Who do you think creates the most content at your tech company? If you said, "marketing," well…maybe rethink your answer...
A study by Docurated found that sales actually creates 40% of content (marketing was tied with “everyone else” at 30%). And, that’s not a bad thing since content creation should be a company-wide initiative, especially because:
- Marketing has a better skill set for creating content, but sales has access to more timely information.
- Your company will be perceived as inconsistent if your marketing collateral doesn’t align with your sales collateral.
So how do you get your sales team, who thinks they “aren’t the creative type,” to actively contribute to content creation? Here are some of our favorite smarketing (sales + marketing) alignment tips for software and technology organizations looking to invest in sales enablement and content marketing.
Share insider info
What should marketing write about? Whatever questions the customer is asking, of course! But, how do you know what they’re asking? As a marketer, don’t be afraid to insert yourself into sales interactions.
- Ask that sales people record calls that you can listen to at a later date.
- Get sales to "bcc" marketing when answering prospect questions via email.
- Tag along on a sales pitch.
In other words, become one with your sales team!
Change the lingo
"Content creation" isn’t the sexiest of marketing phrases…in fact, it kind of sounds like a bad homework assignment from college. So, if your tech colleagues aren't enthusiastic about "creating content" (like white papers and blog articles), try renaming your content marketing requests to “insights.” This way, your sales team will perceive their writing contributions as education and answers to prospective leads (vs. laboring over a term paper)…which they actually are! And, intellectual property is definitely a selling point they can use to provide differentiation.
Forge alliances
What type of content would be most helpful for sales? Odds are they won’t know off the top of their heads. But…if phrase your question as, “what’s stopping you from closing sales?,” you’ll probably get bombarded with a list of roadblocks. Use this insight to show sales how marketing can create content that can help solve their problems. They’ll start to see you as an ally vs. someone adding to their to-do list.
For more ideas on how you can get your sales team involved, check out another great Kiwi article, Selling Sales on Sales Enablement.
Prove value
Once sales closes a deal, go back through your CRM and marketing automation platform to see all of the dozens of steps that likely occurred before the client signed on the dotted line. By showing your sales team that your most recent eBook brought in a new client from a simple Google search (organic SEO), you might just start to prove the value of content creation to the company’s bottom line (not to mention sales commission checks).
It all comes down to "smarketing"
Look, in sitcoms, there's no doubt that it’s hilarious to see a sales vs. marketing rivalry. But, in the real world, it’s vital that we all get along.
Without marketing, sales would end up spending their most productive hours hacking together unbranded and inconsistent sell sheets full of clip art. And without sales, marketing wouldn’t have half the insight that that their customer-facing colleagues have experienced.
But together, sales and marketing teams can function as a well-oiled lead-generating, deal-closing machine. As a marketing professional, you can take that first step to creating a camaraderie that will benefit everyone’s success (and wallets!) by driving your teams toward a common goal—new customers!
