I talk to a lot of revenue leaders from marketing to sales to customer success. They are all looking for the same thing right now, innovative ways to help their teams connect with customers and build strong relationships.
New Podcast
With that in mind this week, we launched the inaugural episode of In Pursuit of Growth—the new monthly podcast sponsored by Modus, which I am honored to be hosting. The one and only Jay Baer, founder of Convince & Convert and bestselling author and marketing expert Ardath Albee and me kick things off.
Now, more than ever, marketing needs to provide content and show sales how they can use it to add value. No one needs another email, so we have got to provide content that engages. As Jay says,
Nobody wants to be sold. Everybody wants to buy. Everybody is up to here with hassle right now, the more you can communicate easy to buy and allow customers to self-educate, the better off you’ll be.”
As Gartner reports, B2B buyers want a seller-free experience. The research shows that 33% of all buyers desire a seller-free sales experience – a preference that climbs to 44% for millennials.
However, sellers do have an important role...if they can add value.
So as sales and marketing leaders, we have to look at revenue operations differently. Rather than looking departmentally at sales, marketing, customer success, we need revenue operations to look at the customer experience, and work backwards.
Actions Leaders Can Take
- Train the sales team to collaborate on solutions—not just ask questions, and present product. It's about being relevant at every stage in the buying process.
- Marketing can look beyond the top of the funnel and produce content for every stage, and transition point—and help sales learn how to use it appropriately.
- Train the sales team to help the customer make sense of the information presented to them. This way, they become valued—even if they don't win the sale.
Ardath wrote the book on relevance, and as she says in the podcast, it’s more important now than ever. Collaboration, providing useful content at every stage, and helping customers make sense is what makes a seller relevant. As leaders, we have to ask ourselves: are we relevant to the buyer? If the answer is 'no,' then we have to act.
Prevent Ghosting
Relevance prevents ghosting. Brilliantly, Jay spouted:
Specificity moves the needle in a way that generality cannot.”
The more specific, the more actionable.
Ardath talks about 'time to value,’ and says:
Our range needs to improve. We need the ability to talk not just about what we can do today but what we can do tomorrow.”
The 3 Ms of Relevance
Listen to learn the magic of the 3 Ms of Relevance:
- Message — specific to audience.
- Messenger — the source is relevant.
- Modality — beyond the website (to a puppet show?)
Entertain
Let's make our sales and marketing information "Binge-worthy, not cringe-worthy." Listen to learn how to do just that.
You have to because as Jay said,
You’re not just competing with your competitor, you’re competing with another browser tab, the Kardashians, the NFL. So, you better get more interesting.”
We hope we entertained you a bit.
In true ‘Jay’ style he shared some of the fun things we can do to engage our customers—like a webinar he did with a marketing company called Marketing and Margaritas—because no one wants to go to another boring webinar. It was Friday at 5 pm, so they drank margaritas and shared ABM research and tequila trivia. Do something different!
I recommend being more creative and there are so many ways to do that explained in this article How to Get CREATIVE in Sales.
We shared some great insight, and of course, had some fun. Put Jay, Alice and Ardath together and how could we not! I mean, Jay offered to produce a puppet show. You’ll learn some little-known secrets about rabbit holes AND tequila.
It's Relevant
I love it when Jay said, "Wow, it's as if Alice made this podcast just for me.” I hope if your job as a leader is focused on revenue, this show is so relevant for you that you won’t miss it. Our goal on every show is to provide innovative ideas that our listeners can institute immediately to help their teams connect. That’s relevant.
This show will address how to identify and engage all the decision-makers, how to be relevant to all of them (at every stage), and how to bring those decision makers to consensus.
We will also take a look at the tools we can use to not just be competent, but to help us be great. Like using Modus to ensure sales reps have the resources marketing developed for them, at their fingertips—when customers need it.
Subscribe here for a chance to:
- Win a copy of Jay Baer's newest book, Talk Triggers: The Complete Guide to Creating Customers with Word of Mouth.
- Continue to be notified when we release our podcast episodes each month.
- Learn about new giveaways.
