What role do sellers play in your marketing? Are they sharing content on social regularly? Are they trained on how to engage in Social?
The intersection between marketing and sales is an important place to be. This is where the “rubber hits the road” when it comes to deploying the key marketing messages that drive sales opportunities. Your sellers are a critical part of your business and they need to be empowered with content and tools that make them look like superstars.
But don’t just take our word for it. Here is a recent LinkedIn discussion on this topic:
Post from Jeff Mesnik
People like Helane Cohen from Microsoft are actively building training programs around LinkedIn (FYI she is a Rock Star, along with Diana Ishak and Dave Fisk). Kelly Nuckolls from IBM has built programming to support her sellers in the past. Kellyn Smith Kenny how do you see the sellers at AT&T supporting your messaging? Or how about the Agents and Master Agents? Wendy Thacker how is ScanSource supporting the sellers in the channel?
I would argue the sellers can be some of your best influencers, do you agree? But as a salesperson myself, I know few people allow me to write too much on my own.
So if anyone is looking for support on how to build messaging for your sellers, Zach Messler is one of the best messages out there!!
Reply from Zach Messler, Product Marketing Advisor and Mentor
Sellers and marketers ideally should be working hand-in-hand. I know I became a better marketer when I started going on live sales calls.
I know the salespeople I worked with became better sellers when they learned to hear and apply what I would hear as a marketer. If your sellers are not playing a significant role in your marketing–and vice versa–you’re missing out on a big piece of your potential revenue.
Cheers, Jeff! Thanks for the mention!!
Reply from Kelly Nuckols, Ecosystem Marketing Manager, Distributors
Great points Jeff 👏
By working together with marketing, sellers can build stronger relationships with prospects without excessive pressure. Marketing helps sales teams find and qualify leads and maintains contact with prospects throughout the sales cycle.
Sellers should be proactive in providing feedback to marketing throughout the sales cycle (both positive and negative), so marketing is able to pivot and optimize the process and message to suit the needs of the target market.
The benefit of social conversations like this is that they inform and engage a good target audience with comments, impressions and reactions. The ongoing challenge for sellers is generating these conversations. Make sure to follow me on LinkedIn and join my conversations – let’s keep these important conversations going!