Does a tree that falls in the middle of the woods make a sound? Marketing should always communicate wins.

We have released ten marketing automation tips to make you a little more productive. Like presents, some are small, some are big–but enjoy them all.

Today’s Tip – Celebrate Wins and Build Alignment with Sales

Most marketers know how to market to customers and prospects. Well, what about one of Marketing’s most important clients…the Sales team? If Sales doesn’t know about Marketing’s wins, it becomes more difficult to build alignment.

According to a recent MarketingProfs study , companies with aligned Sales and Marketing generated 208% more revenue from marketing. So how do marketers begin building trust? Marketing should always provide value and celebrate wins with the Sales team.

There are many tips but here are a few to consider.

1) Communicate Wins Consistently with a Weekly Success Email

Yes, I’m talking weekly. And be consistent–that means the email should go out to Sales the same day and time every week. And use the same format. In general, the email should arm Sales with information that can help them close more business. A few topics to include:

• Results from the Past Week
  • Goal: Give reps the hot leads they want. Reps will be happy to have these names readily available.
  • Example: “Last week’s tradeshow produced 450 attendees and 50 hot leads–here’s a link to those leads.”
• What’s Ahead This Week
  • Goal: Here, you are getting reps involved in the process and getting them closer to their prospects and customers.
  • Example: “This week’s hot webinar topic already has 600 registrants. Be on the lookout for Attendees next week. In the meantime, you can review the list of Registrants to see if any of your clients signed up. As always, here’s the copy and link you can add to your signature to promote the webinar.”
• Recent Wins
  • Goal: Demonstrate repeatable best practices. Sales reps are always trying to find a recipe to close more business. If they are seeing success with another rep with one of your marketing programs, that will build their confidence in your future programs.
  • Example: “Congrats to Jim Sullivan who just generated a $100K opportunity from the white paper our company released last month. Check out others from the campaign.”

2) Meet with Sales Regularly

Whether it’s a monthly call, beers after work or quarterly visits, establish a relationship with your Sales team. Reinforce the great things that Marketing is doing for Sales.

And listen to what isn’t working. Getting feedback is a big part of the overall process of developing effective marketing programs and establishing alignment with Sales.

3) Provide Sales with Intelligence

Give Sales more information about its prospects so reps can make more informed calls. Start by getting the Sales team heavily involved in the selection process of choosing the right third party tools. The team’s involvement will help build adoption and build alignment.

Here’s a shortlist for you to start with–some of which integrate directly with your CRM and marketing automation platform.

• Data.com  – Crowdsourced contact-focused data and D&B info.
• DiscoverOrg – DiscoverOrg’s specialty is providing organizational charts and purchase intent for mid-large sized organizations.
• Hoovers – A subsidiary of D&B. 85 million corporations, 100 million people, and 1,000 industries.
• InsideView – InsideView aggregates and curates all company and contact data, news and social insights, and professional connections. Intelligence from over 30,000 sources is delivered into most CRMs.
• NetProspex – NetProspex provides comprehensive data management and offers intelligence via cleaner data (Data appending, cleansing, enrichment).
• RainKing – In-depth information on validated technology decision makers that also includes purchasing intent.
• ZoomInfo – Detailed profiles of 95 million business people and seven million businesses.

For companies using Marketo, Sales Insight is the perfect tool for highlighting lead scores, pages visited, programs completed and more.

Bang for the buck effort-wise, Sales Insight puts valuable marketing information at the rep’s fingertips. Tomorrow’s post, Arm Sales with Intelligence with Sales Insight will cover this topic in detail.

Summary

An internal marketing plan is essential to building a successful Sales and Marketing alignment process.  As with most relationships, communication is a key ingredient so make sure to keep your key reps on speed dial.

Other Tips from the Series

• Tip #1 – Add Time Zone Link to Webinar Invites
• Tip #2 – Improve Your Global Form Experience
• Tip #3 – Build Reusable Offers With Snippets
• Tip #4 – Celebrate Wins and Build Alignment with Sales
• Tip #5 – Arm Sales with Intelligence with Sales Insight
• Tip #6 – Don’t Forget Your Plain Text Email
• Tip #7 – Put Down the Pepto: Reduce Marketing Automation Stress
• Tip #8 – Gain Insight into Your Lead Lifecycle with Date Stamping
• Tip #9 – Cut Marketing Effort in Half with Program Tokens
• Tip #10 – Improve Results with Global Suppression Lists

The post Tip #4 – Celebrate Wins and Build Alignment with Sales appeared first on RevEngine Marketing.