Conventional sales tactics no longer resonate with audiences. The modern buyer has changed, and businesses that don’t adapt or accommodate for that change are only setting themselves up for hardship down the line.
Modern sales teams are powerhouses. Gone are the days of cold-calling and unsolicited email communication. Today, sales reps need assets; they need a wealth of buyer data; they need technology implementation to make the sales cycle faster; most of all, they need a foundation to build upon during the lead generation process.
This is why strategies such as growth marketing and sales enablement have become so commonplace in B2B. If you’ve heard those terms in passing, but want to learn more, then look no further. In this article, we cover what growth marketing and sales enablement are, and how today’s leading inbound businesses are using each practice to create stronger sales teams.
What is Growth Marketing?
Growth marketing is marketing for the long-term. It’s less about short-term wins, and more about building a brand that customers want to interact with. This is possible through highly iterative marketing and sales and marketing alignment. At the core of growth marketing is the concept of experimentation.
Growth marketing is a form of agile marketing — adapting to and embracing change, and the ways audiences consume information. Everything can be learned from, and everything can be improved upon; social media ads, email automation workflows, button placement and design, and yes, even sales.
Sales teams utilize a number of powerful sales tools, content assets, and brand messaging in their communications with prospects. Those tools and assets should be used appropriately within the sales cycle; sharing a blog post or helpful video content with fresh leads, sending custom demos and case studies to potential buyers at the end of the cycle, and so on.
However, there is likely room throughout your entire sales cycle for improvement. Would a more targeted or niche case study strongly support your sales team? What about a new website page for customer reviews and feedback? These are the kind of impactful, interactive changes you can make to bolster your sales team internally.
In the spirit of experimentation, sales managers can then review how these changes impact their bottom line, and make consequent changes to existing sales processes. Growth marketing lays the foundation for fully agile, adaptable teams.
What is Sales Enablement?
Similar to growth marketing, sales enablement is a shift in strategy that many marketing and sales teams have adopted to speed up sales cycles and improve overall customer interactions.
To put the concept simply, sales enablement is the practice of supporting sales teams with the processes, content, and technology to qualifying leads and drive sales.
However, there’s so much more to it than providing your sales reps with extra blog resources. Well-executed sales enablement impacts all aspects of the sales process, from prospecting to kickoff calls. The following are all examples of sales enablement, which can lead to shortened sales cycles and strengthen a team’s understanding of every deal:
- Providing a complete content library, segmented for various stages in the buyer’s journey
- Awareness Stage (Top of Funnel):
- Blogs
- Infographics
- Videos
- Consideration Stage (Middle of Funnel):
- Webinars
- Whitepapers
- Pillar content/articles, and
- FAQs
- Decision Stage (Bottom of Funnel):
- Trial offers
- Comparisons
- Case studies
- Demo videos
- Awareness Stage (Top of Funnel):
- Supporting sales with subscriptions to lead scoring software, reporting tools, proposal software, and video conferencing.
- Actively managing sales performance, and analyzing productivity metrics and data to determine process weaknesses (poor email workflow performance, inconsistent sales/service team hand-off, etc.)
Sales enablement is a product of clear alignment between sales and marketing in identifying marketing qualified leads and sales qualified leads. When well planned, these implementations help
- Marketing knows what content and assets sales needs in order to move down the funnel
- Sales knows what steps, pieces of content, and communications prospects have engaged with to become sale qualified leads
Achieving Synergy Between Sales and Marketing Teams
You know what a highly effective sales process looks like, but what are the steps for making it a reality?
Learning how to speed up sales cycles and more effectively communicate with leads is only half the battle. The true potential of growth marketing and sales enablement is only unlocked when teams are on the same page and the two practices are implemented in unison — which is much easier said than done.
To unify sales and marketing, begin by breaking down your sales process into three main parts:
- Strategy
- Implementation
- Analytics
Consider the following tips and tactics, segmented for each step in the process, which can help boost your lead generation and conversion rates:
1. Strategy
Conventional sales tactics no longer resonate with audiences. The modern buyer has changed, and businesses that don’t adapt or accommodate for that change are only setting themselves up for hardship down the line.
Modern sales teams are powerhouses. Gone are the days of cold-calling and unsolicited email communication. Today, sales reps need assets; they need a wealth of buyer data; they need technology to make the sales cycle faster; most of all, they need a foundation to build upon.
This is why strategies such as growth marketing and sales enablement have become so commonplace in B2B. If you’ve heard those terms in passing, but want to learn more, then look no further. In this article, we cover what growth marketing and sales enablement are, and how today’s leading inbound businesses are using each practice to create stronger sales teams.
2. Implementation
Routinely research and explore new software tools, techniques, and approaches to sales; audience behaviors change every minute — and your sales management decisions should reflect that.
A/B test various approaches toward lead generation, social media content, sales outreach, email marketing campaigns, and proposal/sales documentation.
Would a team/culture video add significant value to your current proposal template? Do you currently have a live chat on your website, connecting visitors with your sales reps? These are the types of tactics that agile sales teams and marketers leverage to outperform their competitors.
3. Analytics
Utilize built-in analytics from your sales software and other sales reporting tools to gain an understanding of where leads are coming from, and what actions leads are — or are not— taking as a result of Growth Marketing.Make the most of all-in-one marketing platforms and CRMs, like HubSpot. These platforms give sales teams a look under the hood of every deal, and every action those contacts have taken on their site.
Further, these platforms often integrate with other popular sales tools and apps, pulling all of that data from the sales cycle into one convenient location, fully visible to both sales and marketing.
The key to improving sales team efficiency is transparency.
Teams should have a clear — and strong — understanding of who their prospects are, and how they can better connect with and help those potential buyers.
At the end of the day, everyone wants the same thing: happy customers. However, truly happy customers are those that love your product or service and champion your brand for the world to see. Those customers only come around when there’s a clear fit between problem and solution — and the first step to finding those customers is helping your sales team identify a clear fit.
Need help aligning your marketing and sales strategies? Reach out to Tobe Agency today!
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