BY LORI SIRAGUSA,
PRESIDENT, INLINE MARKETING PARTNERS

“We have a sales problem.” There isn’t a seasoned sales professional that hasn’t heard this statement from their management team. In my experience, it’s a fairly typical reaction when sales revenues don’t meet expectations.

As a result of this edict, the sales team at the receiving end is forced to go on the defensive, running countless reports listing how many cold calls have been made and to whom, the number of visits that have been conducted, who the decision makers are and of course, the offers to help “push” prospects faster through the sales pipeline.

There’s obviously only a few ways to increase revenue. You can close more sales at a lower price but that cuts into your margins. You can close the same number of sales but increase the price of each deal (far easier said than done, particularly if you are perceived as a commodity).

Or, you can close the same number of deals but sell add-on services or products to drive up the total contract value (yet, clients often perceive this as being sold something they don’t need not the best place to start off a long term relationship).

DO YOU HAVE A SALES OR A MARKETING PROBLEM?

But let’s take a step back. Do you really have a sales problem? Or could it be a marketing problem?
If you were to take an informal poll of 100 prospective customers in your target market and asked them to name the top two or three vendors that provide the particular product or service your organization provides, how many of them would name your company or its product? Maybe 10? 25? 50?

Even if 50 out of 100 can name your company as one of the top three, that’s still 50 potential prospective companies that won’t even know to include your company in the mix when the need arises for them to evaluate your type of solution or service.

Even the most accomplished sales professional can’t combat zero awareness of your company in its respective market. Conducting what’s often referred to as “missionary” sales is grueling on the sales force, inefficient and extremely hit or miss in identifying qualified leads.

BRING’EM TO THE DANCE

Assuming that you are confident your close ratios are strong, then chances are, the best model for increasing sales revenue is to bring more opportunities to the table or, as we call it, “bringing ‘em to the dance.”

This expression is one I first heard years ago from a long-time friend and client who fully understood the need for marketing and sales to work together.

It aptly expresses exactly what marketing is supposed to do. Marketing’s role is to develop strategies that attract more business opportunities to your organization, giving your sales team a fuller, more qualified pipeline.
In turn, they can then close more deals and drive revenue. When sales and marketing function together in the roles they are experts at doing, companies succeed.

This is evidenced over and over in surveys of businesses worldwide. For those companies where sales and marketing are aligned, they universally experienced faster growth, a higher closing rate and significantly less client churn than their out-of-alignment counterparts.

A MYRIAD OF TACTICS

So how should marketing go about “bringing ‘em to the dance” for their sales team? Marketing’s efforts should be heavily geared toward proactively initiating opportunities with prospects and customers to increase awareness and reinforce credibility of the offerings.
There are a myriad of tactics to address this.

Among the best is to develop positioning papers/white papers, write and place articles in key publications, book speaking engagements for articulate executives and host online seminars that provide information on their industry.
These thought leadership-type initiatives work especially well with companies that offer complex solutions and services because prospects can benefit from receiving ongoing information to keep them well informed of industry trends.

When they are ready to make a buying decision, marketing has done its role to facilitate the decision making process.

Other awareness-building and lead generation activities such as tradeshows, email and search engine optimization strategies also be deployed, but should be done in conjunction with some of the through leadership type programs for maximum impact and staying power.

Marketing should also provide sales with tools they need to nurture prospects throughout the entire sales cycle, not just at the point at which they show up on the radar screen. Again, informational, value-add materials such as articles, newsletters and in particularly, case studies, are exceptional tools for this purpose and can help sluggish prospects move more expediently through the pipeline.

Finally, sales should assist marketing in providing feedback to help identify the source of leads as well as quality of those leads whenever possible. A few intelligent questions at the front end of the sales cycle can go along way in helping sales fine tune its strategies.

When companies focus a strong percentage of their marketing initiatives toward attracting more prospects through awareness building, generating demand for your solutions and establishing the organization as a thought leader, then sales will definitely get more invitations to the dance.
Inline Marketing Partners provides on-demand marketing director services for technology companies who need seasoned marketing leadership and expertise to accelerate business growth. For more information, visit

www.InlineMarketingPartners.com.

Southeast Venture Conference, February 29 – March 1, 2012 at the Ritz Carlton in Tysons Corner, VA – Where Smart Money Meets Smart People.
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