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So, everyone is using and/or moving towards the use of digital content marketing, but the success of this relatively new practice is highly variable, and many companies are missing the mark in specific areas. Making wins with content is conceptually very easy, it’s the creation that gets complicated. This week we’ll examine how to create content that is tailored to buyers at different stages of the sales funnel for an optimized sales process with a real sales enablement solution.

Digital content marketing has grown exponentially, and created vast swaths of valuable content for Sales teams to use at every conceivable point of the sales process… but they aren’t. Sales and Marketing alignment is part of the problem, but many buyers and Sales Reps share similar feelings on the matter. A 4-step method may hold the answers to unlocking digital sales enablement solutions.

So you’ve secured a business. You’ve gotten that client to finally say "Yes, I am ready to buy". How exhilarated must you feel? All your hard work paid off. But before you close-off the sales process and spend your commission, remember that the sale only consummates the relationship, and the buyer’s relationship hasn't come close to ending. Are you stuck thinking; what now? Your CRM system holds the answer.

If you’re reading this and thinking “My CRM system won’t tell me that”, then not only is your CRM system being underutilized, your company is at risk of being a laggard of CRM integration.

In this 5th piece of our 5 part series, you'll find a lighthearted guide to enabling sales reps to close more deals.

In this section, we want to discuss the age-old debate about sales reps; are they born or are they made? You would think that the best sales reps are extroverts who are able to hold up a conversation with just about anyone. You might even go as far as to say that they show poise and confidence in any situation and become the focal point in any environment. However, are these the requisites for being able to successfully pitch to a client? Doesn’t being more concise, and saying less with more, ultimately win over lip-worship?

Sales and Marketing are two teams in business that have seen an explosion of sales enablement technologies, everything from the heavy adoption of CRM systems and marketing automation, to social media, mobile devices, and ubiquitous internet connectivity.

Unfortunately, most are coming to realize that the state of the sales rep is in a continued state of decline, and the role of marketing is in a paradigm shift that, for now, is only making things worse.

The balance of buyer-seller power is tipping favourably towards the buyer, and trends aren’t showing signs of slowing. The solution to the challenges already exists, and though implementation can vary across industries, a turn-key solution may be a click away.

“Can’t you just show me on my iPhone?”

We all know what buyers want, they want solutions that help them achieve their strategic objectives, and no nonsense. If you can come to a buyer, deliver a solution which provides measurable ROI or achieves objectives, and earn trust, you’ve got a winning proposition for closure.

The issue is that the sales process, one oriented in earning trust and developing relationships, is losing ground to technology that empowers the buyer and fragments the communications market. The art of being conversational and understanding the buyer is lost in the fog of unknown buyer preferences and difficult to reach buyer mediums.

The walking-brochure sales rep is seeing a dramatic, and highly undesirable, reestablishment, not by choice, but by virtue of a tipping balance of buyer-seller power in the conversational relationship.

New feature to the SFX environment empowers Sales with high quality, secure, digital sales calls on any device, any file format, no downloading or plugins, and through Skura’s predictive analytics engine. 

The concept of the trust based relationship sales orientation is well established in sales. Old time strategies like pressure selling or canned selling have absolutely no relevancy. The trust based seller is consultative, and wants to help the buyer achieve their strategic priorities through the sales process.

Technology has exploded and given way to sales acceleration through various types of sales rep software, CRM systems, and etc. but something isn’t clicking. The state of the sales rep is in a continued trend of decline, and even with more time spent on sales preparation activities, the buyer is less satisfied than ever.

This begs the question; is the issue somewhere in the process? Or is there just a lack in real sales enablement software.

Behind the times,

Marketing and Sales have changed, in fact, they’ve evolved over the last generation. A lens of production volume and high quantity product movement is now marketing customer centricity and relationship selling. Yet, even with the huge shift from product/ion-centric to customer-centric, the flow of traffic has continued to be unidirectional.  

That is to say, Marketing is primarily focused on continually understanding the marketplace, refining a value proposition, and integrating communications to deliver that value. Sales receives MQLs generated from those communications, guides the leads through the sales process, and captures the final sale. End.

Now you see the problem… the two are operating like 18^th century firefighters, passing along buckets of water and showering it into the fire, hoping that more buckets will lead to more success. At no point does the information flow come full circle to let Marketing know about what is and isn’t working, leaving Sales to make do with what they receive. We call this a lack of sales and marketing alignment. 

Easier to find; harder to reach,

There was once a time when the only way to reach someone was by letter, phone, and in person. Today, finding someone has never been easier, you could throw their name into Google and probably get 2 social media hits, contact details, personal characteristics, job competencies, their network, and etc.

But with all the ease of access, it seems harder than ever to actually reach someone. Today’s buyer is significantly more fragmented, operating on several social media platforms, likely using multiple mobile devices with potentially several operating systems.

Oh, and did we forget to mention? They’re also more empowered as buyers!  Your trusted sales process is turned inside-out with the abundance of online information, allowing buyers to meet you for the first time yet be half way into your typical funnel. How can you manage this?