For enterprises everywhere – and across all industries – the disconnect between sales and marketing departments is a pervasive problem.
This often-tense gap between sales and marketing teams is especially prevalent in large corporations, where teams are scattered geographically, they are focused on different verticals (and as a result, a wide spectrum of targets and customers).
Even before the global pandemic increased the size of the remote workforce, it wasn’t common for sales and marketing teams to be next to each other in the office every day.
So now, the misalignment between the two functions is even greater.
The irony of this lack of synchronization is that sales and marketing have the exact same end goal – to grow the business and increase revenue.
It is counterintuitive that the two functions are often clueless when it comes to what exactly the other team does on a day-to-day basis.
Marketing creates material to promote a company’s brand and offering, but then sales teams don’t know how to access it or work with it at the height of its relevance.
Then, without feedback, marketing teams don’t know what kind of material is most optimal for their company’s sales processes.
It’s a crying shame because this means that sales representatives don’t understand all the resources they have at their fingertips to grow their pipelines and close more deals. After all, how are you supposed to leverage a tool if you don’t even know it exists?
It turns into a vicious cycle of leaving important digital assets and marketing resources out of the sales process.
What do we mean by digital assets?
Digital assets are pieces of virtual content like photographs, logos, other kinds of images, audio recordings, text files, spreadsheets, marketing copy, product brochures, product information guides, and rich media assets – Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality files.
Put simply:
Digital files make up everything a customer wants to see before making a purchase decision.
Why sales and marketing teams fail to communicate over content and digital assets
There must be a solution to this problem, right?
Sales teams across every vertical should be leveraging digital assets to support their processes. In fact, these days, B2B companies are relying increasingly more on digital assets than traditional sales methods to empower sales.
According to a recent Gartner study, “by 2025, 80% of B2B sales interactions between suppliers and buyers will occur in digital channels. This is because 33% of all buyers desire a seller-free sales experience.”
You’re probably thinking, “well, this is a no-brainer: if content and digital assets empower sales representatives to actually sell, then sales and marketing teams should just make communication and collaboration part of their business processes.”
Of course.
But, it’s not all that simple.
As a writer for Forbes so aptly said, “The conversation about breaking down the silos between marketing and sales may be one of the longest running conversations in business.”
These communication gaps not only create logistical nightmares, but they are also costly – both in missed sales opportunities, and in wasted time (and remember: time is money).
In fact, according to Planview statistics, “the average team wastes more than 20 hours per month due to poor collaboration and communication…that’s six work weeks per year that teams are not being productive.”
And, when you consider that the average sales cycle for a SaaS based company is about 90 days, six weeks is an astronomical amount of time to waste.
What happens when sales and marketing are on the same digital page
According to G2, sales and marketing “simply cannot exist without each other…They “should be in constant collaboration to attract, inform, engage, and convert projects in the hopes of them becoming a customer.”
And it’s true: sales and marketing should always be aligned, especially when it comes to digital assets and content.
Why?
Because it is content that both initiates and fuels the entire sales cycle. Marketing-produced material both initiates and enables sales throughout the entire buying cycle.
The right content can provide the exact ingredient that a sales representative needs to create a deal-closing recipe.
So, how do we solve this?
Glad you asked. Let’s take a closer look.
How content enables sales teams
Here are five ways that content plays a pivotal role for salespeople when closing deals – and the reason why salespeople need instant knowledge about and access to it.
Attracting targets through inbound leads
A main priority for marketing is to build a database of legitimate prospects for sales teams. And they do this primarily through digital assets, which is content itself or what comes together to create content.
These assets are distributed to all of a company’s digital channels with the goal of getting inbound leads – potential customers who visit and interact with your website or any other of your digital channels (company websites, third-party sites, eCommerce sites, social media pages, and more).
So, if you think about it, marketing actually kicks off the entire sales cycle for a lot of leads (translation: potential deals).
Then, based on the content that visitors interact most with, marketing puts out more and more related material to maintain interest and to keep leads curious about the company’s offering.
Certain marketing content is the entry point to the buying journey, and then more strategic, personalized digital marketing content is the fuel that nurtures interest. It keeps leads moving through the buyer journey.
Content is such a powerful sales enablement tool that marketing teams establish broad, diverse portfolio of content.
For example, this collection of marketing content will include whitepapers, ebooks, blogs, brochures, infographics, case studies, and more – all of which differentiate your product from competition and are consistent with branding and core messaging.
The right content and marketing assets allow marketing teams to identify and nurture inbound leads. And, once qualified, marketing hands them over to sales teams, who are then in the driver’s seat.
Digital assets: Preparing sales reps for discover/intro calls
Now that sales has access to these marketing-qualified leads, they do their own prospecting.
Once sales teams comb through these leads and qualify certain targets as true prospects, the research and communication preparation begins (technically, the second step of a sales cycle). Once again, digital assets here are critical.
Sales teams have a huge advantage when they have full access to and understanding of the very assets that attracted leads to the company’s digital real estate in the first place.
With this knowledge and exposure, sellers know exactly where marketing left off with the customer and where they need to begin with their initial conversations with prospects.
This way, when they pick up the phone or send out their own personalized introductory email, they facilitate a seamless customer journey for the potential customer – no repetition, and no wasted time.
And, as we learned at inRiver’s digital conference PIMPoint last year, customers never want to feel handoff from one experience to the next during their [omnichannel] buying journey.
Leveraging the same assets that the relevant target has engaged with allows sales reps to enter every conversation or meeting with a full understanding of (and answers to) the questions that a prospect has.
They also will know exactly which features and functionalities to elaborate upon so that they really ‘wow’ their audiences.
Optimizing sales and all product presentations
As many things about the sales cycle change, much of it stays the same:
Presentations.
All salespeople are all too familiar with this element of the sales cycle: the conference rooms, the PowerPoint presentations, the paper handouts, fielding questions, and so on…
And, at this stage of the game, sellers inevitably rely on marketing assets. And, it’s no wonder: pictures and videos are worth so much more during sales presentations and demonstrations than just words.
Can you imagine attending a product presentation, only to stare at a sales deck riddled with text?
Especially for high-dollar and/or complex products, it is much easier to demonstrate the glory and true functionalities of a product with digital assets – visual and live examples.
For instance, one Digizuite customer, Dura-Line, has found that sales peoples’ easy access to pictures and videos has allowed them to “swiftly close more deals” following both formal and informal presentations.
As a global manufacturer of telecommunications solutions – aka, fiber optic cables and conduits – Dura-Line sellers ordinarily (without digital assets) finds it difficult to show people the exact value of their products compared to those of competition.
In the words of Dura-Line’s Director of Marketing, Tanya Kanczuzewski:
“Our products are shipped on large reels that are taller than I am, so it’s not like anyone can carry them around in their back pocket. We rely heavily on photos and videos of how our products are installed. It’s what drives customer experiences and how we share actual use cases.”
At this stage of selling, digital assets are critical.
Driving personalized omnichannel experiences throughout the entire sales cycle
From beginning to end of the buying journey, customers never want to feel like just any old prospect. And, digital assets give them that experience they desire – one that feels more tailored to them specifically.
According to McKinsey, “given the choice of in-person, remote, and e-commerce channels, B2B customers have shown they want them all.”
In other words, when they are looking to buy something, they want the ultimate omnichannel experience.
Whether the customer is researching a product on a website, watching an online product demo, or walking around a brick-and-mortar store to get an in-person look and feel for brands and products, they want it all to feel consistent, crisp, and simple – absolutely no mixed messaging.
How do you empower sellers to keep this buying journey smooth?
With digital assets, of course.
Videos, infographics, logos, and everything that a customer encounters online should match what a customer experiences when first meeting a sales rep in-person, in a branded space.
At every step of the journey – as the potential customer straddles the line between physical and digital – they are learning something new, gaining knowledge that complements what they’ve already learned about your solution.
Assets that build upon each other and that are created to supplement one another are priceless for sellers.
Whether it is because sales reps consult all the right assets to communicate the right, most up-to-date messaging to live customers, and/or they can hand a prospect the perfect informational brochure – sales people need marketing assets to so that they can deliver the optimal omnichannel experience for every individual customer.
Nurturing customer relationships
The final, celebrated step of the sales cycle: conversion!
But the work doesn’t end there – not even for salespeople. Even after product implementation, sellers must do their due diligence to nurture customer relationships.
Again, enter digital assets, which create the foundation for follow-up communication. Content is a powerful tool for relationship management and brand loyalty because it allows your customers to feel part of a community – part of the conversation.
When new information about your industry surfaces, or whenever there is a product release, sales reps can leverage assets like product videos, email templates, and more for campaigns and social media posts that can lead directly to upsell opportunities.
Conclusion
By now, we’ve made it clear how digital assets empower sales.
So, how do we get sales and marketing teams in constant contact, so sellers have constant access to marketing assets?
The solution comes in the form of a Digital Asset Management (DAM) platform – technology that brings sales and marketing teams together as one unified revenue team.
A sophisticated DAM is a system that literally keeps sales and marketing on the same page. It enables content management at scale by storing and organizing all digital assets in a centralized repository.
Through a DAM platform, teams can search, access, manage, and distribute assets to all different channels, and through any device.
To learn more about empowering your sales teams with digital assets, and the exact tools and strategies required to do it, contact us today.
