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If I only had a nickel for every time I’ve heard a salesperson ask for something only to have a marketer spring up and say, “We sent that out a month ago!” The strange thing is, they’re both right. Oftentimes:
These points of disconnect are symptoms of a fundamental difference in selling objectives between the two departments. At a 20,000-foot view, a marketing copywriter’s job is to create content that resonates with key personas at different points of the buyer journey. Even use case studies have to be high-level enough that a prospect doesn’t walk away from a sale because their configuration or scenario is slightly different than what is outlined in the document.  On the surface, this may sound a lot like what the sales team does. However, salespeople’s selling cycles are saturated in detail. It’s their job to figure out what’s motivating their decision-maker and cater their pitch to show the product they’re selling solves the buyer’s specific problem to a tee. Compounding the marketing content delivery issue, a given salesperson is juggling multiple deals while trying to bring in new prospects. They simply don’t have the time to dig through a content platform, read long-form content, and figure out how or when to fit snippets into their presentation, email, or phone call. Marketing typically focuses on lead generation while sales focuses on closing each deal. The need to bridge the gap with catered content is largely responsible for the number of people with “sales enablement” in their title tripling since 2017.
Whether or not your organization has a budget for a sales enablement team, there are best practices marketers should use to help drive sales content adoption. These practices especially apply when marketing signs up for creating a pitch deck or any mid- to late-funnel pieces of content. Gather Requirements Before development begins, have a conversation with the people who are asking for the content. This helps avoid confusion over terminology. When sales asks for a use case, they may actually want a sheet they can leave behind or content that dispels common objections.  Requirements gathering also gives you an opportunity to understand what kind of materials they’ve tried and what has (or hasn’t) worked. You may save a lot of time by giving an existing piece of content a much-needed overhaul or save other sales reps the pain of using a piece of material that’s incorrect. Don’t be afraid to ask sales more about the persona they’re targeting and the details they want to convey. Involve Sales in Development I’ve never understood department silos. Salespeople are constantly talking to prospects and are a fabulous resource. They understand who wants to buy when, and they have a finger on your market’s pulse. Chances are they’ll sense a shift in market behavior long before anyone else in the business.
Salespeople create a ton of content. They know what works and what falls flat. Talking to successful sales reps throughout your development process will help you keep the message on point and increase the chances your work will be used. I once heard a regional sales leader say, “Salespeople gossip like old ladies in a knitting circle.” He isn’t wrong. Salespeople are extremely adept at sharing what they love (or hate) from marketing. Pitching your content to an influential seller and incorporating their feedback can help you gain an ally who will encourage people to adopt the content. Communicate, Communicate, Communicate As someone who has been personally responsible for sales CRM adoption, I can tell you they’re a tough group to sell to. A great deal of this has to do with how little time they have to review communication that doesn’t directly pertain to an upcoming sale. Always start emails or presentations with WIIFM (What’s In It For Me). You make a career of presenting value to prospects. Use those same skills when you speak with sales. Position your content by stating what it’s intended to help sales do, who the audience is, and when it should be used in the buying cycle.
If you’re creating a piece that has been in high demand or you believe will make a big impact, don’t forget to loop management into your communications. They are more likely to check their email and amplify to their team. Just remember to keep your email short. Bullet points following your value statement are a great way to go. Spoon Feed Them When a key piece of content drops for my clients, I draft a communication for their leadership team to send. The format I use is:
This is only done for epic content. I recommend a monthly newsletter for all content with a short blurb on where it fits in the sales cycle, who the intended audience is, and how it can be used. They may not read it, but you’ll have a handy summary to forward when you get questions.
Here’s an example of a communication I drafted for an aboutGOLF article feature in Bloomberg (credit for coordinating the feature goes to Matthew Pilla, PR representative):
Does this seem too long? Sure. But the opening few sentences summarize what they’ll find throughout the email and it’s broken out with headers to make it easy to skip to the parts they care about. Keep the Feedback Loop Open It’s not easy hearing something you worked hard on isn’t useful. Finding out the content you’ve been creating for years can’t be used by sales is even harder. Risk soliciting negative feedback and find out how to fix your content going forward. There’s no better time to lean in than now. Have you developed a formula for better sales adoption of your content? I’d love to hear what you do or suggest to engage sales.
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Quarter-end is a stressful time in a startup. Due to tight budgets, the people responsible for pulling together quarterly business review reports are stretched thin wearing other, equally important hats. According to CaliberMind’s latest Revenue Marketing Report, marketing ops spends up to a week each month merging disparate data together with baling wire and duct tape (AKA CSV dumps and Excel). Those are expensive reports! Between shuffling priorities and aggressive QBR deadlines, data is often produced within 24 hours of executive review. Believe me when I say I understand the need for QBRs. They’re a great way to uncover insights, drive accountability, and decide what needs to be elevated to the board. But if your department only compiles data on a quarterly basis, you’re courting trouble with a capital T. Particularly in times of economic instability, teams must be expected to maximize ROI. They can only do this if they can catch a tailspin before it hurts and amplify tactics that show promise. Does your team need to reproduce your QBR deck every week? Absolutely not. Does your team need constant access to real-time leading indicators? You better believe it. The Quarterly LandmineWhen I watch an executive get surprised by their own team’s data, I feel for them—especially when it’s bad news. When I watch an executive get surprised by a different team’s data, I want to crawl under the table.  A deck walk-through prior to the executive review is an easy way to prevent the first problem. However, the adage that always plays through my mind when I see a landmine is “bad news should travel faster than good news.” This means finding ways to develop internal KPIs that flag problems throughout the quarter (more practical tips on how to do this later). Uncovering an issue before quarter-end gives your executive time to understand why something went wrong and develop a game plan to turn things around. It also gives your team a chance to pivot tactics before sales output drops. Ideally, department heads immediately seek out their counterpart when a cross-functional issue arrises. Whether it’s because they assume the other team is already aware of the issue or they feel ignored after escalating appropriately, QBRs are a very public way to pressure a team for a quick resolution. As the marketing analyst, take the high ground. Form relationships with peers across departments and socialize issues early and appropriately before resorting to the nuclear option. Why Aren’t We Embracing a Weekly Reporting Cadence?While reading the February 2020 CMO Survey, two main findings conjured an emotional response:
As a copywriter who uses metrics for everything from tweaking email subject lines to mapping out editorial calendars, this blew my mind. Then I remembered my days as a marketing ops professional. Despite the explosion of tools to help marketers do things faster and (in theory) better, we either can’t mine the right data or don’t know how to translate what our systems are telling us into action items. As a result, the perceived contribution of marketing analytics to company performance has remained flat over the last eight years. In an interesting article by Allison Frieden, she pointed out that most of our marketing tools aren’t helping us focus on what we need most: to connect with prospects in a meaningful way. Each tool often adds a layer of complexity to an already convoluted data environment. We need insights into what message works when, but a tool that makes content look awesome may not mesh with your CRM. As a result, marketers are left making decisions based on gut feel or popular internal opinion over real productivity data.  The Cost of the Quarterly CadenceQuarterly reporting is a hustle that takes place four times a year to fulfill executive demands. It’s easy to look at those bursts of marketing ops activity and write them off as an acceptable expense. People forget to also take into account:
Too many marketers are still spending their time looking backward. The high-level indicators produced for QBRs aren’t detailed enough to understand the root of a problem, and because of system complexity, it takes a lot of time to understand what went wrong. Marketers need the ability to dig into a problem and fix it as it’s happening. To do this, analytics need to be prioritized, understood, and delivered on a regular cadence. This means choosing tools that can properly integrate or finding a platform that does the integration for you (they exist!). Building a Sustainable ModelThe quickest way to break your marketing ops professional’s heart is to let them know you’ve just purchased another tool. Without them. Again. As a marketing operations professional, I witnessed countless application purchases made because of promises that were never delivered. Slick demos and a lack of knowledge about system requirements on the part of the buyer made for a hot mess more often than not.  Include your marketing ops professional in toolset discussions before you make a purchase. Let them hold requirements gathering sessions and figure out which features are a must-have and what people can live without. Including them on discovery calls also allows them to ask critical questions the rest of the team wouldn’t know to ask about integrations, usability, and reporting options. Marketing management must change its mindset about tool acquisition. If you want to have the information needed to make the right decisions, you must prioritize your budget to acquire tools that can deliver a good visual and the data to prove your campaign works. This means tying early funnel and in-flight opportunity marketing activity to sales data. Teach Your Team How To FishMarketing operations professionals thrive on delivering key insights and fine-tuning processes that drive real change. Unfortunately, a great deal of our time is dedicated to trying to make the tech stack work properly, cleaning up bad data, and answering one-off questions about individual campaign performance. Now seems like the perfect time to remind you that marketing ops turnover is a big problem. Check out Sara McNamara’s great insights into why. Empower your entire team to operate efficiently by:
Return on investment visibility should be a top priority, especially given our current circumstances. But even if you don’t have the time or budget for tool integration, there are still insights that can be gleaned from the systems already in place. Data-Driven Decision Making Done RightRight now we’re witnessing one of the most drastic about-faces in economic memory. I’ve watched companies slash budgets, furlough personnel, and produce copious amounts of poorly developed content to compensate for a drop in website volume and sales. Only 35% of marketers can quantitatively prove the impact of their efforts. In an age when ROI is more critical than ever, this is unacceptable. I’m not suggesting integrated technical stacks and on-demand reporting will be easy. It takes a lot of research to find the right technology. It requires an investment in the right talent. It takes time to switch the average marketer mindset and train people to know what to look for when in order to optimize their campaigns for revenue production.  The decline in the perception of marketing analytics' impact on sales production isn’t universal. Multi-billion dollar companies invest a higher portion of their budget on analytics and see a bigger benefit.
Start with leading indicators provided in the systems your marketers already use. Don't take common knowledge for granted. For example, ensure your digital advertising team knows how to access insights and interpret them. Discuss how email metrics such as open rates are tied to subject line effectiveness or formatting choices and click-through rates correlate to content. Take the time to understand your ICP and buyer demographics. Set up a monthly brown bag to discuss a best practice and encourage people to attend webinars and user groups hosted by experts in their field. Demanding a weekly reporting cadence will empower your team to make the right decisions about their campaigns earlier, prove marketing’s value to the company with greater clarity, and allow you to maximize your ROI. |
Camela ThompsonFreelance writer and Dark urban fantasy author featuring vampires with bite. My BooksCategories
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