What Sales Could Learn from Marketing -Definitions

Recently I have been in the process of helping our marketing team look at sales automation tools.  This has been an eye opener for me in that over the past few years I have been looking at the customer through a sales reps eyes.  Sales reps are always intent on finding people to sell to and then moving them through the sales process to a win.  I always assumed that marketing works the same way but when we called on any lead that came out of marketing it always seemed like a dud.  This has been the case for several years of my career.  Keep in mind that I was the technical guy in the sales process and not the sales rep.

In the last couple of years I have been looking how I could take my technical expertise and help move the sales cycle along.  I would create seminars and slide decks and all sorts of customer facing documents that could be used to help a customer move down the sales path.  There always seemed to be sort of a disjointed process though for getting my messages out to the customer at exactly the right time.

With my current assignment at NTT I had a look behind the Kimono, and to my surprise there was amazing stuff to learn from what is mainstream for most marketing professionals.  I wanted to write this blog so sales and technical presales guys could take some of this information and connect the dots with marketing.  I think one of the biggest disconnects in organizations is around how marketing and sales interact and I think in knowing some marketing techniques sales reps may be more effective.

So let me start with some definitions that may be common place to marketing people but sales reps have never heard of.

Definition 1  Lead Nurturing

Not every potential customer is ready to buy a product when the first start looking at something.  But at some point they may make a buying decision based on information that they have accumulated.  Lead nurturing is the process of taking a person that may only be browsing or looking at different alternatives or looking for specific information from being a casual looker to someone who would actually purchase the product.  This may be accomplished in several different ways but the concept is to progressively provide the appropriate information on a consistent basis to a potential customer so they don't forget about you.  When they are ready to make the buying decision they will look to you as the source.  In a future blog post a I want to go deeper into this topic.  Needless to say from a sales perspective providing the right services and insight at the right time is key to success.

Definition 2 Drip Marketing

Like a leaky faucet that could fill a bucket a little at a time or drip irrigation that instead of deluging a plant with a heavy flow of water all at once a little bit is applied at a time, drip marketing's goal is to provide little snippets of information over time to your intended audience.  Whether it is emails or invitations to seminars or webinars, these activities are meant to keep you at the top of the mind of your intended audience

 
Definition 3 Lead Scoring

Lead scoring is a process of taking a look at all of the activities that a potential buyer engages in and  then analyzing the behavior to look for key indicators that typical buyers exhibit.  Once this data is gathered then a score can be created to give a sales person a better idea of what potential customers are more likely to buy and also what stage of the buying cycle that they may be in.  This tool helps better allocate limited resources to the places that are most likely going to provide the best return.


Definition 4 Marketing Automation Software

This is software that is essentially built to automate the process of creating marketing demand campaigns and then checking the effectiveness of those campaigns.  The techniques that are mentioned above are things that these tools are meant to track and assist with.  So for example most Automation software helps you create campaigns, then track and report of them, and then score the success and see the progress of customers in this process.  There are several of these vendors out there but a representative list includes Eloqua, Pardot, eTrigue, and Marketo to name a few.

There are numerous other things that marketing does but by knowing a little more about these topics will make a good start into more effective collaboration and sales.