Adele Revella
arevella@pragmaticmarketing.com

Is management asking you to do more to generate sales?  If so, you're not alone.  But be careful about how you respond.  Marketing should contribute to sales results, but you should not become a sales support organization. How do you know when you're crossing the line into sales?  If you're building customized presentations and proposals, or delivering prospect demos for the reps, you're in sales support.  Yet every time a deal closes the pipeline gets smaller.  A productive marketing organization supports sales by constantly bringing new leads into the pipeline, and then drives those leads to closure with effective tools and programs.

If you want to rapidly and consistently help reps to achieve results, begin by learning the steps they take as they transform a lead into a customer.

• Meet with your sales managers to understand the stages in the sales process and the type of prospect (technical, financial, executive, etc.) that your reps must convince at each stage.
• Develop a profile of each type of buyer, and understand the information they need to make a decision to move to the next stage.
• Find out how many deals are currently in each phase of the pipeline, plus where and why they're getting stuck. 

At the end of this assessment, you should understand which sales tools are needed.  The next step is to evaluate your current tools, including your web site, for their usefulness in the sales process.  While each organization and process is unique, following are some of the issues you should expect to discover.

• There are generally two or three types of buyers in an enterprise-level sale, including a technical, financial and executive buyer, and each of these people needs different information to gain confidence in your company.  For example, most senior managers worry about implementation timeframes and the manpower needed to support your solution.  Do you have sales collateral that answers these questions?  How believable and detailed is this information? 
• Many data sheets waste paragraphs describing the problem.    If the prospect doesn't believe he has a problem, he won't read your materials.  If he does have a problem, he wants you to quickly and succinctly explain why you are best qualified to deliver a solution.  If you really need to "educate" the buyer that they have a problem, written collateral will not get the job done.  Make sure that each of your sales tools quickly and convincingly demonstrates your expertise at solving the target prospect's perception of his problems.  If you don't know the person you're talking to, you're not communicating.  
• Many marketing people believe collateral should describe benefits, not features, and the result can be a lot of fluffy words that read just like the competitor's.  Buyers have been promised that solutions are "flexible, scalable and compatible" for years, and they don't believe us.  Expect your prospect to quit reading whenever they see these words.  You need to quickly state the problem you address and then describe the specific features and/or implementation processes that will make the solution work.  Be honest and direct.  None of your competitors approach marketing this way, and you will stand out as a credible partner who understands your customers. 

Marketing helps sales channels with awareness, leads and sales tools. Sales support helps sales people with individual deals. You can help the company generate more revenue by loading the pipeline with qualified leads and providing the tools for sales people to move the accounts to close.