Joann asked me for some quick and easy sales enablement tricks that marketers can implement right away. Well, this is such a basic question, but there is no quick answer. It really depends… It depends on your marketing jobs and your interactions with the sales team. Your roles and responsibilities will guide how you support your sales team.
The best way to start is to have a clear understanding of how you support your sales team and find ways to optimize the process or your support efforts.
If you are an event manager, you probably coordinate with your sales team on how to divide and conquer on the show floor. You know salespeople’s challenges are to gather as many leads as possible. To better support them, it’s your job to come up with creative ideas to draw the crowd to your booth. What can you do to drive more foot traffic to the booth? So understand how you support your sales team and find ways to do it better.
Another way to better support sales is to understand their challenges. Obviously, we can’t do their jobs for them. But, it’s possible to understand their sales process and methodology. Get a sense what they do on a daily basis, even what kind of rejections they receive. How do they move prospects through the sales journey? It’s very similar to understanding buyers’ personas. To market better, you need to understand your audience. To support your sales team better, you need to walk in their shoes.
Once you have that understanding, you can pinpoint the specific challenges and needs that you can help alleviate or satisfy based on your roles and responsibilities. For instance, if you are a content marketing manager, you can identify some content pieces that sales can use or customize for sales engagements.
Here are some ideas that you can implement quickly to support your sales team:
Can you find a joint initiative that sales and marketing teams can work on together? For example, can both sales and marketing tackle a strategic account together? Account-based marketing is a great way for sales and marketing to collaborate.
Another quick and easy way is to attend sales meetings. Most sales teams have weekly huddles. Can you attend the weekly calls and understand the current status of sales team efforts? I often discover useful information attending these calls. From time to time, I’ll proactively ask them if I can present and share upcoming content pieces and marketing plan and priorities. I help them understand what we are doing on the marketing front to build awareness and drive demands.
Here is one more idea: what about training sales on social media?
Marketing tends to be on the forefront of adopting digital. Can you share do’s and don’ts on social media? You can also share what tools to use to understand prospects better.
Joann, to answer your question, it’s important to start by knowing your roles and responsibilities well. Then, make an effort to understand sales challenges and needs. Lastly, pinpoint challenges and needs that you can assist with based on your roles and responsibilities
By understanding your roles and challenges, you can determine where you can best provide value.
The bottom line is that there is no quick and easy way to support sales. It takes time and effort to support them and do them right.
Again, send me your marketing questions and thoughts here or via Twitter @pamdidner.
What can Pam Didner do for you?
Being in the corporate world for 20+ years and having held various positions from accounting and supply chain management, and marketing to sales enablement, she knows how corporations work. She can make you and your team a rock star by identifying areas to shine and do better. She does that through private coaching, keynote speaking, workshop training, and hands-on consulting. Contact her or find her on LinkedIn and Twitter. A quick note: Check out her new 90-Day Revenue Reboot, if you are struggling with marketing.
