It’s a common issue. Sales and Marketing don’t collaborate enough on the creation and sharing of company content. It stalls sales and causes delays in meeting company goals.
Most recently, Jamie Shanks at Sales for Life reminded us of this ever-present challenge:
“While sales feels a disconnect with marketing, it also goes both ways. Marketing can’t understand why the sales team isn’t sharing content. This is because marketing hasn’t had a conversation with sales and figured out what’s moving the needle for buyers. Marketing needs to understand the buyers’ pitfalls and challenges.”
In response to this kind of urging, sales and marketing can admit their dependence on each other. Marketing admits that even their most glitzy, high-concept assets are nothing without the customer-centric insights that Sales provides. Sales stops complaining about how Marketing’s content isn’t good and realizes they should probably get involved earlier.
If we align with this new vision, sales and marketing teams can collaborate and do better. We can put together some killer video sales enablement content together. Then Sales suddenly has powerful new company content that speaks to the buyer’s needs more powerfully than ever before.
But what about before it’s time to start talking to buyers? If you understand how today’s buyers approach your brand—and your brand’s content—you start to see that the sales-marketing collaboration needs to happen much earlier. Before buyers fill out a lead form, 75% of them are investigating your company on social media, according to IDC. And 74% of them have completed more than half of their research, according to Forrester.
This can only mean that Sales needs to provide Marketing with insights for awareness-level company content. Before the pitch decks and ebooks, they need to be helping Marketing to craft messages for video demos, blog posts, and Slideshares. Of course, this implies that Sales needs to understand how this content influences the opportunities that will one day land in their hands.
In all honesty, these top-of-the-funnel activities, especially video, can have a great influence on their next sale, often more so than a glossy pitch.
To learn how Consensus delivers relevant, sales-boosting content to buyers before they become a lead, click the orange “Watch Demo” button below.
