A smart man once said, "Marketing is the price you pay for attention, sales effort is the price you pay for conversion."
Often, company leaders conflate the ideas of marketing and sales, only to find that neither is working well for them. By keeping marketing and in-house sales separate, but coordinated, you give your MSP the best chance at getting eyeballs to see your marketing message and hands that will willingly sign your sales contract.
In this article, we'll talk about what it takes to coordinate that dance between the marketing and the sales departments.
A B2B study done in 2018 indicated these six challenges in the marketing/sales relationship
- Lack of accurate/shared data on target accounts and prospects (43%)
- Communication (43%)
- Use of different metrics (41%)
- Broken/flawed processes (37%)
- Lack of accountability on both sides (25%)
- Reporting challenges (21%)
Avoid the Boxing Match!
Keeping your marketing and sales departments communicating helps avoid the conflict and increases conversions.
The Outsourced Marketing Firm
Before we talk about internal marketing teams and their relationship with sales, let's look at the one outlier in the scenario – the outsourced marketing firm.
In the MSP universe, there are a dozen or so marketing firms that specifically cater to MSPs. Companies like Ulistic, JumpFactor, Luminescent Communications, and Pronto help take the digital marketing burden off small to mid-size IT services firms, funneling leads toward the firm's internal sales department.
The challenge with outside marketing firms is communication. It's essential to have some form of account manager within that outsourced marketing firm that has the willingness and the bandwidth to coordinate the marketing strategy with what your internal salespeople are doing.
Without that key person, the outsourced model doesn't work nearly as effectively.
The 5 Pillars of Marketing/Sales Coordination
In an article on the topic for Harvard Business School, Benson Shapiro wrote, "In today's hyper-competitive world, your sales and marketing functions must yoke together at every level—from the core central concepts of the strategy to the minute details of execution."
- Respect Each Other's Roles
There is a big difference between the role of the marketer and that of the internal sales department employee in an MSP.
Think for a minute about a car dealership. See the guy out on the sidewalk in a neon-colored costume waving a "HUGE SALE TODAY ONLY" sign as the traffic goes by? He's the marketer. Now look in through the showroom window and find the smooth-talking guy with the khaki pants and button-down shirt talking to a young couple about interest rates and features of the newest SUV – that's the sales guy. One's out there on the ragged edge, gathering attention. The other is working with people much farther down the sales funnel, trying to close the deal.
By nature, MSPs attract methodical, detail-oriented (and many times, introverted) individuals – even in the sales department. Understanding that the marketing department is a different breed goes a long way in helping the two departments coexist.
- Coordinate Strategy
Although marketing and sales have different mandates and methodologies, the over-arching strategy needs to be firmly in place.
If there is no previously-agreed-upon strategy, there's always a tug of war between the departments.
Both teams must have a firm grasp on what the marketing funnel looks like, understand their place in that process, and know where the handoff of the prospect between marketing and sales happens.
Here are a few of the elements of an umbrella strategy that both teams must understand.
- Ideal Customer Avatar
- Company Values
- Pricing
- Brand Positioning
- Service Descriptions
- Service Packages
- Promotions
- Let Sales Inform the Marketing
Is your marketing department getting pre-qualified leads to the sales team, or is it hit and miss? Providing a conduit for sales to deliver feedback about sales calls to the marketing team helps marketing to refine the process. Giving the sales department qualified leads helps keep the sales team from wasting precious time and resources on "dud" leads.
The flip side of that coin is that you cannot allow your MSPs internal sales department to put your marketing team into a straight jacket. If what they are doing gets leads in the door they get leads in the door, that’s the most important thing.
- Map the Customer Journey Together
Part of the challenge with marketing and sales is that those departments are often so far in the weeds of the work that they can't see the forest for the trees. Getting both departments together and mapping out each micro-conversion of a potential customer from their first encounter with your brand to their final signature on a contract, is critical to the two departments working well together.
- Make Sales Utilize Marketing Assets
The complaint from the marketing department often is, "We make all this great marketing collateral, and then sales doesn't use it!"
Whether it is brand messaging, copy, or tools, there is a certain amount of marketing "flavor" that has to bleed across into the sales process.
Why?
Because your prospective client expects continuity throughout the process. What they see in the initial marketing campaign they want to see continued throughout their sales journey.
In other words, whatever you use to win their attention, you've got to keep doing to maintain their attention and trust.
In Summary:
Every professional publication from the Harvard Business Review on down advocates building bridges of communication and collaboration between your marketing and internal sales teams. Although some would suggest that the lines can be blurred between these two functions (especially for smaller MSPs) it’s important that best practices are followed, no matter how small your team is. It’s very easy (even in a scenario where only two employees that are filling these two departmental roles) to have employees that forge ahead, each without regard for their impact on the other’s overall effectiveness.
By breaking down silos and building cohesiveness around an umbrella strategy, each team will be able to recognize both their role and their boundaries in attracting and landing that next big account.
We hope this article was helpful! If you have questions, or would like information on our MSP partner program, please head over to this page: https://www.egnyte.com/resellers/msp-program