Why Marketers Should Help Sales to Always Be Closing

During this month’s Insight50 webinar, we’ll discuss why marketers should help sales to always be closing. Sign up to the session to get all your questions answered.

Almost everyone in sales and marketing will be familiar with Alec Baldwin’s famous blackboard lesson to a beleaguered and desperate sales team (warning – some strong language in the clip below).

But while marketers might spend much of their day on the AIDA, it would be well in their interest to look at the ABC – even if they aren’t in the running for the Cadillac or the steak knives.

So while you put that coffee down, here are three reasons why it pays to help sales to always be closing.

ABC helps to build stronger relationships with sales teams

Marketers often complain that their relationships with sales teams leave much to be desired. But at the end of the day, all that matters is the revenue and closed deals that a company can achieve in order to keep the lights on and generate a profit.

Salespeople are always under a lot of pressure to make their targets, both to achieve the upside of a bonus and to avoid the downside of being shown the door. While providing great leads is an excellent start, anything extra that marketing can do to help their colleagues will inevitably build a stronger working relationship.

As a result, these salespeople will pay back the favour, making sure marketing gets credit and acknowledgement where it’s due and providing assistance to marketing to help meet their own targets.

ABC increases marketing’s share of weighted pipeline

Opportunities within the sales process are often labeled as either being marketing-generated or sales-generated. But if the marketing-generated opportunities don’t make their way down towards the final stages of the sale, their value becomes limited – and as such, marketing’s value isn’t counted as strongly.

By helping edge opportunities towards sale and over the line, marketers increase their value to an organization. Furthermore, there’s the chance to make sure well-qualified leads don’t get left behind as the sales team chooses which opportunities and accounts to focus on.

ABC will strengthen your own career

Lazlo Bock, Google’s former SVP of People Operations, once described the perfect formula for a winning CV or resume. That was to state your achievements using the following structure:

Accomplished [X] as measured by [Y] by doing [Z]

Helping colleagues in sales to close deals will help to assign both a monetary value to your achievements and provide a list of brand logos. Whether you’re applying for a promotion or a new role, demonstrating the value you have brought to the revenue process in such terms will allow you to stand out among the competition that can’t boast such achievements.

Furthermore, as some firms look to hire Chief Revenue Officers instead of Chief Marketing Officers, these achievements will demonstrate your ability to reach across the entire customer journey.

Want to learn more and get your questions answered? Then sign up to the Insight50 session on “How Marketers Can Help Sales to Always Be Closing”.