It’s not hard to understand why companies place so much emphasis on aligning their sales and marketing teams.
Buyers continue to engage sellers later along their journey and the buying process continues to become more complicated, involving more decision-makers. In this modern environment, sales and marketing must act as one cohesive unit to standardize messaging, recognize the buyer’s path to purchase, and enable sales teams to start more sales conversations with qualified prospects.
Taking this importance into consideration, we’ve decided to do something we’ve never done before. Vengreso has two podcasts, the Modern Marketing Engine podcast showcases marketing leaders, and The Modern Selling Podcast showcases sales leaders, entrepreneurs, and anyone responsible for producing revenue.
These two podcasts are wildly successful with more than 400 published episodes combined. That’s why we’re excited to do this roundup on a specific topic.
Naturally, we thought that sales and marketing alignment was a great fit, given the audience of our two podcasts.
Below, we’ve pulled five recent episodes of the Modern Marketing Engine podcast that focuses on how the marketing leaders at these companies have aligned their team with sales.
Listen to each of these episodes to learn valuable insights into how you can better align your marketing and sales teams to achieve better results. And don’t miss our upcoming roundup of essential episodes of The Modern Selling Podcast!
Episode 271: How To Measure Contribution To Sales Pipeline From Events
Chief Marketing Officer, Socio
Events account for more than 22% of most marketing budgets. Yet, in this data-driven world, there aren’t many businesses that use data to reveal the keys to successfully generating sales leads at events.
In fact, it took Bernie 271 episodes to cover the topic! 🤔
Socio is an event app platform that provides customizable event apps trying to change that. Their team has recognized how difficult it is to draw a straight line from event spend to ROI because most of the key elements of a successful event are difficult to track.
So, what’s the best way to track the ROI of events? For one, sales and marketing must be aligned to understand which reps should attend, identify specific KPIs and set daily goals for the event.
Listen to this great episode as Corey McCarthy, CMO of Socio, shares how marketing can effectively tackle the handoff of event leads to sales to maximize your ROI on event spend!
Events account for more than 22% of most #marketing budgets… Are you using #data to measure the #ROI of your events? Learn how @socioevents helps you track and maximize your ROI on event spend! @mikedobrien @mmenginepodcast Click To TweetEpisode 267: Why Customer Success Belongs in Marketing
Chief Marketing Officer, Lola.com
Lola.com (which is a shortened version of longitude and latitude) is a B2B business travel platform that allows companies to track expenses, save money, and create more transparency for business travelers.
The fact is, no one likes the many headaches associated with business travel. In fact, Lola.com surveyed 1500 business travelers and found that the average traveler spends 12 hours planning and documenting their trip.
Jeanne shares that one of the difficulties Lola.com faces is that they sell to the CFO, but their end-user is the business traveler who needs a quick solution when the hotel has lost their reservation or the car rental company has no cars. At those times, customer success is key to their business and their many five-star reviews.
How do they succeed?
While many CEOs and Boards often don’t know where customer success fits into an organizational structure, Jeanne believes very strongly that successful organizations have Customer Success under marketing.
Listen to this episode to learn why!
Where does #CustomerSuccess fit into your organizational structure? @jeannehopkins of @LolaTravel shares her advice on an @mmenginepodcast episode! Learn more practical tips in @mikedobrien’s roundup! #Leadership #B2BSales Click To TweetEpisode 265: How to Market An Unknown Premium Brand
Vice President of Marketing, Jumio
Jumio faces a difficult challenge that some brands can relate to. They are a premium brand in an industry where many buyers don’t recognize any difference between the available solutions, even though Jumio has won numerous, prestigious awards.
As a provider of identity and verification solutions for businesses, their target audience is any company that requires users to sign up or register online, such as banks, consumer goods, online gambling or many others.
In this episode of the Modern Marketing Engine podcast, Bernie and Dean discuss how the Jumio marketing team believes that the best way to sell to the modern B2B buyer isn’t through selling. Instead, it’s through education.
Consequently, Dean’s team uses PR, analyst relations, and sales enablement to educate their buyers to build brand equity and gain the attention they need to set up their sales team for conversations with qualified prospects.
Don’t miss this great episode focused on the importance of sales and marketing alignment, especially with an unknown premium brand.
How does a premium brand like @jumio market to an industry where #buyers don’t recognize the difference between available solutions? @Dean_Nicolls, VP of #Marketing says it’s through education. @mmenginepodcast @mikedobrien Click To TweetEpisode 263: Voice of the Customer Insights Only Your Customer Advisory Board Can Deliver
Senior Vice President, Marketing, AVI-SPL
AVI-SPL is a digital workplace services provider that works to improve team collaboration and unlock new business value. As a B2B provider, AVI-SPL lacks the closed-loop information of e-commerce companies. However, they still need as much information about their customers as possible.
Consequently, they created a Customer Advisory Board or a formal organization of members who are chosen via an official nomination process and who serve limited terms.
In this episode, Kelly shares the importance of the voice of the customer (VOC) and how it informs all aspects of their marketing strategy, such as:
- Ensuring their brand is still relevant.
- Designing the user experience.
- Where to target lead generation efforts.
- Creating customer advocates.
Listen to this complete episode to learn how the Customer Advisory Board helps align the sales and marketing efforts of AVI-SPL.
How important is the voice of the #customer to your #sales and marketing strategy? @kelly_bousman of @avisplinfo discusses its impact with @BernieBorges in an episode of @mmenginepodcast. Read the recap by @mikedobrien to learn more! Click To TweetEpisode 256: What’s Changed In My 15 Years Of Marketing Leadership
Chief Marketing Officer, Assurance
As an insurance brokerage, Assurance manages over 6,000 clients, mainly mid-sized businesses, though some of their clients are large businesses and small businesses.
During Steven’s 15 years with Assurance and 27 years of marketing experience, he has watched the sales process evolve. Today, marketing has to better arm sellers with an online presence because the modern buyer performs more independent research before contacting a sales rep (or insurance broker).
To do that, Steven and the rest of the marketing team at Assurance understood the value of digital selling techniques designed to educate their customer. Consequently, they focus on building professional, branded social profiles with buyer-centric messaging. Additionally, they encourage brokers and other client-facing employees to share valuable content on their social accounts to establish their expertise.
Steven strongly believes that sales and marketing alignment goes beyond just having the same focus. Instead, Marketing Is Sales. In today’s business environment, the sales team uses the data provided by the marketing channels to reach out to pre-qualified clients.
Learn how Steven and the Assurance marketing team leverages content, social media, and how they view every marketing interaction as a possible sales opportunity!
.@handmaker, CMO of @AssuranceATeam strongly believes that #sales and marketing alignment goes beyond just having the same focus. Instead, #Marketing Is Sales. @mikedobrien @mmenginepodcast Click To TweetThe Value of Sales and Marketing Alignment
These episodes share many common themes. The most important of which is that the modern buyer doesn’t want to be sold to. They want to develop relationships with sellers who provide value and who are focused on earning trust. With all of the available information, the hard sell is a relic, with lower and lower rates of success.
Instead, sellers must understand how to provide value to prospects from their first engagement. This lays the foundation of trust and is more likely to lead to an offline sales conversation.
That’s why we’ve created the PVC Sales Methodology TM. This easy-to-follow guide describes a messaging technique sellers can use to personalize, provide value, and offer a soft CTA to guide prospects along their purchasing journey. If your sellers aren’t striking the right chord with prospects, download the guide today!
