Category: Blog

Sales and marketing both share a common goal – revenue. Yet, often there is a whole host of squabbling that goes on between the two in order to find a way to bring revenue in. This is an age old rivalry, a misalignment that costs B2B companies 10% or more of revenue per year.

Once sales and marketing teams have decided on an idea to run with, they often quickly unravel. 60-70% of B2B content created is never used, often because the marketing team lack the intimate buyer knowledge that sales teams are party too. Even more frustratingly, 79% of marketing leads never convert into sales because they aren’t passed on at all, they aren’t properly followed up or the leads aren’t validated before being sent across.

It’s seemingly obvious then that it is about time that Sales and Marketing teams joined together in a merry dance of integration – businesses with aligned sales and marketing teams achieve 207% higher revenue compared to those which are disjointed and out of touch.

The solution:

1. Make sure that your sales and marketing teams are working together

For every client, both sides should be able to offer their expert advice as each can bring different skills to the table. Your sales team will often have personable skills, giving them the upper hand when it comes to actually closing leads. However, your marketing team are there to entice those leads in to begin with, using targeted marketing based on their in-depth market research. It is important that teams are on the same page and share an awareness of the client’s needs.

2. Be transparent

Make sure that each team has access to, or a clear awareness of all that will be happening during a client’s campaign. Have your marketing team share social plans or ask the sales team to proof read blog posts, for example – they may have suggestions on how to keep clients interested during the nurturing process. And vice versa, share call scripts with your marketeers, they may be able to offer more engaging conversation suggestions.

3. Evaluate results together

Learn from what each team has done well and what you can collectively improve on. Using data from past campaigns will allow you to best assess this. If a referral scheme didn’t work on a previous campaign, why was this and is it a good idea to use it on a similar one in the future or should both teams look at alternative messaging or ways in which the referral scheme is presented? At the end of the day, both teams are here to make money, so each team should have input on how best to do it.

4. Get to know each other

It sounds almost too easy but how can a team be successful and integrated if none of them know anything about the other? In talking, each team will find out how the other works and who is best to go to for certain tasks. If you allow your teams the opportunity to share common ground and build working relationships and friendships, they are more likely to be motivated and produce work of a high quality.

At Air Marketing Group, we understand the importance of integrating sales and marketing. Within the group we have two brands, Air specialising in business development and inside sales alongside Roots to Market who specialise in Marketing and Demand Generation services.

If you’re looking for a fully integrated sales and marketing experience then get in touch, call: 0345 241 3038, or email: contact@air-marketing.co.uk

Managing your sales pipeline effectively is a sure-fire way to ensure success for your business, however according to Vantage Point whilst 72% of sales managers hold sales pipeline review meetings, 63% say that their companies do a bad job of managing their sales pipelines.

A strong sales pipeline won’t build itself overnight, but if well managed it will be worth your time and energy.

When developing your sales pipeline, it is essential that you have a definitive sales process. A few basic steps to follow when implementing a sales pipeline are:

• Clearly outline the stages your sales process will follow
• Define the number of leads that you require to reach your sales target, from that work out your average conversion rate which will then allow you to outline how many leads you need to generate to enter this process
• Analyse what all of the converting leads have in common – how were they generated and converted which includes the activities of your marketing team, the actions your sales reps take and the feedback from your prospects.

Implisit analysed the sales pipelines of hundreds of companies and found that the average length from lead to close is 102 days – this is broken into the average time from lead to opportunity being 84 days and opportunity to close being 18 days. This will of course vary from business to business but demonstrates the need to continuously manage and feed your sales pipeline in order to make the most out of it.

So, who is managing your sales pipeline and how are you doing this?

This may be down to a dedicated Business Development Manager or it may be a whole sales team focused on selling, building relationships and developing pipelines. It’s a big task and needs experienced individuals to be carried out as successfully as possible.

We find that creating a multi-touchpoint experience for prospects improves pipeline management and ultimately conversion. Yes of course we are advocates of lead generation via telephone, but our expertise stretches across the whole sales cycle taking prospects on a journey. This incorporates touchpoints such as email, social media, lead generation, follow-up pipeline calls, and even inside sales closing calls.

Could your pipeline improve your sales? Let’s talk, call: 01392 796 702 or email: contact@roots2market.co.uk.

In the world of business, we often watch the wild success of one company and the quick failure of many others.  At the heart of all business is the customer, whilst business is of course fuelled by money, money is easier to obtain if you simply take a minute to stop and listen to what the customer is saying. After all, people buy from people!

An essential strength of using telemarketing whether they are integrated within your in-house sales team or outsourced is the ability to talk directly to your target market and listen to their feedback. No one wants to receive cold calls, however if your brand is presented as open and receptive to feedback and objections, they are more likely to gain success. However, if you’re not open or willing to listen, then you may risk your business stagnating or failing.

In order to be successful, you need to make the customer feel as though your values and business goals are centered around their needs, as ultimately, they are the ones buying and using your product or service. You shouldn’t simply be thrusting a product or service at them and hoping for the best without taking their input on board.

Listening to customer feedback is especially vital for telephone-based sales professionals who are representing start-ups, businesses choosing to release a new product or service, and those marketing an existing product or service to a new audience. Asking customers, or potential customers, for their feedback is a key step in the process of reaching a sale, enabling you to assess your product/service, refine its offering and match to the customers’ requirements.

Their opinions provide insight to your customer and shapes the direction and message of your brand, ensuring that your business is aiming itself at the correct target audience. If the customers you’re interacting with are continuously providing negative feedback, something isn’t working! You may be missing your target’s needs, aiming the product or service at the wrong group of people, presenting the incorrect message or it may even be that your product or service simply isn’t desired in the market in comparison to competitors. By conducting market research through telemarketing and encouraging potential clients to help you explore the advantages and flaws of your product or service, you will gain vital insights and ideas. But more importantly, you will be able to tailor the product or service for the people who will actually be using it. In doing this, your business, and brand, becomes customer-centric.

Later down the line, listening to customer feedback helps you to measure customer satisfaction, which is obviously vital to keeping your business afloat. By continuously engaging with customers throughout the sales cycle, your sales team will create a sense of loyalty which will help the performance of your business as your customers will feel valued. If customers are actively telling you that they like your offering, share this and encourage others to buy into your brand and offering. But remember this channel of feedback is a two-way street, if they’re also suggesting changes or reporting issues, work to implement these changes and show that you are listening.

The more that you prove that you are open to customer feedback, be it negative or positive, the higher your levels of customer retention will be. Ultimately, a continuously unhappy and ignored customer will find a more suitable alternative to your business and leave. However, if you and your sales team continuously encourage your customers to voice their opinions and where possible adapt to these, you will better be able to measure the satisfaction of customers and keep them on board.

The easiest way to show that you are listening to your customer is to actively seek their point of view – conduct surveys, ask for testimonials, or react to feedback on social media. Social media is a gold mine for feedback, it is fair to say that almost all of your customers will interact with the internet in some way, shape or form, so use this to your benefit. Reply to their comments, negative or positive, engage in conversation with them, don’t simply use automated responses. If you don’t feel that you have the time to do this, then outsource this service, as it is vital that you engage with people on these platforms.

Simply put, if you and your sales team present your business as a customer centric company, the people buying into your product or service will be more connected to you as a brand and in turn this will boost your sales and your customer life-cycles.

So, are you listening?

Marketing a product or service by email is nothing new, but in an ever-changing digital world, where target markets are becoming more discerning and wanting that personal touch, we think of email nurturing as a faithful old friend.

No one wants a spam email, or with the onset of GDPR, should be receiving one! We are constantly hit with impersonal advertising in our inboxes, so unless it seems that some time and effort has gone into providing us with the information we seek, we simply aren’t going to buy into it.  According to Experian, personalised emails deliver 6x higher transaction rates. Therefore, it is worth taking some time to think about what an individual may want to receive.

If you have identified a group of individuals or businesses with a legitimate interest in your product or service, running a personalised email campaign is the way to go. Thanks to many email packages now offering comprehensive reporting insights, a simple introduction to coding and segmentation, there is no excuse for not using personalisation. Such sites also allow you to send as many personalised emails as you like in one hit. 100s of tailored emails can be distributed in a matter of minutes, each addressed to a specific person/company, putting your product or service directly in front of decision makers in a format they like.

But you need to keep in mind that personalisation alone will not make your email campaign stand out – it is also important to get creative! We’ve created the email below to give you our favourite hints and tips for a basic, personalised, introduction email:

Once you have sent out your first email, it is key to then follow this up rather than just providing sporadic, one-off communication. A fantastic way to do this is with a nurture stream, this is a sequence of emails that send your recipients on a journey of your story and works especially well for those that express interest or for those that might consider your product or service at a later date.

A key addition to these emails are testimonials. Research has shown that 92% of customers read online reviews, with 88% of people trusting online recommendations as much as ones given in person. An impressive 72% of people claim that positive testimonials lead to them trusting a business.

We’ve created an example nurture email and featured the use of testimonial, have a look below:

If you are interested in using email marketing as a part of your campaign, but perhaps don’t have the resource or expertise in-house, get in touch with us and we will help you by creating a tailor made campaign for your business – give us a call on: 01392 796 702 or email: contact@roots2market.co.uk.