Increasing the efficiency of a company’s sales and finding ways to increase time actively selling is not always easy. However, one person that has been through the dark tunnel of sales improvement and seen their way to the other side, is Matt Heinz.
As the founder of Heinz Marketing and someone with over 15 years of business development, marketing, and sales experience, Heinz is an expert in helping companies improve sales, achieve revenue growth, boost products, and retain customers. Now he shares his insight on the best practices for B2B marketers who want to enable better sales.
Sales Enablement: Faster and Efficient
The purpose of sales enablement is for a company to spend more time actively selling and increase the conversion rate of their opportunities. They are cutting out the muddy waters and background noise that decreases efficiency in the sales realm.
By converting customers faster and more frequently, a company will see better growth overall.
Sales enablement applies to the administrative and sales side of the enterprise. Heinz says that the sales funnel requires full-bodied support, and to do that both marketing and sales must work together
1. Establishing an Internal Consensus
Everyone must be on the same page in regards to the buyer persona. That means not only having a target consumer, but understanding who that consumer is, what motivates them, what deters them, and more.
Essentially, a company must establish a buyer persona and then share that persona with all key players in marketing and sales. That allows people to understand the stages of where their customers go for answers, what influences them to buy, and so on.
2. Utilize the Data Appropriately
Once the data is collected about the buyer and the buyer persona, the persona needs to be applied correctly. Heinz points out that most personas are funneled into marketing, but the message must also come from sales and how those sales reflect the buyer persona.
Sales team members are often concerned with making sure a customer is not forced into purchasing something they do not need, but they are motivated to sell regardless. Marketing, on the other hand, needs to understand what a qualified prospect is and what a qualified prospect is not. To do this, both teams must assess the data and create common objectives that help them establish a common ground.
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3. Become a Trusted Expert
One way marketing and sales can work together is by establishing the brand as an expert. Sharing information that helps people understand their products or services will create a level of authority and trust among buyers.
Eventually, a greater percentage of buyers will seek out that company again, because they provide value to the consumer.
4. Create a Bond
Heinz points out that a purchase is emotional. Therefore, creating a relationship and strong bond between the sales prospect and the seller is critical. Companies must also ensure that sales team members are not building their brand because that does not benefit the company long-term.
However, companies must also recognize that people want to bond with people; not logos or company names. Therefore, a marketing team needs to help empower every sales representative with the right tools, content, and processes that engage on a wider scale.
5. Nurture the Relationship
Nurturing takes many forms in marketing, but one of the simplest is just keeping in touch with qualified leads. The more they see your brand and company name, the more they are nurtured into a buying relationship. Heinz points out that an efficient nurturing tool is email newsletters.
However, sales professionals must know when to stop nurturing a stalled lead. If someone has never had a purchase or he or she are not ready to buy, marketing can re-market to them later.
6. Throw Out the Sales Scripts
Sales scripts are something Heinz says never work, and in his years of marketing, he has yet to see one that did. Therefore, a script should never be a go-to for making sales more efficient. A conversation’s start might be scripted, but from there the sales staff should know how to guide a prospect in the right direction through improv. Most importantly, the sales professional must advocate for the deal and advocate for the customer’s needs in that conversation — something a script cannot do.
Enabling more efficient sales comes down to teamwork between marketing and sales. When both components work together, a business is more likely to increase sales and find qualified leads so that sales team members are there to nurture instead of starting from nothing.
Get effective B2B marketing assistance and direct mail marketing from the team at Magnificent. Also, do not forget to follow Matt Heinz’s blog for more tips on sales and marketing.
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