Welcome to Talking Shop Tuesday, where we sit down with sales and marketing leaders to learn their tips for achieving #peakexcellence.
Today, we're chatting with marketing executive Wendy White about how sales and marketing teams can sell their solutions.
In a world where selling solutions is tougher than it's ever been, Wendy has a few great tips for how salespeople can make account-based solutions more attractive to decision-makers.
Let's dive in:
How Do Tool-Sellers and Account-Based Sales Professionals Sell an Account-Based Solution?
On the marketing side, there are a lot of people who want to hear about account-based marketing. For instance, there are the people in charge of sales enablement, who have to make sure their salespeople are successful every day. There are also the people who own the website, and the people who own the media. Any one of those people can get a conversation about account-based marketing going. All it takes is the right person seeing that vision and figuring out how it can work.
With this in mind, if you're responsible for bringing your technology to market, don't stop. If it's really good, it will sell. It's your responsibility to make sure these tools get into the hands of salespeople.
Even if you don't hit on the change agent at the first try, keep hammering it. Sometimes, it takes a few tries to get in touch with the right person, but it's generally worth re-targeting.
Additionally, keep in mind that it's typically less about a single contact and more about an entire effort. Complete and thorough prospecting is a smart strategy and can help position your prospects so they're ready to receive the right email at the right time with the right content. When this happens, sales can move forward seamlessly.
What's the Equivalency of Sales in Marketing?
There are people who care about the concept of the marketing stack, and most of them are probably putting together a "best of" solution because it makes sense for their business. If it touches Salesforce, this is especially true.
What Should We Do to Combat Tool Fatigue?
Tool fatigue is real. The first step in combating it, though, is figuring out how much money you're willing to spend. When is enough "enough" and too much "too much?" The second step is figuring out which tools are really going to change the game, especially since the answer is typically not "all of them." Companies need to find the solutions that can help them do more.
While we can create a lot of data, that doesn't mean it can be passed to a seller, where they can act on it in a really concise way. Insights are essential -- without them, sellers miss important opportunities and may find gaps developing in their businesses.
When you narrow your stack, you can get the data to flow and deliver it in a way that's more actionable. In addition to helping marketers narrow their stack, this tip is also useful for account-based salespeople looking for ways to make their products more attractive to decision-makers. By being the solution that helps enact a certain result, you can stand out from all the rest and ensure you're making as large an impact as possible.
While making solutions attractive to buyers has always been a puzzle, these smart tips are a great starting point.
