then champions the issue, knocking down barriers. Marketers: it’s time to put yourself in the enviable position of being a champion to your sales force, finally get the credit you deserve for your efforts, and likely win more deals in the process.
How do you go about doing this? Marketing needs to establish and build strong relationships with accounts and give sales people the right tools to engage them when they are ready to buy.
5 ways to strengthen account engagement to accelerate sale
Consider that Forrester Research shows that 75% of technology salespeople agree their role today is to provide buyers with well thought out logic validating their solution as best for the buyers’ needs. But only 15% of technology buyers believe that a salesperson can clearly show they understand their business issues and can articulate a way to solve them.
Whoa! That’s a gap large enough to drive a freight train through. You’ll never fill that gap with a single effort. In order to best prove to buyers that you know their business and their needs, you will need to arm your sales teams with intelligence to make the most of every engagement with account buying teams.
Here are 5 effective methods to strengthen engagement and accelerate sales using purchase intent data from independent sources:
- Prioritize engagements with accounts using the best purchase intent data you can get your hands on.
- Be more responsive with account relationships.
- Gain a better understanding of what all buyers are researching for in targeted segments of your market.
- Find new, unknown opportunities that you can fast-track to be new named accounts.
- Make conversations with buyers more engaging, and more rewarding to your sales teams.
Be a champion
In order to help you become the champion you can be for your sales teams, we have developed this best practices white paper.
If you have any thoughts you would like to share about how fellow technology marketers can become sales champions, please feel free to leave a comment or connect with me on LinkedIn.
Originally published on TechTarget's Mktr2Mktr Blog.