In this day and age of the sales world, you might think that sales and marketing engagement would be very integrated. However, this isn’t exactly the case. There is still a struggle between sales teams and marketing teams, and this difficulty unifying them had consequences that affect the entire organization. Joel Capperella, interviewed by John Golden, discusses how marketing can truly engage with sales.
This expert sales interview explores sales and marketing engagement:
- Learn how the two teams can serve each other
- Why listening to the customers can help facilitate the integration
- How metrics serve as a distraction
Learn to Serve Each Other:
Marketing people don’t always understand or know how to engage well with sales. Part of uniting these two teams and encouraging engagement is for marketing to appreciate that the sales role is the only entrepreneurial role in an organization. “That level of pressure is mediated by many marketing professionals. Marketing doesn’t realize that the most qualified lead in the world is the one not yet into the sales pipeline. No matter how qualified the lead is, that’s when the challenge for the sales pro begins,” said Capperella. Closing the gap between when a lead leaves the marketing funnel and goes into the sales pipeline is critical. Understanding the way sales goes about doing their job, how they prospect, and how they move things through the pipeline is vital to healthy engagement. “If we truly understood those things, and marketing has a deeper appreciation from them, we’d be able to serve each other better,” said Capperella.
Listen to the Customers:
We have to run our business, we have to sell our products or services, we have to listen to our customers, but we get caught in this cycle of serving the immediate need for the customer. We’re not able to look a few steps beyond why they need our products or services. What ends up happening is, instead of serving their future, we’re serving their past. The first order of business is that marketing needs to talk to customers all the time. Salespeople need to understand them, even better than the salesperson does. The marketing team has more flexibility because they don’t have the necessity of closing deals and retiring quota. They can be more flexible in how they get to know the customer. That is without a doubt the first step in serving sales better.
Stop Serving the Metrics
“What I’ve seen happen across marketing organizations is that it’s filled with tactics of advertising, social media management, and demand generation. Those things are all good, but the idea and the concept of a go to market strategy that drives the tactical execution, is absent,” said Capperella. Marketing automation has allowed this to happen because the focus has been on metrics. As a result, the marketing team starts to serve the metrics, and miss that challenging area of the market and the sales transitions, and driving deals further into the sales pipeline. “If we’re more strategic in our approach, that focuses us on being ahead of our customers, and become more prescriptive of what they should do,” said Capperella.
For more insights into sales and marketing engagement, watch the expert sales interview, and check out the sales and marketing section on SalesPOP!
About Our Host
John is the Amazon bestselling author of Winning the Battle for Sales: Lessons on Closing Every Deal from the World’s Greatest Military Victories and Social Upheaval: How to Win at Social Selling. A globally acknowledged Sales & Marketing thought leader, speaker, and strategist. He is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.
Pipeliner CRM empowers sales-marketing alignment. Get your free trial of Pipeliner CRM now.
Comments