MARKET VIEW 01
Simeon Lando
CHIEF MARKETING OFFICER
By understanding the customer and their environment, their decision-makers and influencers, what keeps them up at night, their pain points, and ultimately the value that can come from resolving these, salespeople will be well equipped to succeed in their endeavours.
Do you think it’s becoming increasingly important for enterprise salespeople to procure market and industry knowledge before engaging buyers?
Over the years, salespeople have realised that in order to land the deals and be successful, they must strive to better understand their customers and leverage the knowledge that exists within their organisations and the wider market. By understanding the customer and their environment, their decision-makers and influencers, what keeps them up at night, their pain points, and ultimately the value that can come from resolving these, salespeople will be well equipped to succeed in their endeavours. Likewise, it is important for salespeople to keep abreast of the increasing amount of industry information available online to demonstrate an understanding of the latest trends and market forces. To remain competitive and credible salespeople must spend more time in their preparation to become well informed before embarking on a particular sales pitch.
The bottom line is - the more insight that you can gain about your target audience and the more work you put into understanding them, the better chance you have of being successful.
What can marketing do to assist sales with procuring more market and industry knowledge?
Marketing has an incredibly important role to play. It has the opportunity to create and shape thought leadership; to not only reinforce the industry-leading position of the organisation, but also to put across a point of view that might encourage a buyer to speak to you in the first place. Marketing can produce “sales toolkits” that provide specific content linked to the relevant stage of the sales cycle where the customer exists. The “sales toolkit” ensures that you have content that is relevant, demonstrating how your solution can help customers to overcome their problems, and set themselves up for the next stage of success in their journey. Secondly, if the company that you're engaging with is early on in the sales lifecycle, you want to talk to them about wider, high-level industry problems and trends. But as you progress, you need to start going into more granularity, into the specific solutions and/or propositions that will actually help overcome those problems or requirements. The bottom line is - the more insight that you can gain about your target audience and the more work you put into understanding them, the better chance you have of being successful.
I always say: “We win together.” An organisation that recognises the importance of the synergy of marketing and sales will help transform an organisation and set it up for success.
SIMEON LANDO
Chief Marketing Officer
FORM3
What strategies do you deploy to help sales and marketing work together to engage buyers in a sales cycle?
I always say: “We win together.” An organisation that recognises the importance of the synergy of marketing and sales will help transform an organisation and set it up for success. We achieve this through ‘OKRs’: Objectives and Key Results. Sales and Marketing then create their own functional objectives and key results to support the company objectives. This helps ensure transparency across the teams and supports collaboration and joint success. All key results are measurable and time-bound. Marketing is measured on creating qualified leads at the top of the funnel with the ultimate goal of converting them into opportunities for the sales team to work on. Marketing then supports the sales teams in helping drive the customer through the different sales stages through a strategic nurturing programme. So, it's very much a team effort.
