The biggest miscommunications between sales and marketing organizations that can take an organization out of alignment are typically centered around the ‘quality of lead’ that marketing is flipping over the fence for the sales team to follow up on. This common misunderstanding is usually because the definition of what a ‘good lead’ is is not mutually agreed upon by both teams. A simple rules of engagement document can solve that real quick.
A great way to build collaboration between marketing and sales is to map the customer journey to video content and detail which teams take responsibility for each action along the way. So sales can see that it’s marketing’s job to create interest and its up sales to take that interest and turn it into opportunity. Once the journey is mapped, collaborate on the content types to be used at each stage by marketing to support sales in their conversations. Just like marketing uses video on websites and landing pages to earn the prospects interests, sales teams can also use video to better engage prospects, build trust and communicate value in their daily engagements.
By collaborating on video content, messaging from both marketing and sales reps (in their one-on-one conversations with prospects) stays consistent and sales will feel confident following-up and staying top-of-mind with prospects, ultimately accelerating the sales cycle. While its marketing’s goal to further educate and interest prospects with personalized and customer-focused content (rather than product focused), sales is working hard to determine which leads have a real interest in the product, and of those, which ones are a good fit and are actively looking to buy. This tricky balance of communication can sometimes be like ‘good cop,’ ‘bad cop’ with marketing being the good one. The sales team needs video content that speaks directly to the benefits of the products to move leads from interest to consideration without providing too much information to the customer that might take the power and control away from their sales person.
With sales and marketing aligned the right mix of videos are created and sales cycles move faster. Once the video mix is fine tuned, consider creating a public-facing video library accessible to all employees including the sales team so video can be shared with prospects accordingly.
Also See: Video Marketing Software Solutions
Here are a few example questions to bring to the video marketing content meeting with sales and marketing:
These questions will help focus content brainstorm sessions and align both teams around the customer.
- What problems do your prospects need to solve?
- Why is it important to solve the problems?
- What are the business benefits?
- What is your brand’s solution to the problems?
- How, specifically, does your product solve the prospect’s problems?
- What are your product’s features and benefits?
- How can your product impact the prospect’s users and business?
- What sets your brand/product apart from your competitors?
Recommended video content types:
- Explainer videos
- Tip series
- Business use case videos
- Webinars
- Self-guided demos
- Interactive videos
- How-to/tutorials
- Webinars
- FAQs
- Micro-demos created by sales reps
