When should salespeople give marketing feedback?
We read a statistic that made us feel ill.
Over 80% of content created by marketers goes unused by sales teams. What a waste of time, effort and money!
Marketing teams need the input of salespeople to create useful and effective campaigns and initiatives but unsurprisingly perhaps, marketing departments are often nicknamed the “brand police” – more concerned with making sure everything is in line with brand guidelines than being useful in actually generating sales.
Any marketing manager worth their salt knows that consistency is key - Brand promises should be clear with every interaction that anyone experiences with the business. One of the main struggles for marketing professionals is when to approach sales for feedback and/or how to act upon it when sales teams use the opportunity to give honest feedback on what’s working and not working in the field.
Essentially, sales and marketing teams are bound together by a single goal – deliver revenue. Many companies have already integrated their sales and marketing teams because they realize that by working together, marketing and sales managers can blend anecdotal feedback with quantitative metrics to determine the true effectiveness of marketing and sales activities and deliver a significant increase in profits.
So at which stages should salespeople give marketing feedback?
Concept Stage
Sales teams often build strong relationships with clients and see trends and patterns in buyer’s behavior in the journey from awareness to buying without even realizing it. If it is assumed that everyone has the best intentions, sales can be a wonderful source for suggestions and ideas so it’s important to get their input and translate it into a campaign plan that works.
Individual salespeople can often focus on their own goals and revenue rather than the overall brand message of the company. For this reason, it’s important to get their input and carefully translate it into B2B and B2C marketing initiatives that can work for the whole company and help customers make the right buying decisions.
If you’re thinking of doing something new this year, it might be worth delaying slightly and asking the sales team to provide input on past initiatives first. Speaking to sales at the concept stage means you can get valuable feedback on what’s working, what people are responding to and what clients and prospective clients haven’t engaged with in the past. Taking a moment to talk to other teams can save a lot of time, effort and money in the long-run.
Post-Rollout Stage
Sales teams are often exceptionally results-driven because they live and work in monthly cycles with various targets and quotas to hit (sales cycles may be longer than a month but monthly reports are usually still expected). Salespeople often quote the old adage “time is money” which is why they often get frustrated with marketing because initiatives rarely deliver immediately and take time to generate engagement and produce results.
Getting feedback from sales after a marketing campaign has been going for 7 – 10 days is a waste of time of effort because it’s often too soon to tell. Better to get some quick feedback on campaigns on a monthly basis and then do a deeper review on a quarterly basis to get a more holistic, qualitative and quantitative understanding of what’s working and what’s not and generate some new ideas at the same time.
Marketing can also ask sales teams to write down any feedback comments from clients directly which can be used as testimonial content on the website, social media and elsewhere. At EMARI we have a set of 10 testimonial questions we ask sales teams and small business owners to start asking in order to generate different types of engaging content and of course, the sales person’s favorite type of inquiry – referrals.
Marketing can also ask sales teams to write down any questions they get asked by clients during the process from awareness to buying. This can create amazing content ideas and I guarantee if one prospective client is asking that questions, others will be as well. Make it a game. How many questions can you get your clients to ask? How can you involve them in evolving your product and service? What problems are they actually facing in their day-to-day life that you can help with to create real additional value?
Whilst marketing can provide statistics on social media engagement, website hits and how many inquiries were offered to sales teams, sales can provide qualitative data such as buying intent, conversion rates of each stage gate and together the teams can rate both the quality of the leads generated and amount of revenue won. This is especially useful when looking at larger deals that may take longer to close.
For example, if marketing activities send 30 inquiries to the sales team, but only 3 have closed it might seem like a marketing initiative has failed however sales could provide additional feedback that 10 are still being nurtured and reviewing proposals which would suggest the activity is working after all. Having time and space to reflect on the campaign properly could lead to a further conversation about potential follow up content related to the initial campaigns. Marketing can then create this content for sales teams to use to develop the relationship with the customer further by providing valuable information that is relevant and resonates with them.
Closing the Feedback Loop
Essentially when the right processes are put in place, they help teams become efficient and encourage the right kind of inputs and outputs so everyone can work together to drive revenue growth. If you are spending money and not seeing a lot of results or just need some help integrating your marketing and sales' teams efforts, please let me know - We love this stuff and we'd like to think I'm good at it. I recently helped a company with a £5million turnover reduce their marketing budget by 92% and increase their revenue by 47% year on year within 6 months. We’ll quite happily tell you the story of how this was achieved - let’s get started!. No sales pitch guaranteed!