Identifying the accounts that are the most valuable to your brand and concentrating your efforts on them can help align companies’ marketing and sales forces.
“The friction or lack of trust between marketing and sales is interesting, because both sides are focusing on growing revenue and driving the business forward,” notes Peter Isaacson, CMO, Demandbase, who recently chatted with Chief Marketer about the marketing and sales relationship.
Traditionally, friction has risen because both teams are approaching the goal differently. Marketing concentrates on generating leads to fill the sales funnel, while sales is looking for meetings with buyers and influencers. Sales teams often feel like they’re not being properly supported, but digital technologies that help marketers customize and personalize messages can help change that, says Isaacson.
A shift toward account based marketing can have a huge impact further down the pipeline, he continues. “The sales and marketing process has gotten so challenging—individuals are being bombarded constantly, but technology can help you identify accounts accurately and customize marketing based on industry.”
Isaacson suggests developing marketing and engagement plans against the accounts sales identifies s as the most valuable. “Scale your efforts,” he says. “Companies are getting smarter with data and doing great things with predictive analytics to identify the best prospects and focus attention on them. More and more tech is being developed for B2B marketers—B2B is an enormous market that can’t be ignored.”
Of course, a huge issue in B2B marketing is the fact that potential customers are waiting longer and longer before they connect with a potential vendor. By the time they contact a company to discuss potentially buying their product or service, they may already be 80% of the way towards making their decision.
“There’s definitely a trend towards maximizing the value you get out of the portion of the sales cycle before the hand raise,” he says.
More on B2B Marketing:
3 Reasons Your Employees Should Be Thought Leaders
Closing the Gap Between Traditional and Data Driven Marketing
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