3 Ways to Align Communication with Corporate and Customer Needs

Sales leadership is always on the hunt for new sales tactics and strategies to transform their sales team into the dream team. When you take away sales training and costly CRM’s, what resources are left? Free (or almost free) tools and tactics are coming to light with the new age of selling. With a culture consumed by social media and the idea of marketing combining forces with sales, the industry’s relationship with its prospects is being challenged. Here are three, cost-efficient tactics to help improve the performance of your sales team and ultimately fill the pipeline:

1.    Social Selling

Free, simple and effective are three words to describe social selling. Encourage your sales team to leverage platforms such as LinkedIn, Twitter and Google+ to listen, engage and establish relationships with prospects. Hootsuite does an incredible job of outlining the pillars of social selling; the process is as follows:

  1. Listen and learn
  2. Research and relate
  3. Engage and impress
  4. Collaborate and close

Take advantage of everything social platforms have to offer. Get into the conversation; encourage your employees to respond to posts on the LinkedIn and Twitter newsfeeds. This is an almost effortless way to engage with prospects in the social community. Speaking of effortless, LinkedIn offers something called the Daily Digest which is an alert that it sent to you daily informing you when a contact changes jobs, gets a promotion, or even tells you when it’s their birthday. Similar to LinkedIn’s Daily Digest, Newsle is a free online tool that connects to your Facebook or LinkedIn accounts and alerts you when one of the people in your network are in the “news”.

These are all opportunities to engage, which can have a big impact for a small about of work. Just remember, social engagement is the gateway drug to lead generation.

 

2.    Partner with Marketing

Does your sales team understand the role marketing plays in the success of the business? Marketing exists to make the sales process easier so the company can hit its bottom line. Break the communication barrier and explain to your team where marketing fits into the sales process.

Sales can provide marketing with valuable information, including hindrances, prospect objections, customer feedback and market activity. With this information marketing can create programs and materials to streamline the sales process (follow-up emails, communication scripts, collateral, etc.). Working together can prove successful for both departments and the company as a whole.

 

3.    Identify Your Purpose

How does your business change the life of your customer? Everyone on your team should have an answer to this question. What are your customer’s issues? How will your product make their lives easier? Can you list product benefits?

  1. Among the obvious reasons, your team should be able to communicate an understanding of customer pain points when speaking on behalf of the organization. It’s easier to believe in something if you are able to relate to it; case in point, if you can’t relate to the customer then they surely won’t be able to relate to you or the product you’re selling. Once your staff understands the overall purpose of the organization from the customer’s perspective, their role in the company and how it fits into the big picture will become clear.
  2.  Identify the individual’s purpose and department purpose so they are able to see how their actions can help or affect the success of other departments. For example, we help marketing accomplish x, y and z. Sales helps marketing with a, b, c. When all team members understand not only their role, but the role other departments play to determine the success of a company.

Ultimately, a clear understanding will help build the foundation for good communication with clients. As well as helping the team identifies aspects of their conversations that would be helpful for marketing or trending issues so you can continue to relate to customers at their level.

 

These three strategies are designed to help you and your team reach your goals the most effective, cost-efficient way possible.  I hope you’re able to take these ideas back to your team and put them in action to help create your sales dream team.