At this year’s ISA Marketing & Sales Summit, Scott Sommer and I tag-teamed again for the third year in a row to talk about the intersection of marketing and sales. Since the theme for this year was “In Search of the Holy Grail: Integrating Marketing and Sales” we put together a presentation that looked at how to answer three key questions:
1. With all the distractions of today’s technologies like social media and the rising level of messaging noise, how can you make your brand successfully stand out in the crowd?
2. How likely is it for your sales representative to go in to a new prospect meeting with a high degree of confidence that previous marketing programs/messages have been seen and heard?
3. How can a technical brand develop better, more effective communications that will help drive sales?
These are challenges for any organization in any industry, especially discrete and process manufacturers who face growing global competition and often end up competing on price vs. value. So Scott and I walked our audience through a path to illustrate how the process of building detailed marketing profiles can create more targeted 1-to-1 messaging campaigns that can potentially increase campaign conversion rates and help sales win more sales cycles.
Here’s what we outlined:
- We opened with a funny video clip from “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” that really helped paint the pictutre of the challenges of getting a message through the stone walls of the castle — it ends with “Is there anyone else we can talk to?” …
- Challenges in Getting Messages Heard – Based on a study Scott and I did last year, we discovered that only 1 in 10 emails really get read and 1 in 100 get some sort of response. With those kinds of numbers and the rising noise, what can marketers do to get their message heard?
- Creating Detailed Customer Profiles – why we need to go beyond our basic demographic profile of geography, functions, customer type, product type etc
- Integrating the Message into Marketing – I outline three steps: 1. Build learning experiences. 2. Create smaller, more targeted campaigns 3. Add personalization
- Moving the Message to Sales – Scott discusses the challenges of how a message flows into the sales cycle
- Amplifying the Message – Scott talks about how sales personnel can enhance marketing messages and build upon them in the sales cycle
- Translating the Message – Scott shares how critical it is for sales to accurately translate marketing messages so it resonates strongly
- Extending the Message – This gets to spreading the message beyond the initial recipient. How do you carry the message forward to the buy team?
- Alignment of Marketing and Sales – finding the Holy Grail 🙂
You can download the presentation and watch the video stream hosted on the Marketing and Sales Summit web site. The video picks up mid-way through the presentation when Scott does his piece. Scroll down toward the bottom to where the slides and video stream are posted.
