How (and why) to build a content-driven B2B sales funnel
Data: 2020 m. rugsėjo 02 d.
Working closely with cross-functional teams, we witnessed many cases where relationships between Sales and Marketing turned sour.
Nobody in the organization wants these functions to be on bad terms, including (and especially) the Sales and Marketing teams themselves. Yet a lack of alignment and of truly cross-functional goals and initiatives often ends up in a breakdown of partnerships, or, in the very least — in organizational inefficiencies that harm results and lead to bigger workloads.
In this article, we’re taking a closer look at what causes these misalignments and, more importantly, how you ensure that marketing content optimally supports sales to convert leads.
A successful relationship between Sales and Marketing should result in a higher quality leads as well as better lead conversion. The reality, however, tends to be less benign.
A common mistake is companies underestimating the complexity of their sales journeys. This is especially the case in B2B sales where both digital and live interactions are involved — but often not aligned. Organisations tend to neglect the possibility of employing brand content and digital tools to help progress leads along the sales journey, and to supplement live meetings.
Common Scenario 1: When Marketing content and Sales interactions are not connected at all
A cringeworthy but not at all rare scenario: A potential customer is approached by a sales person and has come across the exact same offering on digital channels earlier. Yet the potential customer fails to understand it’s the same company or even the same product.
This sounds like it shouldn’t happen. But it does. More often than you’d think. And why? Because of a complete misalignment between Sales and Marketing. The very same company, product, or service is portrayed differently on different channels — with conflicting sales narratives, disconnected content, or even with different messaging.
When two teams both create their own messaging and narratives, they certainly both mean well, but the lack of alignment betwen them harms the sales journey and lowers conversion. When digital and live communication don’t cross-reference each other or aren’t aligned, what the customer will see is two different offerings under the same brand — one communicated by marketing, and one sold by a sales team.
Common Scenario 2: When fragmented marketing content ignores the complexity of sales journeys
Slightly less cringeworthy, but not less harmful for sales performance: Marketing provides supportive content to be used in live sales interactions. But it fails to have impact, because it’s too fragmented and doesn’t take the complexity of the sales process into account.
Sales teams experience an array of complex challenges everyday. Juggling different customer-side stakeholder interests, dealing with quick changes of interest and shifting primary needs, all the way to justifying an offer against other providers. It’s crucial for sales representatives to have appropriate and useful tools that both justify a product need — and address purchase barriers.
Why marketing content and sales interactions need to be aligned?
Both scenarios underline how often organisations lack alignment and synergy between digital marketing content and physical sales interactions. The numbers speak for themselves: According to a Hubspot study, organisations lose a whopping $1 trillion a year from this disconnect. The list of problems ranges from decreased sales performance and productivity to wasted marketing efforts. The lack of alignment causes parallel and hence double internal efforts and investment. And last but not least it leads to unsuccessful conversions due to inconsistency in the sales process across different channels. A problem worth solving? We think so.
