It’s that time of year again. Sales Kick-off! You bring the team together. Sales, Marketing, Services. Everyone is pumped to talk about how this year is going to be the best ever. How things will be different, and how all of the new plans are going to change everyone’s destiny. It’s a great time.
But despite the rhetoric and flashy presentations, the reality is that year after year companies suffer from a gap between what the market team produces and what the sales team sells.
For most companies the investment made by marketing to come up with killer messaging, compelling presentations and engaging collateral is simply not made available to sales in a format, manner or mechanism that they benefit from, or helps them close business. And so, despite the best intentions to bring sales and marketing close, and make the marketing ROI better, 40% of all sales materials created by marketing will never be used by the sales team!
CRM was created to centralize customer records so they are easily accessible by the salespeople and the company. Marketing automation centralizes marketing effort information (social media impact, website hits, etc.) so it is easily accessible by the marketing team, but nothing has provided a way for sales to easily interact with marketing material and customer information where they need it most, with the customer.
Adaptive Sales Enablement finally solves this problem by giving the marketing and sales department the ability to seamlessly share information and interact with each other and the customer. Adaptive Sales Enablement technology dramatically increases your sales and marketing team’s productivity, effectiveness and collaboration.
Unlike traditional document management, CRM of even content management solutions, sales enablement platforms allow marketing to deploy the investments they’ve made with creative agencies, marketing teams or outside development shops to the sales team and customers dynamically, effortlessly and consistently. Marketing can now load, manage and deliver the right content in any format (PPT, PDF, Word, Video, Audio, etc.) across any platform (iOS, Windows, Android, etc.), on any device (iPad, tablet, smartphone, laptop, etc.) through any medium or channel (face to face, email, web, social, etc.). Marketing can control and deliver a constantly changing catalogue of content, ensuring the right message is being delivered at all times.
For sales, marketing’s ability to deliver valuable, compelling and engaging content across any device, platform and format, gives them an immediate and dramatic competitive advantage. With the most compelling message delivered at their fingertips in the format and mechanism most suitable for how they sell, salespeople can significantly improve their customer meetings by having targeted, engaging and influential discussions with customers who are coming to the meetings more and more educated. The sales team transforms from merely a walking brochure to a value-added partner. For a sales team looking to improve customer engagement and deliver the right message to the right person at the right time, Adaptive Sales Enablement platforms provide an instant leg up.
Finally, through next-generation Adaptive Sales Enablement platforms both sales and marketing get real, tangible and measurable insight into customer engagement and content consumption. Nether team has to rely on gut feeling or lagging indicators. Sales enablement platforms provide sales and marketing leading indicators of what your customers are actually interested in, their network of influence and the medium, channel and frequency customers want to engagement.
In 2014 sales and marketing departments have to stop talking about working together and have to start actually working together. Adaptive Sales Enablement platforms give both teams the ability to develop, deploy, manage, track and action the right messages, ensuring they have the best conversations with customer, create engaging lines of communication and drive a real competitive advantage for their companies. A sales and marketing team that acts as one, delivers significant ROI improvement and wins more business.
Are your teams ready to come together in 2014?
