Marketing Assisted Selling Helps Deal Makers

Develop Your Marketing Competency to Reach the Next Level

Sales driven companies are slanted towards transactions.  Their sales reps sell existing products to existing markets and are accountable for prospecting and account management.  They rely on the “marketing department” for sales support and are not interested in developing or acquiring a marketing competency.

Companies Evolve from Being Entrepreneurial to Having a Sales Driven Identity.

But Most Don’t Achieve Marketing Driven Status.

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By John Bernardi

Field Marketing Boosts Sales Success From Lead Generation Thru Account Management

Field Marketing Boosts Sales Rep Productivity

Successful sales professionals consistently close profitable deals and manage a healthy sales funnel while being skillful at key account marketing, customer experience management and high-profile networking.  High business acumen enables them to facilitate peer-to-peer relationships and provide market intelligence to the leadership team.  Companies that provide this class of environment are able to attract and retain top sales reps who want to be the best that they can be.

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By John Bernardi

Marketing Funnel Acumen Is Essential For High Marketing ROI

Apply Art and Science In Order to Generate Highly Qualified Leads For Your Sales Force

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By John Bernardi

Hidden Gems In Your Content Marketing Calendar

Fortify Your Marketing Calendar To Play Two Valuable Roles

• New Content Keeps Existing Followers Interested
• Drip Market Older Content To New Followers

Do you typically plan the release of new content without considering new followers who join your community after this content is published?  Schedule your marketing calendar to get new followers caught up in a reasonable amount of time.  "Drip market" older relevant content in bite size chunks.

Here's an example marketing calendar that schedules a weekly educational tip and blog post; a monthly press release and success story; and a quarterly newsletter:

Weekly Educational Tip

• Every Tuesday
• Repeat 4 weeks later to new followers

Weekly Blog Post

• Every Thursday
• Blogs reference past posts, so no need to republish them

Monthly Press Release

• First Wednesday of the month
• Repeat 4 weeks later to new followers

Monthly Success Story

• First Friday of the month
• Repeat 4 weeks later to new followers

Quarterly Newsletter

• First Monday of the quarter to existing followers
• First Monday of each month to new followers

Your website and social media outlets should have archive links to all historical content for followers who want to proactively search your libraries.
 
Refresh your content annually and try delivering it via different channels such as video.

When you run lead generation campaigns, avoid information overload on a given day by using the Monday, Wednesday and Friday open slots in your marketing calendar for these communications.

By John Bernardi

Interrupt Marketing: A Provocative B2B Methodology That Makes A Compelling First Impression

Field Marketing Specialists Earn Their Stripes By Nurturing Leads To Sales Ready Status

I recently presented marketing assisted selling as an effective way to optimize the ROI from a B2B company's sales assets. Interrupt marketing, a component of marketing assisted selling, is a necessary, but challenging lead generation methodology.  It requires discrete, knowledge-based persistence.  It meshes with a prospect's buying cycle and can initiate your selling cycle.  It is best implemented as part of the field marketing process - not by field sales reps.

Begin a campaign by "approaching" a well defined targeted suspect list. Use sequentially scripted 1to1 "approach" emails that are generated through the CRM system based on campaign criteria and timed according to workflow rules - let's say every three-to-five work days. The goal is to gain permission from contacts who want to receive timely and concise information about your campaign subject.  A bonus occurs if they become an early stage lead ready for nurturing.  For those suspects who don't reply by the third email, the field marketing specialist will make a scripted telephone call after reviewing LinkedIn and other sources and updating the CRM record.  The goal is for them to opt-in or opt-out and for you to move on accordingly.

Email marketing tools provide a more aesthetically pleasing [compared to CRM generated emails] means for staying in touch with those who opt-in.  They offer the versatility to embed surveys and manage event marketing campaigns.

Through sign up forms on websites, social networks and email signatures, new subscribers may specify their areas of interest for receiving timely, concise information.  Use the field marketing process to approach these new subscribers and to correctly categorize them in the CRM system for future campaigns.

Marketing-Assisted-Selling For B2B Companies

Apply Marketing Assisted Selling To Boost Your Sales Process To The Next Level

To me, a B2B sales professional is a high value company asset who leads and executes a tailored selling process while also being an adept marketer and customer experience expert.  Their primary accountability includes:

1. Closing profitable sales opportunities
2. Managing a healthy sales funnel enables continuous goal attainment
3. Creating golden spike sales opportunities
4. Converting customers to clients
5. Facilitating company-to-company and peer-to-peer relationships
6. Feedback to company leaders contributes to effective decision making

Marketing Assisted Selling Enables Optimal ROI From Your Sales Assets

1. Help customers determine if they have a problem worth solving.
2. Success stories about challenges, solutions and results are a wonderful resource for situations where risk reduction is more important than price reduction.
3. Pricing tools show the value of each trade-off during negotiations.
4. Complementary vendors who have relationships with people that can benefit from your company's solutions are a great lead source.  These relationships enable "whole product" solutions.
5. Self-service content and assessments for each stage of the buying process must be intuitive for general awareness and more in-depth for educated buyers.
6. The field marketing (FM) process is involved in each stage of the buying cycle:

• Awareness Stage: approach suspects to gain permission to send relevant, timely and expected information.  For each account that appears in the CRM database, FM reps search for additional contacts where cross-selling makes sense.  FM reps schedule sales interviews for sales reps and are a consistent backup when sales reps are unavailable.

• Pre-Purchase Stage: Nurture early stage leads. FM reps assign sales ready leads and work with sales reps to ensure that leads are reviewed and acted upon in a timely manner.  FM Associates stay in touch by distributing relevant articles, company information and videos and conducting theme webinars.
• Purchase Stage: FM reps assist in presentations, proposals, site visits, etc.
• Post-Purchase Stage: Sales reps and FM reps co-author programs to retain, cross-sell and up-sell second-tier customers (STCs) and develop STCs into key accounts. A welcome package for new customers teaches them how to do business with your company and creates a positive first impression.