SALES & MARKETING FUSION
Acme Financial Services offers low cost business accounting and other financial services.
SALES & MARKETING FUSION
Most companies operate with the traditional set up of Marketing and Sales being two different departments. The downside to this way of thinking is that it limits the effectiveness of both departments. These two units have to work cohesively to accomplish one strategic objective- to create new client relationships and generate revenue for the company. These two departments should operate as your left and right hand completing tasks. Imagine if your left and right hand operated by the commands of two different brains that were not connected? Very little will get done. What if that was the only way you knew? You continue down a path that is inefficient and you operate at less than 40% of your potential.
We will use the name “Acme Financial Service” for the benefit of anonymity: Acme Financial Services offers low-cost business accounting and other financial services. They have a marketing department that focuses on 3 areas of marketing- newspaper & magazine advertising, direct mail, and social media. Ads are placed in multiple newspapers and magazines, advertising their low-cost accounting services, a direct mail campaign goes out once a month for small businesses who can benefit from their services, and finally Acme is building their social media presence by getting more followers or friends. During this process, the sales team waits for prospects call in so they can sell their great services. Now on the surface, this may sound fine- especially because marketing is bringing the sales team leads. The problem comes to light once we go a little further… The sales team tries to get anyone they can into making some type of purchase. Some people buy and others figuratively walk out the door. Marketing tries to get as many people in and sales tries to get as many of those people closed. This process happens day in and day out, week after week, month after month.
A BETTER ALTERNATIVE
Marketing and sales should be aligned with the same strategic outcomes. One overall strategy is created for sales and marketing, having each unit a major function in the overall plan. Marketing is focused on creating interest and specifically delivering hot qualified prospects to the sales team. The sales team is focused on turning those potential buyers into customers or clients. For the prospects that do not immediately convert to clients, marketing strategy and systematically nurtures that relationship throughout the customer’s buying cycle, eventually bringing them back. Once that prospect takes certain actions and shows interest, sales steps in and tries to help the customer to facilitate their purchase. If for any reason that prospect does not become a customer at that point, marketing again takes the reigns until there is another opportunity for sales to step in.
Let’s look at our approach to the previous scenario. In reality, we will introduce many different tools to take your marketing to the next level, but we’ll keep it simple to demonstrate the point.
Acme Furniture Company not only places ads in the magazines and newspapers but now also contributes articles to those publications providing great content to the readers. The content includes great accounting practices and important tax advice showing prospects that Acme is the authority in these matters, not just asking the readers to buy their services. The content is also distributed in a direct mail campaign to businesses who can benefit from the information along with an offer for a free 30-minute financial checkup.Social media isn’t about just connecting with friends, it’s also about maintaining a relationship with them so we make sure these great articles and the free offer is given to Acme’s friends and followers as well. Now that Mindstorm helped Acme increase their traffic by fivefold using the same marketing dollars, it’s time to bring in sales. The sales team was trained to all deliver the same high-quality presentations. They were taught exactly what to say and do in every scenario and most importantly, all sales people were delivering the same message.The focus wasn’t on price, it was about the comfort of having the right advice without the ridiculous fees usually associated. With marketing and sales, delivering one message, these prospects hear the same thing over and over which creates an imprint in the prospect’s mind. The prospect can understand what the brand stands for because every communication from Acme to the customer says the same thing regardless if it were a sales person or a flyer. At this stage Acme has a major increase, converting prospects to customers and are getting many customers to purchase additional services because of Acme’s trusted name in the industry. Just like earlier, some prospects are not ready to buy so they get their information and need time.Where most marketing departments have abandoned this prospect, we just got started. Once a month postcards is sent to this customer offering reports, coupons, and free trials to services. When a customer downloads the free report, sales immediately call the customer and offers a free trial to the service that corresponds to the report. When sales and marketing have one brain, then the customer gets a better experience. The experience is more focused on the customers buying process than the organization selling process. People like to buy, don’t ruin that great experience for them.No one likes to be sold. Mindstorm fuss sales and marketing into one machine that dramatically increases your sales, brings in more clients, raises revenues, skyrockets company profits, and most importantly strengthens your relationships with your customers
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