Sales is like dancing. it’s best when you know the steps

If you want your sales strategy to succeed, you have to put serious forethought into it. The haphazard approach — in which reps are told to sit down in front of the phone and start selling to someone — rarely works in the sales industry. Instead, integration between your sales and marketing teams is key to repeated (and repeatable) wins.

Everyone needs to know how different customers may enter their sales funnel, what they may be looking for at each stage, and how marketing and sales can work together to guide them through the funnel and toward an eventual purchase. This overall knowledge is the basis of intentional sales strategy; in turn, the specific actions and tools your salespeople use to guide leads on their journey are your sales tactics.

Factors of Effective Sales Strategy Design

It's vital that you understand the key factors influencing whether your sales strategy is successful or not. Three of the biggest factors to keep in mind are:

1. Lead Sources

Where are your leads coming from, and what's the nature and extent of their interest? A lead that downloads an e-book from your website may have a different level of interest compared to one who attends an hour-long webinar. Or maybe not! Either way, your sales and marketing teams need to understand that the origin of each lead will help them understand how to nurture that lead effectively.

2. Lead Categorization

Leads can typically be separated into 3 common categories:

• Education. These leads want to learn more about your company and its offerings.
• Solutions. These leads are comparing solutions in the market, and want to know why yours is better or different from others.
• Purchase. These leads are actively considering a purchase, and want to learn more about the next steps.

Lead categorization provides sales and marketing with additional valuable insights into how to best guide leads into and through the sales funnel.

3. Lead History

Knowing how long most leads are generally in your sales funnel before they make a purchase, coupled with knowing each lead's history of interaction with your company, can help you develop highly impactful sales strategies and tactics. For instance, an automated email sequence with a CTA to book an appointment may work for one type of lead, whereas a personalized email from a sales rep may be more effective with another.

The important thing is that your sales and marketing teams are in complete alignment on these 3 factors, and understand how leads will be sorted, categorized, and nurtured throughout their time in your funnel.

Building a Sales and Marketing Toolbox, and Training Your Team

Just like you need different equipment to go snow skiing vs. water skiing, you need different strategies and tactics (or at least tweaks to your current strategies and tactics) for each campaign your company decides to tackle. For instance, you may need different talking points for a special campaign compared to your normal marketing message. Of course, you'll also need to ensure that sales and marketing are working together with operations and IT, as needed, to develop the resources your campaign needs.

You can think of all of these collected resources as your sales and marketing "toolbox" — an organizing principle that allows for easy maintenance, updating, and training for your team. Building this toolbox, and then training sales reps to use the tools within it effectively, will increase your team's confidence and improve ROI on lead capture efforts. 

Make sure as you build the toolbox that you document best practices. Keep monitoring your toolbox's effectiveness, and be willing to adapt as needed. And then... document those adaptations! As you grow in your understanding of every step of the campaign's sales process, you'll create a huge competitive advantage for your company. You'll also create shorter sales cycles, improved sales performance, and higher close rates.

Using and Sharing Data To Increase Close Rates

In general, sales and marketing teams have access to different types of data. However, both teams need quantitative and qualitative data to function effectively; and when they pool their knowledge, it can make everything that much better. Sharing and comparing data drives alignment and success.

When you think of quantitative data, you may think about metrics like lead populations, click-through rates, conversion rates, email open rates, average sales cycle timing, and so forth. All of these are valuable pieces of information that, when used properly, can help your sales and marketing teams pinpoint opportunities for improvement and growth. In addition, qualitative data like lead quality, interest levels, observed trends, or even "gut feelings" also play a key role in shaping your overall process.

When your teams review both types of data together on a regular basis, they are empowered to act in a collaborative, integrated way. Far from a siloed mentality, they are able to ideate and implement specific, tangible improvements to your company's current sales and marketing framework. This type of collaborative approach taps into what's really the most important part of sales: not a single strategy, tactic, or process, but the culture created among your sales and marketing teams. When your culture is focused, aligned, and dynamic, it can provide game-changing feedback to your organization.

Designing Purposeful Sales Strategies and Tactics

When you develop strategies and tactics that align with each type of lead, you can unlock tremendous untapped value. When your sales team shares its vision and insights with your marketing team, and vice versa, it creates the basis for a sustainable, ever-improving process of lead capture, nurture, and conversion. Integration of your sales and marketing teams is the heart and soul of a winning strategy.

Granted, developing a collaborative culture and then using it as the leading edge of a sharp, focused sales and marketing initiative is easier said than done. However, once you've laid the groundwork, the maintenance is much easier. And as you continue growing in knowledge of your target leads, and your sales and marketing teams become more comfortable with one another, you're putting yourself in a prime position to win the day, every day for the foreseeable future.

Learn More

A healthy relationship between sales and marketing is vital to an organization’s success. Dive deep into this effective strategy in a new book called Sales & Marketing Alignment. 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.