While I was unable to head to San Francisco for this two day event with some of the leading minds in sales and marketing, my good friend Jill Konrath of Selling to Big Companies and the Sales SheBang was there and she reported daily on her blog and Facebook.
Having read everything Jill posted, as well as what others were saying — and having interviewed five experts myself — the lessons are clear and I share them with my readers:
Get closer to customers
Learn what makes them tick. What are their motivators? Which is most important — fear, greed, ego, safety, etc? Where do they go for information? The better you understand your customer, the better sales and marketing can talk to them.
Test and measure everything
How well does marketing contribute to revenue growth? How effective are you in engaging new customers? What are the steps of your sales process? What content from marketing is sales using in sales calls? What research are salespeople doing to learn about their prospect before going on a call? What kind of thought leadership content do we offer and is it working? The questions go on endlessly, but the point is this: Be inquisitive and question everything.
Tightly integrate Marketing and Sales
We talk above about questioning everything, but so many factors revolve around the relationship between Marketing and Sales. As Jon Miller of Marketo said to me — What is a qualified sales opportunity? The answer: Whatever sales says it is.
Content is also key. What content should marketing focus on developing? The answer: The content sales needs — and that the customers want.
The lesson here is to bond with your VP, Sales. Take him to dinner. Become his (or her) close friend. Meet her team. Ask great questions and listen.
I also had a great comment from Trish Bertuzzi of The Bridge Group. Who is responsible for aligning sales and marketing in your firm? Trish points out that the job falls to one person — the CEO. Yes, it is your job, Mr. or Ms. CEO.
Demand Generation needs to be your strategic focus
While this dovetails with other points, like deeply understanding customers and bonding with sales — it needs a LOT of management attention. Put it at the top of your list. Learn about it. (I suggest you read other articles in this blog, as well as the Marketo blog.)
For companies looking for best practices in b2b lead generation who wish to improve the way they acquire new customers, Find New Customers is the place to go. CSO Insights says companies need to improve the way they generate leads and implement processes for business to business lead generation.
Jeff Ogden, the Fearless Competitor, is a demand generation expert and sales leader, as well as the President of Find New Customers, alead generation company, who helps businesses create lead generation campaigns and continually publishes the best lead generation ideas, so his readers can determine the best lead generation strategy to find new customers. He can be reached at (516) 284-4930 or mailto:[email protected].
