What Football Can Teach You About Marketing and Sales

By Meghan Ganzer | August 17, 2017

It’s third down in a close game. This drive will determine the outcome. The fans are going wild and you can see the bead of sweat dripping from your coach’s brow on the sideline. What play do you call? Run? Pass? Play action?

The game of football plays out like sales and marketing organizations. If your quarterback is the marketing team, the receivers and running backs are your sales team. The defensive players are various objections and hurdles in your way to closing a deal. In order for a team to be successful, it’s imperative the quarterback communicates efficiently with his team. Play-calling is a difficult task, and many variables come into play such as: What kind of defense are we looking at? Is the goal to gain short yardage or do we need to get down the field quickly? What’s been most successful in the past?

 

Pick the Right Offense

We know no two sales processes will be the same, but we do know some marketing efforts will move us further down the field than others. Choosing an offensive system will depend on your organization’s goals, the players on hand and the industry you’re in. Every organization will see different levels of success with different approaches and styles.

Email campaigns may be more effective with some organizations, whereas industry-related events could be more beneficial to others. When building a marketing strategy, an end goal should be created for each activity in order to measure its success. Each play should be strategic and purposeful. Is our intention for this event to score a touchdown? Is our intention for this blog content to move the chains a few yards? Ask yourself those questions before building the right offense strategy.

 

Empower Your Teammates

We know that a quarterback can’t be expected to carry a team on his back. Sure, he needs to be a leader, a decision-maker and command the field, but football is an eleven-man team sport. A quarterback can throw a perfect spiral into the hands of a receiver, but it’s up to that salesperson to complete the catch and move up the field. Aiming your sellers with up-to-date and relevant materials will allow your sales team to drive the business forward and become a playmaker.

Take Tom Brady for example. Is he the greatest of all time? It’s possible. But where would he be without his Gronk or his Edelman? Where would he be without Coach Belichick? Probably punting to the other team. When you empower your teammates, you are enabling to not only make them successful but your team and organization successful as well.  

 

How We Play at Mediafly

Mediafly aims to create a close-knit football team; one that puts everything they have on the line for each other; one that learns from mistakes and grows together after wins; one much like the Patriots. Sometimes there are fumbles and turnovers, and that’s inevitable. Not every drive will result in a score. The difference between winning teams and losing teams is that winning teams will review the game film to better understand what went wrong or right and determine a stronger approach for the next game.

Mediafly allows you to review your “game film” to create high-performing sales teams and boost marketing effectiveness. When it’s third down and the game is on the line, what play are you going to call?

 

Looking to learn more about Mediafly’s solution and change the way you interact with buyers? Subscribe to our emailing list, follow us on social media, and contact us to get the latest information on Mediafly, our platform, and how Evolved Selling™ can help take your organization to the next level.

Meghan Ganzer is the Digital Communications Manager at Mediafly. Since making the strategic shift from sales to marketing, Meghan has focused on content writing, external communications, and event collaboration to support the Mediafly sales team through demand generation. Meghan attended Miami University in Ohio and graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Communications.

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