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Win the Last Mile
White Paper
By Bridging the Gap Between Sales & Marketing
While marketing opens the doors – creating demand and generating
leads, sales covers the last mile – closing the deal by convincing
customers that a product or service will fill their business needs.
When marketing and sales work in alignment, they are a powerful and
profitable force. When they are not aligned, time and resources are
wasted, and overall results suffer.
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WE HELP OUR CLIENTS:
Stand out.
Stand out in a memorable, relevant
way through messaging that clearly
differentiates and creative treatments
that make a lasting impression.
Engage.
Communications play a key role in bridging the gap between marketing
and sales organizations. Marketing professionals can do more to win the last mile by fine tuning their approach to messaging, evaluating the
sales-readiness of the materials they invest in every year and better
equipping their sales force and channel partners.
In the following brief, we’ve summarized 4 common symptoms of sales
and marketing gaps we’ve observed and outlined pragmatic steps you
can take to turn communications into a bridge that connects sales and
marketing efforts.
Engage and equip employees through
executive communications that align,
tools that educate, and corporate
meetings that motivate.
Captivate.
Captivate and connect with
customers through a wide variety
of sales-ready marcom vehicles that
define value, demonstrate relevance,
and build B2B brand equity.
““ Our marketing messages are way too general;
I need to demonstrate a much deeper knowledge
of my customer’s industry and issues.”
~ Key Account Manager, Professional Services Company
Marketing organizations have historically been focused on creating and
broadcasting the “big message”. However, in a complex B2B selling
situation, the message needs to quickly expand to address specific
business questions and diverse buying decisions. Buyers are risk
adverse by nature and when government regulations and corporate
mandates for cost justification are added, the level of scrutiny
intensifies. One study estimated that there are now 3.5 additional
people1 involved in B2B buying decisions — more than ever before.
Sales people need a granular level of messages, specific details and
proof points to keep the sale moving along. If the specific content and
messages aren’t in place to speak directly to the concerns of specific
constituents and stakeholders, salespeople must work longer and
harder to close the deal, if they close it at all.
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Find out how MossWarner can
help your business break through.
Call.
(West Coast) 949.429.2266
(East Coast) 203.268.2960
Click. www.mosswarner.com
This lack of specificity explains why a recent study estimated that “80
to 90% of marketing collateral is considered useless by sales”.2 Another
study concluded that the primary disconnect between marketing and
sales was the “ineffective creation, validation and delivery of value
proposition messages”. 3 Marketers must go deeper in their messaging
to ensure compelling content is in place where it counts the most to
close the sale.
1
Sirius Decisions
2 Proceedings of the Customer Messge Management Forums, AMA and Ventaso
3
Marketing Alignment Benchmark Study, Holden Corporation
Bridge the Gap: With Messaging
White Paper
Outside-In Orientation: In his terrific book, Escaping the Black Hole,
Robert Schmonsees explains how an outside-in (customer or needsfocused) approach to messaging helps close the gap between marketing
and sales. This is the heart of solution selling and the wisdom in the old
adage “people don’t want to buy the shovel; they want to buy the hole”.
Most marketers intuitively get this, but according to Schmonsees most
marketing organizations don’t practice outside-in messaging. This could
be because many marketing organizations are organized and incented
along product lines (a distinctly inside-out orientation) and rarely
send their people out on sales calls. Another reason is that outside-in
messaging is much more complex and it requires a deeper knowledge
of the customer and the specific issues they face.
The first course of action is to involve sales in the creation of marketing
messages. After all, they are well-practiced at the outside-in approach
as their ability to sell depends on drawing meaningful connections
between the customer’s pain points and the product or service they are
selling. Host a cross-functional messaging session with sales to really
get to the heart of the messages that will resonate with customers.
Get Granular: Before hosting this messaging session, you’ll want to
map out what messages are required. As companies adopt more of
an outside-in approach to their messaging, the number of messages
they manage will expand. Developing and managing this inventory
of messages will require an organization model or matrix. In our
experience, messaging matrices are organized with slight differences
depending on the business, but all strive to identify the value
intersections between such things as:
- Business Need + Product Feature
- Key Stakeholder + Decision Factors
- Business Objective + Relevant Track Record
Sales organizations have been moving to this kind of value alignment
discipline as they develop customer-specific development plans for
their largest customers. Marketing can respond by collecting those
granular points of intersection and mapping them into a messaging
system that salespeople will use and customers want to see.
“We spend a small fortune creating sales materials
and I am pretty certain they never get used.”
~ Marketing Director, Pharmaceutical Manufacturer
>>
Find out how MossWarner can
help your business break through.
Call.
(West Coast) 949.429.2266
(East Coast) 203.268.2960
Click. www.mosswarner.com
Marketing often defines what they do as “we open doors” or “we get
the phone to ring.” Their focus is usually on generating demand and
White Paper
the majority of the marketing spend tends to be applied to these dooropening, awareness-building activities. However, the sales people are
focused on everything that comes after the door is opened. They are
very good at moving the conversation toward the close, but typically
have little help from marketing to do so.
This explains why many salespeople – to the great annoyance of marketing – crudely copy and paste material from various sources (which
may be inconsistent with approved messaging) to create customer presentations and leave behinds. They’ve decided that if marketing can’t
give them what they need, they will do it themselves. Marketers must
extend wider than they have before and create materials that support
the later stages of the sales process.
Bridge the Gap: With Materials
Allocate Budget to Stages of the Sale: Next time you assess your
marketing budget try to look at the allocation not only in terms of
key activity or media but also in terms of where the spend supports
the sales funnel. Models for the various stages of the sale vary, but
typically include some permutation of Prospect> Present> Propose>
Close> Develop. Marketing messages and the materials that convey
them should be in place to support all stages of the sale and help
move the conversation from one stage to the next. We’ve found when
a sales force has a low win rate on proposals it usually correlates with
the lack of effective materials to support this activity.
Marketing can better support the effectiveness of a particular stage
of a sale by changing the weighting of the spend. The weighting could
also change depending on the product lifecycle. For example, a new
product will “heavy up” on activities that generate awareness in the
marketplace. Conversely, an established product seeking to defend
market share will spend more on activities that build loyalty and
nurture specific customer relationships.
Brighten Your Thought Leadership: Thought Leadership is an important
tactic marketers use to differentiate their offerings. White papers,
industry reviews, and educational seminars have been used extensively
to generate higher quality leads and arm sales people with “new news”
to go talk to their customers about. The problem is the same materials
are typically used for prospects and existing customers alike.
>>
Find out how MossWarner can
help your business break through.
Call.
(West Coast) 949.429.2266
(East Coast) 203.268.2960
Click. www.mosswarner.com
It’s important to segment or version your thought leadership assets
into two discreet sets of materials: one set used to generate leads and
the other used to deliver real added value to existing customers. After
all, don’t your existing customers deserve a bit more of your insight
and wisdom?
“We’re inundated with data and information, but I
still can’t seem to find the content I really need
when I need it.”
~ National Account Manager, CPG Manufacturer
White Paper
Marketing and sales organizations each possess and manage a great
deal of information. Marketing has reams of brand and product usage
information, while sales has repositories brimming with customerspecific data and competitive intelligence. In all these haystacks of
information lie the needles that sales people hunt for everyday.
A recent study indicated that salespeople spend approximately 30-50
hours per month searching for information and re-creating customer
facing content. 4 When they don’t find it they create it themselves which
leads to other problems. Because as another study indicated, 80 to
90% of customer facing content created by salespeople is inaccurate
and dilutes the brand. 5 Better organization of sales and marketing
assets across easily accessible portals is certainly a big part of the
solution. But changing the method of how information is aggregated
and published is another critical factor.
Because of the way media has been historically produced, marketing
is typically responsible for developing the “final product”. This means
they took all the raw materials and constructed the house themselves;
usually in a way that will appeal to that fictional “typical buyer”. When
marketing constructs the “final product”, sales people often spend time
deconstructing what’s been developed only to reconstruct it again to
address the specific needs of their customer. However, publishing has
evolved to the point where sales people are capable and actually better
suited to take the ingredients and build their own house; one they
know the client will like.
Bridge the Gap: With Methods
Do-It-Yourself Publishing for Sales: Marketing needs to shift their focus
from publishing the “final product” to creating reusable “nuggets” of
compelling content for sales to use as building blocks. These nuggets
include research insights, market trends, test results, value statements,
product information, proof points, etc. and are customized with the
outside-in messaging approach mentioned earlier.
Sales knows how to best construct these nuggets into a story that
will best resonate with their customer. By managing these as “buildit-yourself” components, marketing will save sales the time it takes
to deconstruct and then reconstruct content while, at the same time,
ensure consistent messaging.
>>
Find out how MossWarner can
help your business break through.
Call.
(West Coast) 949.429.2266
(East Coast) 203.268.2960
Click. www.mosswarner.com
4
Bridging the Great Divide: Process, Technology and the Marketing/Sales Interface”, Aberdeen Group
5 Proceedings of the Customer Message Management Forums, AMA and Ventaso
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There are a variety of software vendors (Brainshark, SAVO, Prolifiq) who
offer up technology solutions to enable this kind of publishing capability
for sales people. Standard-setting initiatives such as Customer Message
Management are also starting to take hold as more and more businesses
migrate to this approach. However, the first step before adopting technology or new standards is to first establish the discipline necessary to
first go deeper on messaging and then think in terms of creating highly
granular content “nuggets” as opposed to the finished piece.
“I’m concerned that our channel partners won’t be
able to convincingly convey our new brand message.”
~ VP Marketing, Technology/Software Company
Marketers have a host of reports that show how their various marketing
efforts are performing. However, the one area that remains a bit of a
mystery is what occurs in those last few feet between the sales person
and the customer. This is the critical moment of truth when the brand
promise either comes to life or falls flat. Nothing will derail a great
advertising campaign like a sales person offering up a totally different,
or even contradictory, message.
Winning at this point of contact (what we like to call “the last mile”)
with the customer is an absolutely vital component for any sales
or marketing effort. One study estimated that 85% of B-to-B brand
decision-making and loyalty is driven by the field – generated at the
point of contact with a customer and afterwards. Putting the pieces
in place to win at this point of contact should be an essential part of
every marketing plan.
Bridge the Gap: With Mix Make Sales Your Primary Audience: Most marketing plans detail the
various audiences a program will reach. The better ones will include
specific tactics for each audience. Few, however, include sales (either
direct and/or indirect) as a discrete audience and fewer still make sales
the primary audience.
Many assume that since they are all part of the same team, sales will
“get it” but they haven’t been as steeped in the message creation as
the marketers have. Others discount sales as an audience for budgetary
reasons as they focus their budgets against customer focused activities.
Yet consider for a moment the power and the added potential if
you could “turn on” your sales force or channel partners and have
those front-line resources become your strongest brand or program
evangelists.
>>
Find out how MossWarner can
help your business break through.
Call.
(West Coast) 949.429.2266
(East Coast) 203.268.2960
Click. www.mosswarner.com
There are a variety of internal communication opportunities (that most
companies disregard) which can turn sales into a megaphone that
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amplifies the messages conveyed through the rest of your media mix. Of all the various ways, you can be sure your customer gets the message
you want to send the sales force is by far the most effective – find ways
to tune them in.
Bridge the Gap: With MossWarner
Want to know more about how communications can bridge the gap
between your sales and marketing efforts? Contact MossWarner. We’re
a marketing + sales communications agency that understands the
importance of maintaining consistent and relevant messages from the first step through the “last mile,” where the sale is made.
For more than 17 years, we have worked with the marketing and sales
organizations of leading companies developing messages, tools,
materials and meetings that help both marketing and sales win. Our
understanding of the ways each organization operates makes us a
valuable partner in aligning marketing and sales in the larger pursuit of achieving market leadership and competitive advantage.
For more information, contact:
West Coast:
Marcy Kalina 949.429.2266
East Coast:
Doug Bleecher
908.428.4533
>>
Find out how MossWarner can
help your business break through.
Call.
(West Coast) 949.429.2266
(East Coast) 203.268.2960
Click. www.mosswarner.com