As marketing automation continues to advance, marketers are experiencing an increase in both visibility and accountability as it relates to lead-to-revenue processes. It’s no secret that the relationship between marketing and sales is often rife with tension. Sales expects marketing to increase the value and quality of the support it brings to revenue production and marketing looks for sales to do a better job moving new leads through the sales cycle. Though tension often exists, it is indisputable that marketing and sales must work together if they are going to be successful.
To develop a more collaborative relationship with sales, forward-thinking CMOs must develop sales enablement strategies that put the customer at the center of the messages delivered throughout the self-service, sales and post-purchase phases of the customer experience. This means, sales can no longer operate in a silo; rather, marketing and sales must function as a relay team, making seamless “messaging handoffs” throughout the buying process.
CMOs can achieve marketing / sales collaboration and, therefore, an improved customer experience in the following four ways:
- Don’t pass the baton; share the baton: Shift the focus of your demand creation messaging to the customer’s journey rather than the traditional sales funnel.
- Put sales front and center: Ensure messaging between sales and marketing are fully aligned in the early stages of demand creation.
- Spark conversations with customer-centric narratives: Develop persona-based messages that connect with specific customers within your target audiences that sales can use to relate persona pain points to your unique value proposition.
- Maintain post-purchase, marketing-driven customer conversations: Nurture customer loyalty, preserve revenue and increase advocacy with ongoing conversations in the post-purchase stage of the customer experience.
These four customer-centric approaches to achieving marketing / sales messaging alignment and a superior customer experience can only be successful if the sales enablement strategy is born out of a Corporate Messaging Platform — a strategic messaging document that outlines critical elements of your corporate story such as persona insights, positioning statement, who you are and what you do, as well as the value you deliver and key points of difference. This platform is then infused into all selling conversations and tools.
Don’t let a lack of collaboration and messaging consistency prevent you from achieving the highest possible return on all your communication investments.
