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Sales and marketing have changed. Like so many other parts of life, the change has been dramatic over the course of the pandemic. Change was already coming, but with less face time and more Facetime, the revolution came knocking whether you were ready or not.
From the fax machine to the long lunch, the best days of many tried and true sales techniques are behind us. So what’s next for lead generation? A recent S2W Media panel featuring three leaders from across the sales and marketing spectrum offered their thoughts on how to tackle the new environment – and why it could be better than ever for many businesses.
With so much change in how sales and marketing are performing their roles, ensuring that everyone is aligned around the right business goals and success measures is more important than ever.
“Marketers have to step forward from just delivering to the top of the funnel,”
says Tania Mushtaq, Marketing Director at Rimini Street. She argues that marketing must move well beyond qualified leads and pipelines and ensure their work is leading right through to revenue. “If marketing is delivering against a KPI but leads aren’t giving sales what they need then we’re just creating pretty brochures.”
Michael Demery, Managing Director at Seccom Global, agrees. He gives special mention to those running ‘brand awareness’ campaigns. “To me that says you’ve got no idea. As an owner, you need lead generation to bring money in the door. Same when you ask sales people how they’re going and they say ‘I need more marketing’. Marketing is an enabler, but it isn’t going to give you your sales target.”
Abbie White, CEO of Sales Redefined, says that just eight percent of businesses have strong alignment between sales and marketing, and that sales needs to ensure it is part of the solution too.
“50% of marketing generated leads don’t get followed up by sales. That’s a communication failure.”
Alignment takes some good leadership, especially in organizations where marketing has been treated like “a punching bag” by sales. But one part of the new business landscape can help to point everyone in the same direction: data.
Moving away from ‘vibes’ and focusing on real data is one of the great opportunities for business development. The digital era has made the sales and marketing pipeline more measurable than ever. Those who can take advantage of the numbers can reap great rewards.
“Marketing needs to create multiple touchpoints, but all touchpoints are now measurable,” says Mushtaq. “Marketing has become a complex science. That’s exciting! You can model against a sales plan. Firecast it, assess capacity and budget, and visually show how it is going to work in a sequence that makes sense so everyone can understand the process.”
Data requires careful, constant attention to make it really work for you. This means regularly refining a campaign to ensure it is reaching its intended audience, and using split testing tools to analyse these adjustments and keep tweaking your way toward the best possible results. The ‘set and forget’ era is a thing of the past – if it ever really worked at all.
“We are obsessed with split testing,” says White. “Following the funnel, looking for where it breaks, where we can turbo charge.”
“There’s a tech stack for getting to the right audience now,” says Mushtaq. “Give your agency or your team the parameters you want to reach. There’s going to be misses, but you should hit the right audience the right number of times. Then watch how they take action and whether it was the action you wanted. In a multi-channel approach you need to look at that data closely and refine it again and again and again.”
With layers of data across every step of the sales and marketing process, it always boils down to a great team that knows how to execute – and knows they’re in it together. Just as a team must align around targets and objectives, they must also share an understanding that the whole team needs to be part of a transformed lead generation cycle for the business to succeed.
White sees some simple changes can include sales becoming more proactive during a marketing campaign. Sharing campaign messaging on their personal social media channels can sometimes reap rewards through personal connections that a brand channel alone may struggle to achieve.
“96% of what we read and consume is unbranded – we follow people, not brands.”
Demery agrees that sales can become better advocates for what they sell – including building deeper product knowledge than ever before to ensure the company is seen as experts in their field. “Knowledge sharing and knowledge transfer becomes its own lead gen. When they’ve got a problem they might ask you about it and when there’s an opportunity in future they come back and talk.”
“We also need to see technical delivery teams brought in here as well. We need to know that what is being sold can be delivered. How does a campaign make sense at a marketing level? At a sales level? And at a technical delivery level?”
Right now, there’s a lot of excitement around getting back together again in person in the market. But we also know that most customers now prefer digital over traditional transactions. According to White, 80 percent of B2B sales are heading toward digital by 2025. So how do we ensure we’re getting the best of both. The new hybrid era may have delivered us many new challenges, but it’s also full of new opportunities for those ready to face this future head on.
From the fax machine to the long lunch, the best days of many tried and true sales techniques are behind us. So what’s next for lead generation? A recent S2W Media panel featuring three leaders from across the sales and marketing spectrum offered their thoughts on how to tackle the new environment – and why it could be better than ever for many businesses.
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