Wolverines VS. Buckeyes? Pittsburgh VS. Cleveland? Democrats VS. Republicans? Are sales and marketing really all that far apart? Inexplicably, considering how closely the two entities would seem to be tied, conventional wisdom would say they are.
What is needed is a paradigm shift. Instead of looking at marketing from a traditional (a.k.a. high priced glossy brochure) perspective, sales professionals need to realize “marketing” can actually be a solid source for generating leads. Marketing, on the other hand, needs to move beyond traditional methods and embrace more metrics based digital marketing approaches.
As Act-On Senior Director of Sales Chris Hardeman wrote in his blog post, Sales is from Mars, Marketing’s from Venus: Five Factors to Close the Gap, sales and marketing teams that work together can be very successful. He backs that statement up, saying that working together, he and his marketing department “have never missed their numbers.”
Never is a pretty strong statement … so how do they do it? He offers these five pointers:
- Utilize sales and marketing metrics
- Work together with sales to identify sales qualified leads
- Learn to embrace sales-oriented messaging
- Know what inside information prospects tell sales
- Maintain a sense of urgency
While the title of the post speaks to collaboration, at their core, each of these suggestions lean towards helping marketing professionals start to think like salespeople. You could say that is because the author is a sales director, not a marketing director, but really, isn’t that the point? Shouldn’t marketing be designed to sell?
At NuGrowth, we’d give the answer to that as a resounding “yes.” That’s why when we talk marketing here, what we are really talking about is lead generation – the process of creating assets and enabling systems that empower sales reps to sell more.
As we wrote in Lead Gen: Marketing that SELLS, the latest article in our monthly series, “ Lead generation puts qualified leads in the hands of the sales team. Traditional marketing lets people know you are out there. Lead generation is about quality over quantity; traditional marketing, about saturating the market. Lead generation is about measuring conversions; traditional marketing, about tossing it out there and hoping your message sticks.”
When marketing to sell, form cannot drive function, if anything it needs to be the other way around.
The outsourced marketing and sales teams at NuGrowth Solutions understand this better than most for the simple fact that NuGrowth’s roots are as a sales organization. Our marketing team is comprised of successful sales professionals who know, first hand, the value of a good lead and with expertise in writing benefits-oriented copy, producing compelling graphic design and implementing end-to-end marketing campaigns, they know how to get them.
One-hundred percent of our focus is on driving leads which result in new client acquisition for our customers.
If you are interested leveraging our expert sales and lead gen marketing teams to increase revenue for your business, please contact us via our easy online form or give us a call at 1-800-966-3051.
