How Marketing Can Strengthen Your Sales

If you are like most businesses this year, your sales curve might feel a bit like a rollercoaster. Ups, downs, sharp turns, and a significant fear about what might be next.

Now more than ever, your sales team is your driving force for economic stability within your organization. But are you giving them everything they need to be successful?

The right tools

Getting any job done requires having the right tools to do the work. When it comes to sales, that can mean an assortment of things from branded templates to memorable touchpoints. Making sure you’ve created effective and on-brand tools for your sales team is critical in supporting sales success. Here are a few of the most common tools you might want to consider. 

Sales plays

A sales play provides your salesperson with a defined set of activities that he or she should accomplish within a certain timeframe. It also includes a key end goal. Creating clear sales plays for your salespeople give them direction, accountability, and deadlines. For example, you might want to create a sales play that instructs your salesperson to schedule 10 new prospect demos over the next 30 days. Include details about who are the ideal targets, what is the value to the client, and what is the intended outcome. Provide a step-by-step process to accomplish the play and resources for the salesperson to use along the path.

Touchpoints and scripts

It might seem basic but documenting the various touchpoint opportunities your sales team should consider and giving them clear guidelines and samples of what to say, do, or send can be very advantageous. From sample phone scripts to email templates to thank you notes, your sales team will be more organized and more on brand when you provide them with helpful tools that are easy to use.

FAQs and discovery questions

Empowering your sales team with questions and answers to support their sales process can go a long way. Take time to develop a series of constructive discovery questions your sales team can use when making cold calls or engaging in follow-up conversations. Think through and create confident and branded answers to the most common and/or the hardest questions they might get while talking with clients. Having the right answers will build their confidence and create brand consistency with your customers. 

Presentation templates and proposal systems

Providing easy to use and branded templates for your sales team will not only help you look and sound more professional, it will create a lot of efficiency for your sales team. That means they can do more selling, instead of spending their time trying to reinvent the wheel with each client. Take care to include sample language for things like cover letters, an executive summary (the one page that is most read), and your brand story.

Sales collateral and product samples

Most marketers are already thinking about these as support tools, but make sure you are keeping them current and relevant to the changing times. Collateral should be quick-read, able to be distributed digitally, and targeted to each audience. The same goes for case studies or product samples. Ensure they are readily available and showcase the best of what you have to offer.

Training and incentives

Last, but not least, give your sales team the right training so they know what’s available to them, how to use it effectively, and where to get more support when they need it. Coaching and resources are the underpinnings of great salespeople. Keep your tools in a shared online location, send out helpful tips on a weekly basis, or start a sales team discussion board where people can learn from each other. And remember, most salespeople are generally competitive. Use that to your advantage with sales tracking, team goals, and fun sales contests. 

With a thoughtful combination of marketing know-how and sales activation, you can strengthen your brand, reach more prospects, and improve your sales outcomes.