4 Reasons Why You Need Sales and Marketing Alignment for Virtual Selling Success

This post appeared originally on the Seismic blog.

When the business world shifted from in-person to virtual this year, B2B sales changed too. Sellers went from being road warriors to working from home offices, using video-conference calls to engage prospects and close deals.

Yet while our work settings changed, the focus on understanding customers’ businesses and helping them meet their needs remained the highest priority. The challenge was to achieve the same goals while operating in a new way.

We decided to find out how sellers are adjusting to this virtual environment and what’s helping—or hindering—them. What we discovered was a new focus on the importance of sales and marketing alignment.

Making sure sales and marketing are working toward the same goals and supporting company objectives is essential in the best of times. When teams are working remotely in the midst of a pandemic, it’s absolutely critical.

We asked three sales and marketing professionals to explore the challenges of virtual selling and share how marketing can enable sales to drive the best results possible. Our featured speakers included Will Quigley, Senior Director, Enterprise Sales, Seismic; Jake Miller, Senior Product Marketing Manager, Allego; and Brian Johnson, Senior Enterprise Account Executive, Allego.

Here are the four reasons why sales and marketing alignment is critical from our webinar How to Align Sales and Marketing to Maximize Virtual Sales Success.

Reason 1: Marketing is the glue that makes sellers effective.

Marketing activities—events, ABM, content, and campaigns—are critical to make sellers more effective. Now more than ever, marketing helps sellers focus on revenue-generating activities and acts as a vital conduit for company messaging, product updates, and case studies.

When marketing and sales enablement are aligned, reps can take advantage of new assets easily and rely on a steady stream of relevant and up-to-date content. With marketing support, sellers can maximize their time selling and use personalized content to stand out from the competition.

Reason 2: Sellers need to react quickly in a volatile and uncertain climate.

Our sellers found that prospects have responded differently to the pandemic. Some continued to survive, some even thrived, while others faced severe drop-offs. Sellers needed to readjust their priorities to focus on industries that were weathering the economic downturn.

On the other hand, sellers found that executives who weren’t traveling were easier than ever to engage, but the length of time they could schedule with them has been shrinking. Both of these factors mean that being equipped with relevant, personalized sales content from marketing has become even more important.

Reason 3: Communication is a two-way street.

To keep sellers ahead of the curve and hitting their targets, they need access to the most timely, relevant, and impactful materials—and they need to know how to use them. Making sure sales understands the big picture increases alignment and adoption of content.

At the same time, marketing needs feedback from sales to learn what’s working and what’s not. Otherwise, content doesn’t get used, wasting time and resources. When sales has the most relevant thought leadership and use case-specific content, they stay top-of-mind with prospects, while bringing insights and value to every touchpoint.

Reason 4: Sellers need content at their fingertips.

Sellers are constantly looking for ways to engage with prospects. They must add value to each interaction, but they don’t have the time to hunt for just the right content. They also need content that fits where each prospect is in the sales cycle: high level thought leadership for early stage relationships and customer testimonials and use cases for downstream deals. When marketing makes timely and personalized content just a click away, it gives reps time back to focus on selling.

Are your sales and marketing teams aligned?

Now more than ever, sales reps have a variety of tools in their arsenal. As professionals in every industry fight Zoom fatigue, aligning sales and marketing allows sellers to bring value to every touch point, whether it’s via email, phone or video-conference. Make sure that your teams are working from the same playbook, and you’ll drive results long after the pandemic has run its course.

Learn More

To learn more about how to align sales and marketing for virtual sales success, watch the complete sales webinar on demand here: How to Align Sales and Marketing to Maximize Virtual Sales Success.