Marketers are not immune to the challenges of selling today. But sales challenges like limited access to customers, increased market competition or saturation, or a lack of visibility into sales activities present marketing teams with an need to optimize collateral for the sales process in more holistic, long-term ways. Forward-thinking marketers are collaborating with sales colleagues to overcome these challenges through content development, deployment, and measurement.
Common Challenges for Marketers:
Market Saturation
Heightened competition among companies, products and with sales people compounds the challenges of limited customer availability. Sales reps are increasingly in positions where they’re trying to differentiate themselves, their products and solutions from potentially dozens of competitors. Marketing teams can boost market differentiation exponentially by providing reps with dynamic, customized and relevant presentation media.
While linear content like PowerPoints, sales sheets and product guides may articulate solutions to buyers, they lack the engagement and personalization to truly drive them to convert. Rich media like HTML5 enhances the sales pitch, equipping reps with flexible options to clearly demonstrate a solution while also giving them an inclusive, interactive tool that contributes toward conversions. These options can include tools that provide common sales functions like a product order form or a pricing calculator. When rich media is paired with the right deployment technology, marketing also has the ability to segment and group content according to sales teams, buyer audiences and/or product groups, making it seamless for reps to “tell the right story” to the right prospective buyer.
The more proactive marketers can be in addressing the variety of challenges preventing reps from closing sales sooner or more often, the greater the impact marketing can have on helping the company achieve its’ revenue goals. By taking a holistic and collaborative approach to considering which content formats to utilize, how they should be deployed and how content effectiveness should be measured, marketing teams will be able to better align their efforts with the sales process and deliver what their reps need to drive more sales.