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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. >> 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. >> 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 White Paper 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 White Paper 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