Sales and marketing have always been on a different path. Sometimes not even in the same building, not in the same city, or not in the same country. Account executives have their jobs to get meetings and crush quotas while marketing have their jobs to create and generate leads that lead to conversions which then gets passed to SDR’s or the account executives.
Outside Sales
Sales/Account executives enjoy the 24 OZ ribeye steak dinners and massive commissions while marketing doesn’t get the large commission checks but the satisfaction of being responsible for growing a business and being completely smarter and tactical than most sales people.
In 2017 the lines are being blurred between sales and marketing. Nurturing prospects through email marketing is not only a marketing practice but now a sales practice. Sales reps distributing educational content to their prospects was considered marketing’s job 5 years ago but now this is the norm for a growing number of sales reps.
Years ago account executives were only focused on number of meetings, follow ups, and closing out deals. Today account executives need to become “mini-marketers”. By this I mean they need to build their own email lists, nurture there prospects through the funnel, create easy content such as blog posts, and have their own presence on social media.
No matter how many discovery calls or face to face meetings you have, most buyers are not ready to buy. Instead of losing that control and sending it back to marketing to build trust and authority, account executives need to take matters into their own hands and control the journey by being a self-marketer.
Sales + Marketing
Should sales reps blog? Absolutely. You create yourself as your own educational brand, separate yourself from your competitors and build trust as the go to person for your industry. Add your prospects on Linkedin and post relevant content.
Now should sales reps put together html email campaigns and make infographics and ebooks? No. But they should send monthly personalized text emails sending them content that would be important to them. The most important aspect of lead nurturing is to never sell anything.
Your goal is to educate and keep your brand in your prospects faces and when they are ready to buy, you will be the first person they think of. If you let marketing take this, you lose that personal connection that you need to make in order to close the sale.
If you want the larger sales and big time commissions, chances are the sales process is going to be long and drown out. Learn about the best marketing philosophies. Add influencers and leaders in the marketing space. Follow them on twitter and add them on Linkedin. Connect with the leaders who specialize in the following………
- Inbound Marketing
- Demand Generation
- Content Marketing
- Lead Scoring
- Direct Mail
- Social Media Marketing
Focusing only on face to face meetings and discovery calls sent over by the SDR’s will keep you from hitting your goals and quotas. With so much competition out there and people trying to sell their products every day, taking things into your own hands by doing your own marketing will set you apart and turn those long sales cycles into closed business.
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