Sales is from Mars, Marketing is from Venus - Part 2

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In today's episode, hosts Devin and David are back for the second installment of this series on sales, marketing, and how both can work better together. Last week focused on marketing, this week is about sales!

While sales and marketing may feel like they are from different planets, both have to work together to ensure the best experience for the customer. The main goal for the company is how to orient itself around the customer, and to help the customer make the right buying choice for them. So the question is, how do you make a customer-centric sales process that works hand-in-hand with marketing? Devin and David answer this question in three main steps that will help both sales and marketing win.

First, you must make sure you understand the context of the customer. By the time the customer comes to a salesperson, they have already researched and formed opinions about the company. Even so, it is the job of the salesperson to still ask questions, find out what problem the customer is facing and what they’ve done to try to solve it so far. After that, you can better serve the customer by helping them understand what your company offers and the outcomes your offerings can produce to help the customer make progress.

The next stop on the customer journey is helping them identify the trade-offs they will face and discussing the service from the customer’s perspective. The customer has too many options and each organization is competing for their time and attention. The point in sales is not to just get numbers, but to understand what the customer needs and give them your opinion on what steps they should take. The salesperson needs to build trust with the customer and help the customer make the right choice for them. You can win trust as a company by helping the customer make the right buying decision, and discussing the ramifications and benefits for the options they have.

The last step is having sales and marketing work closely together to receive feedback and adjust accordingly. Just like the customer is researching your company, the sales and marketing team also need to receive intel on the customer to make sure they are the right fit for the company. In order to learn about the customer, you need to have conversations with them and ask questions. Then, you can share those assertions with the sales team, but also be willing to tighten and reframe those assertions about the customer. Both teams need to be able to receive feedback, reset, and try again. If it doesn’t work out with a customer, both teams need to find out why and work hand-in-hand together to improve. In every company, leaders need to give sales and marketing the ability to have conversations and make adjustments. The key to winning on both sides, is to continuously improve and to keep the focus on helping the customer make progress on their job to be done.

Links:

Learn more about theExperience Leaderpodcast.

Learn more about hostsDevin Smith andDavid Antoline.

Learn more about episode sponsorActive Digital.

Connect with Devin

• LinkedIn
• X: @devinwsmith

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