Sales professionals are challenged with providing value early on in the relationship by making the prospect feel like he/she is learning something along the purchase journey. In order to support a successful sales team, marketing and product leaders must enhance the collateral the sales team uses to accomplish the difficult task of educating and challenging a potential customer.
In my blog two months ago, I touched on the importance of getting your prospect to stop and think during the sales cycle. Now I want to outline some of the key things that a sales person needs to successfully communicate: data driven insights, customer success stories, and industry specific trends.
Data-driven insights are key element of a successful piece of collateral.  The marketing and product team need to create the right message to help attract and retain the prospect’s interest. These stats can help the sales person anticipate objections from the prospect by giving reasons to push back, while challenging the prospect’s pre-conceived notions.  These insights can be as simple as how much the company has grown to as complicated as the percentage of employee turnover related to shifts in the global GDP. Insights that are relevant to your customer, or related to your product or service, are the things sales people need in order to elevate their conversations with prospects.
Customer success stories are another important item that the marketing team can provide to the sales team to drive the right message with tough prospects.  Client testimonials can be a powerful tool to challenge and push a prospect to a specific point of view.  These give credibility to the sales person’s story and help align with the overall messaging of your company’s priorities.
Industry-specific trends are another great way to address a prospect who may not understand how your product or service could help their organization.  It is vital that the marketing and product teams develop content that gives the sales team leverage to attack a prospect’s rigid assumptions and ultimately result in a paradigm shift.  By highlighting key trends such as the decline in manufacturing due to the rising price of commodities, or the growth of a specific buyer segment in the retail space, your team can completely change the way a sales person addresses specific objections.  These trends can come from a wide variety of research organizations or government entities – compiling the data to be relevant in a number of scenarios is where the marketing team can be so vital in making the sales team successful.
Elevating the sales teams’ conversations is no easy task, and can only be made possible with strong contributions from the marketing and product team as well as providing the right tools for productive push back. The entire sales journey is an opportunity for the prospect to learn, as well as break through any preconceptions that might be holding their organization back.
How does your organization empower your sales team to be as successful in front of prospects as possible?
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