How Marketing and Sales Learn from Each Other

While this is now common industry knowledge, it never hurts to repeat: one of the best techniques to business growth is content marketing.

If you’re not very familiar with content marketing, it is essentially “a type of marketing that involves the creation and sharing of online material (such as videos, blogs, and social media posts) that does not explicitly promote a brand but is intended to stimulate interest in its products or services.”

To find the right formula to creating this content, it’s key to combine the skills of employees across departments. This looks like bringing together the marketing team and sales team to work together.

The marketing team’s primary role is to create awareness and brand recognition while the sales team typically focuses on direct communication and persuasion with customers. They are also the ones to answer customer questions and know exactly who their customers are in order to better adjust their sales techniques.

Unfortunately, this is where the buck stops with many sales teams. They don’t really know their customers. What’s the solution?

Sales should know all they can about the buyer.

In the same way customers educate themselves about products, salespeople need to educate themselves about buyers.

Salespeople should have an accurate picture of the ideal customer and a firm knowledge of how customers arrive at the decision to buy. It’s fairly easy to come by these insights.

When customers convert, ask them how they got there. Enough buyers will be happy to tell you about the articles and reviews they read, and you’ll start to draw a useful picture of how people conduct their research. You’ll also gain valuable perspective from the awareness stage of the customer lifecycle by learning about the social media channels your customers prefer.

Marketing should ask sales about the customer.

The sales team has more direct interaction with customers and prospects than any other department in your organization. These interactions can provide valuable insights as long as they don’t get lost in the shuffle of day-to-day activities. The marketing team needs to ask sales about their customers—to provide questions, criticism, and feedback from customers.

Pro tip: have your salespeople keep a journal of common customer questions, complaints, and feedback. This information will help marketers optimize their efforts and ensure that they’re answering questions, addressing criticism, and responding to feedback appropriately.

When you know what pain points customers experience, you’re in a better position to sell your product or service that directly addresses and solves those pain points.

Read Kelly’s full article, How to Adapt to the Well-Educated Modern Buyer, on Sales and Marketing Management.