Sales Tip: Establish Your Foundational Messaging

Your Sales Foundations define the core elements of your business. As their name suggests, they're the fundamental structure on which your sales and marketing efforts are built. Without strong foundational messaging in place, it will be extremely difficult to maintain a coherent narrative with your prospects, leads, and clients - and that inconsistency could cost you their business.

Of course, even if your Sales Foundations are already well-established, it's important to make sure that your team members understand and are in agreement with them.

If you're a sales manager, you play a crucial role in promoting this type of alignment. One practical step that you can take in that direction is to host a 30-minute workshop during your next sales meeting. The ultimate objective of the workshop is to make sure everyone is aligned with your company's foundational messaging, and has at least a high-level grasp of how to use it when interacting with leads and clients.

How To Lead the Workshop

In simple terms, establishing your foundational messaging is all about asking and answering the right questions. With that in mind, have your sales team come into the meeting with their individual answers to these key questions:

• Who is your company, and what do they do?
• How does your company create value?
• What type of results do your customers get?
• What is it like to work with your company?
• What are the next steps if the client decides to work with your company?

As the sales manager, your job is to facilitate discussion, and promote alignment and agreement with your entire team. Get out the whiteboard. Go down the list of questions. Point out commonalities and differences with each answer that's given. By the end of the discussion, your team should have a consensus on these vital questions (e.g., whether your company creates value through its competitive pricing or its high quality of service, and so forth).

In addition, invite marketing to the meeting as observers. This helps them  understand where sales is coming from. In turn, they can take that knowledge back to their department. When marketing and sales are aligned towards the same basic messaging, it makes the entire customer's journey much more seamless, especially during transitions from one stage of the sales/marketing funnel to the next.

What if there isn't alignment at the start of the workshop? Well, this is a golden opportunity to jump-start the alignment process. In fact, you may even uncover valuable insights about your company as team members share differing viewpoints.

The Goal: Focused and Clear Messaging

In the final analysis, focused and clear messaging ultimately serves the customer by taking friction out of the sales funnel. How? It keeps your team on the same page and presents a consistent narrative to your consumer base. Ultimately, it all starts with the establishment of your foundational messaging. Take 30 minutes out of your day to make sure everyone is in agreement with that messaging. It’s worth it!

If you'd like more insights on how you can improve your sales leadership, contact us. Or sign up for our newsletter for more valuable resources.

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